Introduction
You often struggle to comprehend how ordinary societies descend into total brutality and how a child manages to endure such a catastrophe. You want to understand the mechanics of survival inside the most notorious death camps of the twentieth century.
A lucky child chronicles Thomas Buergenthal's journey from a peaceful childhood in Czechoslovakia through the Kielce Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Sachsenhausen, demonstrating how random chance and resilience preserve human dignity against overwhelming odds.
The book follows a chronological structure across five major stages of the author's early life. You will explore these guiding questions as you read:
- How does a family navigate statelessness and fascist persecution before the war?
- What daily strategies keep prisoners alive inside ghettos and labor camps?
- How do children endure the industrial slaughter of Auschwitz and subsequent death marches?
- What happens to a young survivor immediately after liberation?
- How does trauma transform into a lifelong dedication to international human rights?
1. Pre-war Life and Refugee Flight
Thomas Buergenthal was born on 11 May 1934. Mundek Buergenthal and Erich Godal operated a hotel in Lubochna, Czechoslovakia, as a refuge and observation post. The Hlinka Guard forcibly confiscated the property in 1938 or 1939.
The family's peaceful life in Lubochna was violently dismantled by fascist territorial aggression, forcing them into a desperate stateless existence.
You had to leave behind your treasured little red car with pedals before fleeing to Zilina.
Gerda Buergenthal repeatedly used immense courage, bluffing, and resourcefulness to protect her family from deportation authorities. When confronted by hostile police or soldiers, she leveraged perceived authority and confidence to reverse dangerous situations.
In Zilina, Gerda intimidated a Slovak police official by demanding to see the German consul and scolding him for treating allies like criminals, resulting in a police escort back home.
In March 1939, Germany marched into Czechoslovakia and the family entered Poland. Stateless refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied territories were trapped in legal limbos between closed borders until military interventions forced passage. After being stripped of legal nationalities and rejected by both Polish and Czech guards, the family lived in no-man's-land ditches until German soldiers occupying Czechoslovakia forced Polish guards to admit them.
The family spent a week walking back and forth across a fifty-yard strip of dirt road between border posts, sleeping in fields before German soldiers intervened.
2. Ghetto Survival and Labor Camps
German Jewish refugees gathered in Katowice in 1939 waiting for British visas to escape to England, but the outbreak of war on their scheduled departure day trapped them. Families registered 1 September 1939 as their scheduled departure date to England and traversed 200 kilometres from Katowice to Sandomierz. Yekkes and Yekketes formed these tight communities while waiting.
A fortune-teller's prediction that the author was a lucky child who would emerge unscathed sustained his mother's hope throughout years of separation and hardship. Despite skepticism from the father, the mother clung to the prediction that her son was ein Glückskind, which provided psychological resilience during deportations and long after the war when others doubted his survival.
When visiting a fortune-teller in Katowice, the mother took off her wedding ring, yet the fortune-teller accurately discerned she was married with one child and destined to survive at 27 years of age.
Survival inside the Kielce Ghetto and subsequent labor camps depended on resourcefulness, forced labor strategies, and sheer luck during brutal liquidations.
Survival in the Kielce Ghetto required resourcefulness, such as securing jobs outside the ghetto walls and performing restricted chores for orthodox neighbors. Inmates faced severe food shortages and arbitrary violence, while adults worked in forced labor workshops and children found alternative ways to secure small amounts of food or firewood.
Approximately 25,000 Jews lived in Kielce when the family arrived, enduring four years of life until August 1944. The author became a Shabbat goy, performing household chores that orthodox Jews were forbidden to do on the Sabbath, which allowed him to earn a little money and see how others lived in the Werkstatt while sporting payess and tzitzit.
The liquidation of the Kielce Ghetto in August 1942 resulted in the mass deportation and murder of almost the entire Jewish population. German death squads executed the sick and old on the spot, gathered inmates in a central square for selection, and transported thousands to extermination camps like Treblinka.
