Nesarim: Child Survivors of Terezin

by Thelma Gruenbaum

This challenging and compelling new book reveals the previously undocumented life of the children at Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. During the war approximately 10,000 children were held here. Concentrating on a group of boys, aged between 12 and 14 at the time of imprisonment, Child Survivors of Terezin recounts their stroies both during and after the war. The 10 boys detailed here shared a room with 30 others and they called themselves the Nesarim or eagles. This is their poignant story, one of survival, strength and above all, brotherhood.

Genres: History, Holocaust

206 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

Reviews

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found that the oral basis for the individual stories of these amazing men had a lot of drawbacks. Most of them did not or weren't able to give the details that make books like Anne Frank's diary sparkle. It became a blur of kids, mostly relatively well to do, being told to report on X date, which they did, for transport to Terezin. Terezin was a very atypical camp. It was not a killing camp. On the contrary, it was a showplace camp. This was the camp that the Red Cross was shown when they wanted to see what was going on in the camps. People were starving there, afraid, and dying from typhus, etc. but they were not systematically murdered as in virtually all the other camps. The Jewish Council was allowed to arrange a lot of the running of the camps in exchange for basic cooperation. So they were able to arrange unlawful teaching of the children and the kids got more food than the adults. Mind you, they just weren't starved as severely. They still were badly undernourished. Since there were a number of college professors at Terezin, the kids actually received a superior education. Several noted that they were not held back after the war and were able to resume their proper grades. However, that was pretty much the only general positive. What separated these boys out was that they were in a room by similar age and their teacher/leader insisted that the kids see the larger picture and understand that it was their obligation to look out for each other. To the date of this book, the Nesarim were doing that. They were able to resume their comradeship 50 years after the end of WWII with scarcely a pause because of the insistence their leader put on working with each other and looking out for each other. Several who survived the real camps, credit their learning to work cooperatively, on their survival. Several of the wives who went through Terezin had somewhat similar experiences. One told a harrowing story of how one of their group was motioned to the side away from the rest of them by Mengele because she had broken her wrist a few days ago and it was in a cast. The girls claimed she didn't need the cast and manage to break off the cast by standing on it. That saved the girl's life since Mengele allowed her to join her friends on the correct (ie staying alive) side of Mengele. However, this sort of detail was lacking in most of the men's stories. They preferred to focus on what happened after the War and how they made their way to a satisfying life. While that was of course, the ultimate triumph after sheer survival, it honestly wasn't all that interesting. Many of them ended up in the United States. Most had children who were fascinated by the reunions they had. Many of them had no idea what their fathers had been through in the War since so many refused to talk about it until they started this project of actively interviewing and taping the interviews at and after the reunion.

One relatively minor complaint was that no one was translating the word nesarim until quite late in the book. It was driving me nuts wondering what it meant. If it said who originated the word, I missed that. It means eagles. My guess is that their remarkable leader, who was at the reunion, (in fact the reunion was to celebrate his 70th birthday) gave them the name. Interstingly enough, most of the boys were not particularly bitter. However, their leader, Fanta (I don't have the book on me and can't remember the name properly) was quite bitter. That in itself says a lot. He was 20 at the time and he knew what was going on and I would guess he shielded a lot of the horrors from the children. Fanta was the last interview in the book before the author who was the wife of one of the group started interviewing wives. Those interviews were much shorter. The main use of this book is mostly more "proof" that the Holocaust occurred. The stories were not individual enough to be memorable, other than their leader's story. This is a valuable book for the basic message that looking out for each other is essential to survival. Other books are more memorable than this one.