New reports on the Holocaust | 60 Minutes Full Episodes
In a Nutshell
On the 80th anniversary of WWII's end in Europe, three Jewish women pregnant in Auschwitz hid their conditions from Mengele, gave birth amid slave labor and death marches, and miraculously survived liberation at Mauthausen as "Holocaust babies" now 80, later reuniting as siblings to honor their mothers' defiance. The luxury liner Cap Arcona, converted into a floating concentration camp crammed with 4,000+ prisoners in Lübeck Bay, was mistakenly bombed by British Typhoons on May 3, 1945—hours before planned liberation—killing ~7,000 in one of WWII's worst friendly-fire tragedies, with only ~400 survivors like Manfred Goldberg and Willie Neyrath bearing witness. Survivors' stories underscore improbable endurance, Nazi atrocities, and the imperative to remember so life prevails over annihilation.
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Last spring marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe and the liberation of the last remaining Nazi concentration camps. Three young women, married and newly pregnant in 1944, were sent to the notorious death camp Auschwitz, then assigned to work as slave laborers in Germany. Pregnancy was an offense punishable by death in the camps. Their story of deceiving Nazi captives to give birth to three babies now 80 years old involves narrow misses, impossible twists of fate, luck, unimaginable suffering, and miracles.
Everyone keeps calling you the babies. Yes. And you're 80. Yes. Are you okay with that? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We're proud of it. Totally.
Eva Clark, Hana Burger Moran, and Mark Olski are among the youngest Holocaust survivors, born April 12th, April 20th, April 29th, 1945, just before Germany's surrender in May. They were Nazi prisoners. Their story begins with their mothers: Eva's mother Anka from Czechoslovakia, Mark's mother Rachel from Poland, Hana's mother Priska from Czechoslovakia.
Anka grew up in a small town; her parents owned a little Jewish cafe. Rachel had eight siblings from a textile manufacturing town. Anka was east of Prague, champion junior backstroke swimmer of Czechoslovakia. They fell in love with their husbands as Europe descended into war. Anka's father was a journalist; they met in a nightclub across a crowded room. Rachel never told Mark much about his father but told grandson Charlie: > She told me that I looked like him. And I said, "Really?" and she said, "But that's it. He was so elegant. You're nothing like him."
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