During the Aussiedlung and Arbeitslager operations, more than 20,000 people from the Jewish community were massacred. The author's father used his Werkstatt pass to save a group of twenty to thirty workers, but the author's grandparents were separated and sent to Treblinka.
During the liquidation of the Kielce labor camp in 1943, the author's life was spared when he asserted his ability to work. German soldiers separated children from their parents to be executed, and when pulled from the column, the young author directly addressed the city commandant.
Prompted by his father, eight-year-old Thomas told the commandant "Herr Hauptmann, ich kann arbeiten" ("Captain, I can work"), prompting the officer to send him back to the column while about thirty children, including his adopted playmates Ucek and Zarenka, were locked up and killed in the Jewish cemetery.
In the Henryków sawmill labor camp, prisoners performed forced labor while developing covert communication systems and warning networks against brutal guards. While parents worked in the factory or infirmary, children took on small roles, and the author became an errand boy for the civilian manager Fuss, using a hand signal to warn workers of the manager's approach.
Because the manager wore a Bavarian hat with a feather, the author wiggled his finger at the top of his head to signal his imminent arrival and prevent workers from being beaten with a whip, surviving almost a year at Henryków until July 1944.
Public executions in labor camps were intended to terrorize prisoners, but the calm dignity of the condemned often provided a powerful form of moral resistance. Escape attempts frequently resulted in brutal public hangings designed to crush inmate morale and entertain the guards, yet the refusal of prisoners to beg for mercy undermined that intent.
When prisoners were hanged at Henryków, one condemned man kissed the shaking hand of the inmate forced to place the rope over his head, robbing the Gestapo officer of his expected Schadenfreude.
As the train changed course in July 1944, the author's father recognized the route from his university days in Kraków and quietly shared the grim reality with the family while guards fired on escaping prisoners.
3. Auschwitz Reality and Death March
Arrival at Auschwitz subjected prisoners to profound dehumanization and selections, culminating in a harrowing death march amidst the regime's military collapse.
The author arrived at Birkenau at age ten and escaped the initial platform selection, reflecting that getting into Auschwitz was lucky because a selection would have meant immediate death. The transport was spared the selection process upon arrival because SS officers assumed children and those unable to work had already been eliminated in the prior labor camp. Most other arrivals were immediately separated and sent to the gas chambers.
Inmates at Auschwitz were stripped of their names and given serial numbers tattooed on their arms, which became their only recognized identity. The author was assigned the number B-2930, and his father became B-2931. Decades later, camp archives could only locate records using the author's number rather than his name 45 years later.
Concentration camps operated as laboratories for brutality, where inmate functionaries terrorized fellow prisoners to secure their own survival. A kapo and barrack boss brutally beat an inmate named Spiegel to death because Spiegel had previously denounced a kapo to the Gestapo in Kielce.
Inmates developed personal strategies to evade frequent SS selections and daily life hazards, such as hiding during head counts or securing functional jobs. You must use specific tactics to stay alive in the camp:
- stand as far back as possible and close to the barrack entrance during daily head counts;
- slip back into the barrack and hide if a selection appears imminent without being seen by the SS or barrack boss.
The author successfully avoided being selected by hiding in the barrack during head counts and later worked as an errand boy for the sauna's kapo. When hearing terrified voices from the nearby gas chambers at night, the author's mind transformed the sounds into recurrent nightmares that he learned to dismiss in his sleep. While pushing a garbage cart near camp C, the author spotted his mother in the women's camp B across the electrified fence and confirmed she was still alive.
As the Soviet army approached in January 1945, the Nazi regime evacuated Auschwitz, forcing thousands of starving prisoners onto a freezing death march. The author, along with friends Michael and Janek, joined the evacuation march from Birkenau, enduring extreme cold, starvation, and exhaustion while adopting a rest-and-jog routine to keep pace. You face extreme cold and numbness during such a march, requiring direct physical action:
- encourage each other to jump around and rub numb limbs upon waking in the cold;
- wiggle toes inside footwear to combat severe frost and numbness.
The evacuation began in January 1945 when inmates were ordered to line up with minimal possessions and marched through snow and ice over the 70 kilometres distance from Birkenau to Gliwice. Those who collapsed or could not keep pace were shot by SS guards and pushed into roadside ditches.
