Harry Eisen, a Holocaust survivor born in Poland, founded Norco Ranch Inc., in western Riverside County in 1950 and built one of the largest egg producers in the state, processors and distributors, has died. He was 95 years.
Eisen died July 19 of complications from pulmonary disease at home in Beverly Hills, said his daughter, Frances Miller.
When Eisen and his wife, of Polish origin, Hilda, who moved to Los Angeles in 1948, had no money and spoke no English.
Eisen had directed a sausage factory and three points in Warsaw before the Second World War, but his lack of English could only get a job cleaning the barrel of meat in a hot-dog factory in Vernon .
However, after saving the money to buy his first 100 chickens, has launched an operation of the depot in Arcadia and eggs sold in their neighborhood.
The language was a barrier to launch your new business. As Eisen jokingly told the Riverside Press-Enterprise in 1993: "I spoke to my Jewish and hens laid their eggs."
The Norco Eisen increasingly moved its operation in 1950.
In 2000, when he sold Eisen Norco Ranch Inc., based in Missouri Moark, had a workforce of around 450 people and a list of major clients including the division of Kroger, Ralphs, Vons Division of Safeway, Albertson, Costco and Trader Joe jack-in-the-Box.
"It's the American dream," said former alderman of the city of Norco Steve Nathan, a family friend Eisen, the Associated Press-Enterprise, at the time of sale. "It started with a small group of chickens, worked hard and became a billionaire."
Eisen was born May 15, 1917, in Izbica Kujawski, a small town in Poland. He left home at 13 and got a job in a sausage factory in Warsaw.
Selected in the Polish cavalry before the Second World War, was captured during the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and finally ended in the concentration camp Auschwitz, where he was put to work in coal mines.
"I was just a number" tattooed Eisen, who still wore his number - 144492 - left arm, told the Associated Press-Enterprise in 1993.
After the Red Army approached Auschwitz began, and the prisoners were forced into a "death march" toward the other camp in January 1945, Eisen, Abe and his brother and another man escaped .
After the war, Eisen returned to his village where he had gone to school with Hilda.
With the exception of his brother Moses and his brother Abe, the entire family was murdered Eisen of the Chelmno extermination camp.
Hilda, who had joined the Jewish resistance after persuading a Nazi guard to open the door of his ghetto of Lublin in 1942, has lost her parents and her six brothers and sisters in Nazi death camps.
The Eisen, who were married in Monaco of Bavaria in 1945, spoke about their experiences of the Holocaust with their four children in recent years, but not go into details.
"I do not feel comfortable uploading their children with horror stories," said Miller.
But, he adds, "they were able to take your pain and become very beneficial for him and very Zionist and very giving back. He felt lucky to be in the giving of charity, more than the receiving end. "
Eisen was a member of several organizations of Holocaust survivors and served as president of the California Lodz, a philanthropic group that survived the Holocaust.
The Eisen contributed financially to the construction of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993 and attended the inauguration with family members.
Eisen spoke of his years at Auschwitz, in an interview recorded for the permanent collection of oral history.
"We are witnesses .... We went through hell," he said in an interview in 1993.
In addition to his daughter Frances, Eisen is survived by his wife of 67 years, his other daughters, Ruth Eisen and Maria Cramer, his son, Howard, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
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