www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2008/07/untold_holo -
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Published on: 7/17/2008
Last Visited: 7/17/2008
Purchase this photo at photos.statenews.com Photo courtesy of Kenneth Waltzer
This photograph was taken by American soldier Orv Iverson after the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, April of 1945.
Audio:
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Kenneth Waltzer, MSU professor of Jewish studies, tells the untold story surrounding his research of the 904 youths imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald.
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200: The number of individual files obtained by Kenneth Waltzer
150: The number of those boys Waltzer has received testimonies from
16: The minimum age at which children were assigned to work at Buchenwald.
Source: Kenneth Waltzer
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As the largest group of children liberated at a concentration camp during World War II, the boys' survival puzzled Waltzer, who has studied the topic for the past three years.
In March, Waltzer was selected by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for his work on the Holocaust as one of the first 15 researchers to assess the research value of the Buchenwald records in Bad Arolsen, Germany.This summer, Waltzer is researching the reason for the boys' survival more completely because of newly-granted access to the meticulously-kept Bad Arolsen files on camp prisoners.
Waltzer, himself of Jewish descent, theorized from the prisoners' testimonies that, as children, they were protected by an internal network of older prisoners.But he lacked the documentary evidence to confirm it.
"How were (the children) still alive to be liberated when the Nazis treated them as useless eaters?"Waltzer said."The big conclusion was that there was a group in the camp, connected with the underground, who clustered the children in specific barracks … and protected them as well as they could."
Normally the children, unable to work, would have been targeted for killing by the Nazis, he said.
While in Germany from June 16-26, Waltzer worked hectically copying files on about 200 prisoners, he said.
This summer he is using individual testimonies and the collected documents to explore how the children were protected by other prisoners, he said.
"Not everybody lived," he said."But a significant number of children were given refuge or haven, disciplined, kept safe, even had classes in a rudimentary sort of way to lift their spirits, to make them believe there was another world."
Waltzer has collected the testimonies of about 150 of the surviving boys, now in their 70s, including Elie Wiesel, author and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
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"When you put lots of individual stories together, you have a group history," Waltzer said.
A book of his conclusions, "The Rescue of Children and Youth at Buchenwald," will be released in 2009, he said.The book will combine the prisoners' individual stories into a collective narrative, he said.
"Nobody's done a book on rescue inside a concentration camp, as opposed to outside," Waltzer said."(It's) rescue not by bystanders but by fellow prisoners."
Before this spring, the Bad Arolsen archives had been open as part of the American Red Cross International Family Tracing Service, which was open only for Holocaust survivors and their families, he said.
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As a Jewish student of Waltzer's, he added that he will read the book.
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"That just shows you the significance of the kind of work that Ken is involved in," he said."It's pace-setting.
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Keep making us Spartans proud, Ken.
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