During the open-car rail transit through Czechoslovakia after the death march, local civilians provided vital life-saving food to the prisoners. The author and his friends Michael and Janek survived the freezing train ride because Czech civilians threw bread from bridges whenever the train slowed down or stopped more than ten days during the trip to Germany.
The author arrived at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg after passing through the Heinkel aircraft factory, located 40 kilometres from Berlin, noting the surreal irony of the camp slogan ARBEIT MACHT FREI.
4. Liberation and the Polish Army
Enduring the horrors of Sachsenhausen led to liberation and an unexpected chapter as a mascot within the advancing Polish military.
Severe frostbite on your feet required medical attention upon arriving at Sachsenhausen. You feared the sick ward because of your Auschwitz experiences, but friends convinced you to seek help. Two toes were amputated on your right foot during surgery in the Sachsenhausen Revier.
Orderlies periodically removed doomed patients during hospital selections in the Revier. A Norwegian inmate named Odd Nansen visited you in the infirmary regularly with sweets and books. Nansen secretly bribed the ward orderly with tobacco and cigarettes to keep your name off the list of terminally ill patients scheduled for execution.
You abandoned the infirmary as the SS began evacuating Sachsenhausen, leaving behind immobile patients like your friend Marek who remained trapped in casts. You managed to leave your bed, use a cane, and join a departing column to escape certain death.
After Soviet and Polish forces liberated the area, you met soldiers from the First Kosciuszko Division and chose to accompany them. You were two weeks short of your eleventh birthday when you joined the Scout Company in April 1945, carrying your B-2930 Auschwitz tattoo number. The captain of the Scout Company welcomed you, ordered custom shoes and a uniform for you, and integrated you into the military unit with a tailor-made uniform complete with corporal's insignia.
Following liberation, you struggled to eat normal meals because your stomach had shrunk from years of near starvation. The company shoemaker successfully cured your lack of appetite by administering specific treatments:
- Administer a spoonful of vodka followed by little pieces of bacon.
- Gradually increase the dose to half a tumbler with bacon to stimulate digestion.
You traveled with the Scout Company during the final assault on Berlin, sleeping in armored vehicles. You participated in the final days of the war in Berlin, witnessing Katyusha rocket fire and joining soldiers on a fishing trip using hand grenades in a park pond.
A Jewish soldier in your company recognized that an eleven-year-old boy did not belong in an active army base.
5. Reunification and Emigration to America
Post-war orphanages and clandestine networks facilitated a miraculous family reunion, paving the way for recovery, education, and eventual emigration to the United States.
The Jewish orphanage in Otwock served as a halfway house where former child inmates were provided with proper nutrition, schooling, sports, and social roles, helping them transition from fear and hunger to a sense of normalcy.
Tommy was examined by a doctor who put him on a special diet containing light cream, strawberry jam, or orange marmalade, making him feel he was eating better than ever before.
The Jewish Bund ran the Otwock orphanage and believed children should help build a socialist Polish state rather than emigrating, which prompted Zionist youth organizations like Hashomer Hatzair to infiltrate the orphanage and secretly prepare kids for emigration to Palestine.
A young female counselor named Lola, representing Hashomer Hatzair, secretly compiled a list of children wanting to move to Palestine, which including Tommy.
Because of strict border controls and missing paperwork, international rescue organizations and secretive groups like Bricha coordinated complex transports of children across national borders, often passing through transit centers and moving in groups.
Tommy's journey from Otwock to Göttingen involved passing through Prague, crossing borders illegally in the cold of late November or early December, and taking a United States military train.
Mutti's name on a search request was matched by a Jewish Agency employee who happened to remember seeing Tommy's name on the Otwock orphanage emigration list.
Mutti survived Ravensbrück, marched to Malchow before Soviet liberation, and traveled to Kielce to find her husband and son, where she learned of her husband's death at a concentration camp.
Mutti walked around Kielce in a stupor after survivors confirmed that Tommy's father had died at a German camp.
