The Children Who Survived

Michael Novice, who had been a slave labourer at Sosnowiec, Buna and Krawinkel, later recalled: "Unfortunately I was too sick to be able to get up and see the German guards being taken prisoner. The liberation was my salvation. Had the war lasted another week, I would not have survived. Once liberated, I was placed in a sick-bay. There, Russian army doctors and nurses nursed me. My health was so poor then that there was a period when the staff gave up on me, thinking that I would not make it."

Also liberated at Theresienstadt was Pinchas Gutter, who had been deported three weeks after the Warsaw ghetto revolt to Majdanek, where his father, brother and sister had been murdered. At the age of twelve he had ended up in the slave labour camp at Colditz, and like Pinkus Kurnedz had survived the death march from there. After the liberation of Theresienstadt, Pinchas Gutter recalled, "We all rushed out and found ourselves on the main highway where a multitude of German refugees were being expelled, or fleeing to Germany. Families with children, peklach [parcels], with hand wheelbarrows, horse-drawn wagons, bicycles, were making their way and were being assaulted mainly by Czechs, some by Russian soldiers, and by very few survivors. I was with a band of children, and I remember very clearly my own sentiments of pity and commiseration towards these people, because they reminded me of my own suffering. I remember similar sentiments were expressed by my companions. After all these years I still find it intriguing that instead of an intense hatred which I should have felt for these people because they were Germans, all I felt was pity and commiseration."

David Kutner, originally from Lodz, was among those who reached Theresienstadt from Buchenwald. In the open wagon in which he travelled, often sleeping without realizing it on the bodies of those who had died during the night, he recalled how one day "we came to a stop in a siding, we were there for a few hours, and all of a sudden we realized that all the German guards had disappeared. By this time, I realized that my life, what was left in me, was ebbing away. I was delirious, and very feverish. I can vaguely remember being in some kind of makeshift hospital, where I was thoroughly bathed (my body had not been washed for months) and put into bed. I passed out, and when I came to, I was told that I was lucky to be alive, as I had survived a high temperature which is peculiar to typhus."

Taken just after the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp by the Soviet army in January 1945, this photo shows a group of children in camp uniform. The girl holding out her arm, showing her ID tattoo, is Miriam Ziegler. (Associated Press)

Those liberated after the death-train journeys were so weak that they could hardly eat. Great discipline was needed to avoid foods which the body could not absorb. After such long deprivation, not everyone could restrain themselves. "As a result", David Kutner recalled, "it was very distressing to see many of my friends die from simply eating -- having survived the six years of terrible experiences, concentration camps ... "

Arek Hersh was sixteen when the Russian troops reached Theresienstadt. Like many of the boys, he had arrived there only a few days earlier from Buchenwald, after a four-week ordeal. "We all looked alike, our bodies just skeletons", he later recalled. "The six of us who shared the room -- Jankl, Natek, Yacob, Moshe, Berek and myself -- went to bed that evening utterly exhausted, but it was not long before I was woken by a commotion coming from the streets. I heard people shouting and I went to the window to see what was going on. The sight that met my eyes was of people trying to climb on to a tank, several jeeps nearby filled with Russian soldiers, and hundreds of people running towards them. I saw a soldier playing an accordion while others danced."

"I saw many boys of about my own age in German uniforms, walking towards the assembly camp. At the end of the war the Germans in desperation had been making boys of fifteen into soldiers. Watching the Germans pass by, it was hard to believe that this dishevelled rabble were the soldiers of whom we had been so terrified. They must have been wondering what the Russians would do to them. Everybody knew how the Germans had treated the Russian people when they invaded Russia. I thought, "Surely the Germans can't expect any mercy?" I thought of the millions of Jewish people they had tortured and slaughtered, and I wondered what punishments would be meted out.

"As we watched, a young German boy of about my age stopped in front of us, took a knife out of his pocket and silently handed it to me. It was a Hitler Youth knife with a swastika on it. We looked at each other, neither saying a word, then he turned and walked away. Even then that moment seemed poignant to me, and I turned to Moshe and said how happy I was that we had lived to see this day. Clutching the knife and the food we had taken from the SS officers, we made our way back to the camp at Theresienstadt.

"The Russians gave us twenty-four hours to do whatever we wanted to the Germans, but being human beings we did nothing. On arriving back at Theresienstadt we noticed two cauldrons of rice pudding. I brought out the knife the German boy had handed to me and ate my share of rice pudding ravenously. I thought of my beloved parents, of my dear brothers and sisters, and of the many relations and friends who had lost their lives. I prayed for their souls and I prayed for myself."



The Boys -- Triumph Over Adversity: The Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors compiled by historian Martin Gilbert, copyright 1996