The children were desperate to talk about the experiences they had had as concentration camp prisoners or forced labourers. Groups of young people huddled around the counsellors for days, talking about their suffering, the loss of parents and siblings. Of all the traumatic experiences, it was the death of parents that left the deepest wounds.
Each of the dozens of individual stories required a different approach, and the UNRRA volunteers listened with attention and compassion. They wanted to understand the children who had survived the war and the Holocaust in order to help them return to a normal life.
Their will to survive and their rage to live had blocked out absolutely everything else. That’s the way they overcame really everything.
Greta Fischer, UNRRA
1. Meeting with a journalist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
Numerous journalists came to the monastery to interview the children.
2. The Karpuk siblings and UNRRA staff, United Nations Archives and Records Center, New York.
The children felt the need to share their experiences with their mentors.
3. Experiences from the camp, private archive of Anna Andlauer.
Jewish survivors demonstrate caning punishment in a concentration camp.