Benjamin Kandel was born on January 2, 1915 in Lvov, Poland to Sigi Kandel and Elka Hahn. His father was killed during World War I. Ben moved to Krakow at the age of 19 to go to school to become an accountant. When the Nazis invaded Poland, his mother pleaded with him to leave, believing young men would be the first to be targeted. Ben walked to Russia, where he stayed for two years but was unhappy with life under the communist regime. With the help of a German soldier, he rejoined his family in 1941. Ben and his family were hidden by a Christian family until their money to pay them ran out. They were then forced to move into the Krakow ghetto. Ben was sent to work outside the ghetto, and while at work one day, his mother was taken away. She was killed in Plaszow in 1942. Ben was sent with a forced labor brigade to build parts for radios. He joined the Jewish underground but was taken before the German commandant and beaten for information and for trying to escape. His life was saved by the factory owner who needed his skilled labor.
Ben was then sent on a cattle car to Mauthausen, where he was again forced into slave labor. As the Allies closed in, Ben was sent to Ebensee. When the Nazi commandants fled the approaching Allies, Ben and the other prisoners broke into the camp’s bakery, and he managed to get out with two loaves of bread. Ben was liberated by the American army in May 1945.
After liberation, Ben walked to Germany and stayed in Munich. He found out that his mother, brother and two sisters had not survived. He wrote to his aunt in the United States, who helped him immigrate to New York. Ben found work in a factory and then as a salesman in El Paso. He eventually started his own business in El Paso. He was married three times and had two children.