In spite of being dangerously malnourished, all three mothers and their babies survived an epic journey that took them from the ghettos and occupied cities of Europe to Auschwitz II-Birkenau and the eagle-eyed scrutiny of Dr Josef Mengele.
“Are you pregnant, pretty lady?” each of the pretty young Jewish wives was asked by the so-called ‘Angel of Death’ All denied their condition only to be sent on to the next stage of the process designed to systematically work and starve them to death.
Whilst the lives of most of their loved ones were reduced to smoke and ash, each woman gave birth to tiny babies in unspeakable circumstances – on a German factory floor during an air raid, in an open coal wagon in the middle of a storm, and at the gates of one of the worst extermination camps. All were destined for the gas chambers, but the Nazis had run out of deadly Zyklon B the day before. Instead they were left to rot or starve, only to be liberated by American forces a week later.
I first came across this miraculous story by chance in 2013 while reading an online newspaper late into the night. It featured an obituary of a woman who was pregnant in Auschwitz but whose child had been taken away from her and murdered. I realised that despite having read numerous books on the Holocaust I’d never before come across one that detailed what happened to the thousands of pregnant women who’d passed through Auschwitz and other camps.
My subsequent research led me to survivor Eva Clarke, who happened to live one hour from me in Cambridge, England. I spent an emotional day with her and at the end of our time together I asked if she would allow me the honour of writing her late mother’s story. She reached out and touched my arm and told me, “But I’ve been waiting for you for almost seventy years!” When I said that I thought her story was unique she told me how she had, by chance, discovered two other babies whose mothers had shared the same hellish journey and who had also survived. Each of them only children, they had since become ‘siblings of the heart’.
Once I learned more about the other mothers’ stories I knew that I had to encompass them all in one epic volume that would span the war and chronicle key moments in the attempted destruction of European Jewry. With their help and with that of their surviving relatives, plus my own extensive research around the world into these tales never before told, Born Survivors came into being. The voices of my three ‘babies’ are now destined to be amongst the last to be silenced. I am touched and honoured that not only have they named me their honorary ‘sibling’ but that they have bravely stood beside me to tell their stories during countless events around the world as publication of my book rolled out across twenty-two countries and in sixteen languages.
In this momentous 75th anniversary year marking the end of World War II as well as the 75th birthdays of these remarkable survivors, it is an astonishing fact that Born Survivors remains the first and only full account of babies born in the Holocaust who lived. Their fathers and most of their families perished, but these indomitable Children of the Shoah all went on to lead full and happy lives in Great Britain and the United States. We are privileged to have these representatives for the dead still here to give us their powerful testimonies in a way that celebrates their late mothers’ courage and defiance, while affirming the human capacity to hope and to love.
Never before have such young, healthy and eloquent survivors been able to bear witness in this way. As long as they are still alive to inform and move us then I believe that it is our moral obligation to not only listen but to ensure that as many people as possible hear their unique voices, especially in these troubled times.
The special commemorative edition of Born Survivors by Wendy Holden, which includes new material, is published by Sphere (r.r.p. £8.99) Paperback & eBook and Audiobook available
Website: http://www.wendyholden.com
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