Eva Clarke, Hana Berger-Moran and Mark Olsky, who as babies survived the Holocaust along with their mothers, finally met in 2010
NEED TO KNOW
- The Jewish mothers of Eva Clarke, Hana Berger-Moran and Mark Olsky worked as slave laborers for the Nazis near the end of World War II, but managed to hide their pregnancies
- The mothers and their babies survived the war after they were liberated by the Allies
- Sixty-five years later, the women’s children, now adults, met for the first time at the concentration camp where their mothers were held
Facing an environment of misery and death, three young pregnant Jewish women were sent to the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz in 1944. Originally destined to be executed, the three women not only managed to hide their pregnancies from their German captors, but they also successfully gave birth to their babies and survived after the Allied forces liberated Europe from the Nazis.
Now, those children of those three women — Eva Clarke, Hana Berger-Moran and Mark Olsky — all of them 80 years old and among the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, have recently shared stories about their mothers’ ordeal during the Holocaust and their own miraculous survival. The three babies didn’t know about each other until they met for the first time as adults in 2010.
"We found each other," Olsky told 60 Minutes in a segment that aired on Sunday, Feb. 15, about himself and his fellow survivors Clarke and Berger-Moran. "We should have been together from day one."
During World War II, Clarke’s and Berger-Moran’s mothers, Anka and Priska respectively, were from Czechoslovakia, while Olsky’s mother, Rachel, hailed from Poland. The three married and newly pregnant women, who didn’t know each other then, were shipped off in freight cars to Auschwitz in 1944. At the time, pregnancy was a crime punishable by death for the Nazis.
Fortunately for the mothers of Clarke, Berger-Moran and Olsky, they were selected as slave laborers at the camp while others were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers, 60 Minutes reported.
Berger-Moran recalled that her mother, Hana, would see her father for the very last time ever. “She saw him across the barbed wire fence,” she told 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl. “And my dad said to her, ‘Be careful and think only good thoughts. Think only good thoughts.’ He just kept repeating that sentence.
According to author Wendy Holden, who wrote the book Born Survivors, about the three mothers and their babies, the trio was able to hide their pregnancies — which they never revealed — because they were given the baggy clothing at Auschwitz once worn by those who were gassed.
The three were later taken to a slave labor camp in Freiberg, Germany. “During the six months she was there,” Clarke told 60 Minutes about her mother Anka, “she was becoming progressively more and more starved and more and more obviously pregnant. But fortunately, none of the Germans realized she was pregnant, because had they done so, they might well have sent her back to Auschwitz to be killed.”
By 1945, as the Allies were advancing and Auschwitz was liberated, the Nazis decided to gas all the slave laborers in an attempt to get rid of the evidence, Holden told 60 Minutes. Priska went into labor and later gave birth to Berger-Moran on the factory floor, which prompted the Nazi guards to wager on whether the child would be a boy or a girl.
“I said, ‘Mom, were you embarrassed?’ Berger-Moran later asked her mother about the birth. "‘I didn't have a chance to be embarrassed. You were being born. That was all that mattered to me.’ ”
The slave laborers, including the newly born Berger-Moran, were then loaded onto a train bound for a concentration camp in Austria — a 16-day journey that Clarke’s mother Anka, who was nine months pregnant, once described as a nightmare with no food or water.
Meanwhile, Olsky’s mother, Rachel, was already nine months pregnant and weighed less than 70 lbs. when she gave birth to her son on April 20 in the sick car, surrounded by dying people and with a woman’s foot on her stomach.
Upon arriving at Mauthausen, one of the last remaining concentration camps, Clarke’s mother, Anka, went into labor and gave birth to her daughter on April 29.
“She had to climb off the coal truck, unaided,” Clarke later said about Anka. “She had to climb onto a cart, because the prisoners who were not strong enough to walk up the steep hill to the camp, they had to get on carts, and they were pulled up by others.”
The three mothers and babies arrived at Mauthausen one day after the camp used the gas chambers, as the Nazis ran out of gas.
“Had the train arrived on the 26th or 27th, none of us would've survived,” Clarke told 60 Minutes.
Several days later, a group of soldiers from the 11th Armored Division of Gen. George Patton's Third Army came and liberated the camp. Afterward, Berger-Moran and her mother relocated back to Czechoslovakia; Clarke grew up in the U.K.; and Olsky’s family spent time in Germany and Israel before moving to Chicago. Sadly, the three mothers' husbands did not survive the war.
Decades later, Clarke, Olsky and Berger-Moran learned about each other’s personal stories online and through a newsletter. They met for the first time at Mauthausen, now a memorial, in May 2010, shortly after their 65th birthdays, 60 Minutes reported.
"We spent the whole of the Saturday in one café talking, laughing and crying, and talking about our mothers, and comparing and contrasting their three stories," Clarke recalled of that first meeting.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Even though they are now 80 years old, the trio, who collectively have 11 grandchildren, is still often referred to as the “babies,” which doesn’t bother them.
“We're proud of it,” Clarke told 60 Minutes.
Read the full article here
