Two of Max Samuel's brothers perished in the Shoah: the tailor Gustav Samuel (1881–1943, Bełżec Camp) was deported on 12 February 1940 from Stettin to Bełżyce Ghetto and on 15 August 1941 onwards to Bełżec Camp, and the watchmaker Julius Samuel (1878–1943, Sobibór Camp) with wife Gertrude, née Gellhorn (1878–1943, Sobibór Camp), and son Kurt (1905–1942, Auschwitz), all having moved to Delmenhorst in 1920, when their home place Argenau had been seized by Poland, and escaped from Delmenhorst to the Netherlands, where they were deported from Westerbork in 1943.