Born in 1886, Siegfried was one of nine children. His father, Isaac, owned a candy factory, and the family lived comfortably in the Polish city of Będzin. Siegfried (Shulim Mayer, in Yiddish) had a secular education and spoke Russian, German, and Polish fluently. As a young man, he traveled across Europe—and even to the United States—on business. His son Stanley would later remember him as a visionary; a man of business acumen and intuition. Around 1910, Siegfried met Salomea (Salcia) Waksberg through a matchmaker. They married and had two children, Stanley and Helena. In 1919, after World War I had ended, the family moved to Salcia’s hometown of Kielce. Subsequent years proved to be economically difficult for Siegfried; and he was undoubtedly very proud when both his children left to study at the University of Poznan, supporting themselves in their education. When the Nazis occupied Kielce in September 1939, Siegfried was briefly imprisoned, and Stanley later recounted that his father returned home crushed, with a new knowledge of what the Germans were capable of. In August 1942, the Nazis liquidated the Kielce ghetto and sent its inhabitants in boxcars to Treblinka, an extermination camp in eastern Poland. Siegfried was among the 99% of Jews in Kielce who were murdered during the Holocaust.