Alwin Meyer | The Children of Auschwitz

This is the darkest chapter in German history

They were deported to Auschwitz with their families or were born there under unimaginable conditions. At least 232,000 infants, children, and adolescents were deported to the extermination camp. Of these, 216,300 were Jews, 11,000 were Sinti and Roma, and 4,260 were non-Jewish Belarusians, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and children and adolescents of other nationalities.

Only a few survived. Even decades later, these children of Auschwitz continue to experience the same thing over and over again: Auschwitz could catch up with them at any time.

“With the pregnancy of my youngest son, it shows me once again,” says Eva Umlauf, “to what extent I am marked by the Holocaust, suffering from terrible dreams in which I saw the gas chamber full of babies.” One said on behalf of many others: “No matter how far you run away, Auschwitz will never let you and your family go.”

Alwin Meyer, author and curator, has been searching worldwide for the few surviving children of Auschwitz for 50 years. He has spoken to them empathetically and gained their trust. Many told him for the first time about life in the camp, about a childhood in which death was always present and never natural.

He has published numerous articles, exhibitions, and books on the subject in Germany, Greece, Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. He is also the author and co-author of several books and exhibitions, including topics such as “Signs of Life” about artists imprisoned in Auschwitz, “Children’s Drawings from Besieged Leningrad,” and “Right-wing Extremism among Young People.”

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Alwin Meyer, born in 1950, lives in Berlin and has received numerous awards, including the “Political Book of the Year” prize and the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class.

An event organized by the Fritz Bauer Forum on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the verdict in the Auschwitz trial (1963-1965).