Mrs Appel, a baker's wife in Göttingen, returned a dust-covered suitcase containing family photographs and letters to Mutti.
Reuniting with a parent after surviving concentration camps abruptly shifts a child from adult-like self-reliance back into dependency.
When Thomas arrived in Göttingen at the end of December 1946 at twelve and a half years old, he kept kissing and holding onto his mother Mutti to ensure they were truly together.
Having received at most half a year of formal education before entering a German school, Thomas was tutored privately for a little over a year by Otto Biedermann, covering six years of school subjects through intensive daily sessions and wide-ranging discussions.
Otto Biedermann used Karl May's Wild West stories to rapidly improve Thomas's reading skills and required daily essays about his walk to tutoring, which led to deep discussions on contemporary realities.
You can follow similar structured habits when you face deep recovery tasks:
- Produce a brief essay every morning describing what was seen on the way from home to the tutor.
- Vary the daily route and rise earlier to discover new parts of town and observe people.
Observing happy German families on the street initially filled the author with envy and hatred, driving a desire for indiscriminate vengeance. Over time, he recognized that such acts would not restore the dead and that protecting humanity requires breaking the cycle of violence.
Looking from his balcony on Wagnerstrasse in Göttingen at pedestrians on Hainholzweg, Thomas longed for a machine gun to do to them what they had done to his family.
After reading an article about Odd Nansen's published diary detailing his time in Sachsenhausen, Thomas wrote to him. Nansen replied enthusiastically, revealing himself as the 'certain person' who had helped Thomas in the infirmary, sending massive crates of food collected by Norwegian schoolchildren and eventually bringing Thomas to Norway.
Odd Nansen mailed a massive wooden crate filled with canned food, dried fruit, rice, flour, and chocolate bars collected by Norwegian schoolchildren after receiving Thomas's letter addressed simply to 'Mr Odd Nansen, Norway'.
By 1951, seventeen-year-old Thomas realized he could not associate words like Vaterland or the German national anthem with anything other than Hitler and the Nazis, convincing him that he would always feel different and unsafe in Germany, prompting his move to America.
Thomas traveled to New York on 4 December 1951 aboard the USNS General A. W. Greely, a military transport ship carrying 1,271 refugees.
Thomas acted as an interpreter for US immigration examiners conducting interviews with prospective immigrants at the Bremerhavn transit camp.
As Thomas looked at the illuminated Statue of Liberty and New York City at night, the vivid memory of reddish-brown smoke from Auschwitz crematorium chimneys flashed before his eyes.
10 Key Ideas
- Thomas Buergenthal survived the Kielce Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Sachsenhausen because random chance and resilience preserved human dignity against overwhelming odds.
- Gerda Buergenthal repeatedly used immense courage, bluffing, and resourcefulness to protect her family from deportation authorities during their refugee flight.
- Survival in the Kielce Ghetto and subsequent labor camps depended on resourcefulness, forced labor strategies, and sheer luck during brutal liquidations.
- Arriving at Auschwitz at age ten, Buergenthal escaped initial platform selection because SS officers assumed children and those unable to work had already been eliminated in the prior labor camp.
- Inmates at Auschwitz were stripped of their names and given serial numbers tattooed on their arms, which became their only recognized identity.
- Enduring the freezing evacuation march from Birkenau, Buergenthal and his friends survived extreme cold, starvation, and exhaustion while adopting a rest-and-jog routine to keep pace.
- After liberation by Soviet and Polish forces, Buergenthal joined the Scout Company of the First Kosciuszko Division at nearly eleven years old, carrying his Auschwitz tattoo number.
- A Jewish Agency employee matched Mutti's search request after seeing Tommy's name on an Otwock orphanage emigration list, leading to their miraculous family reunion.
- Tutored privately for a little over a year by Otto Biedermann, Buergenthal rapidly covered six years of school subjects through intensive daily sessions and wide-ranging discussions.
- Traveling to New York aboard a military transport ship in December 1951, Buergenthal immigrated to the United States after realizing he would always feel unsafe in Germany.