The Children - Survivors of the Holocaust

Many of these children fled from the ghettos in 1943 as the Nazis herded the last inmates into the concentration camps. Janina aged 12 (here on the left) and her brother Joseph 18 (below and right) had already watched their parents being taken away. Joseph had grabbed Janina by the hand and together they had fled into the sewers to escape.
As Janina and Joseph trudged in darkness through the filthy sewage, they knew that only minutes earlier they had escaped death.
Finally they emerged into a world where Jews, even if they were children, were hunted like animals.
Janina who was separated from her brother, tells how she escaped and went into hiding. Two years later, after liberation she searched for her brother Joseph, who had saved her life.

JOE.
As the Nazis finally cleared the ghettos, transporting inmates to the death camps, Jo escaped through a hole in the ghetto wall. He talks about moving to 22 different hiding places, the terror of being followed. How he had to pay to be hidden, and his fear about what would happen to him when they money ran out

JAN 9, (seen here on the right after the war)
Jan watched the Nazi’s killing people and was so terrified that he ran away, he stayed on the run for 2 years. He talks about inventing a new name and a new past, foraging for food, how remembering his family would betray him.

LOLA.
Lola 8, was hiding alone for nine months in a dark, lice infested hole in the ground. The only time she stood up was to go to the bucket outside. When she was liberated she was forced through starvation to beg for food.

DANNI
Danni 6, became a street orphan, not knowing that her parents had been taken to the death camp at Auschwitz. She tells us about life on the road as a a 6 year old child, trying to eat raw chicken. When Danni was taken ill, the other street orphans left her on a stranger’s doorstep, hoping she would be cared for, nobody knew what would happen.

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