Michael Smuss

Michael Smuss (15 April 1926 – 21 October 2025) was a survivor of the Holocaust and an artist. Smuss was the last surviving resistance fighter of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Smuss was born in Danzig, Free City of Danzig on 15 April 1926, to David and Margarete Smuss. When Michael was 6 years old, Nazi Germany took over the city. The Nazis then outlawed Jewish children in the public school system, after which Smuss was removed from his school for being an “enemy of the people.” Smuss's father homeschooled him until they moved to Lodz when Smuss was 12. In 1939, after the Nazis took over Poland, the Nazis started taking Jews to bring to the Warsaw Ghetto. Due to a misunderstanding of Margarete's passport, Polish authorities assumed she was a German citizen, which allowed her and Smuss's sister, Frida, to find work. Smuss and his father were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto. Smuss's father had connections that allowed him to open a shop in the ghetto.