Final spring marked the eightieth anniversary of the tip of World Warfare II in Europe and the liberation of the final remaining Nazi focus camps. It’d really feel, almost a century later, as if there are few Holocaust survival tales left to inform. However then we discovered this one.
It begins with three younger girls who had been married and newly pregnant in 1944 after they had been despatched to the infamous loss of life camp Auschwitz, then assigned to work as slave laborers in Germany. With being pregnant an offense punishable by loss of life within the camps, the story of how these three girls managed to deceive their Nazi captors and provides start to a few tiny infants — who at the moment are 80 years outdated — entails slim misses, seemingly inconceivable twists of destiny and luck, unimaginable struggling, and miracles.
Lesley Stahl: Everybody retains calling you the infants.
Mark Olsky: Sure.
Lesley Stahl: And also you’re 80.
Mark Olsky: Sure.
Lesley Stahl: Are you okay with that–
Mark Olsky: Oh sure.
Hana Berger-Moran: Oh yeah.
Eva Clarke: Completely. We’re happy with it.
Hana Berger-Moran: Completely.
Eva Clarke, Hana Berger-Moran, and Mark Olsky are amongst – if not the – youngest survivors of the Holocaust.
Hana Berger-Moran: April twelfth.
Mark Olsky: April 20.
Eva Clarke: April twenty ninth.
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Born in April 1945, simply earlier than Germany’s give up in Might. On the time, they had been Nazi prisoners, however their story begins lengthy earlier than that, when Eva’s mom Anka, from Czechoslovakia; Mark’s mom Rachel, from Poland; and Hana’s mom Priska, additionally from Czechoslovakia, had been younger Jewish girls in a world that was about to be shattered.
Hana Berger-Moran: My expensive late mom grew up in a small city. And her mother and father had been homeowners of slightly café, little Jewish café.
Mark Olsky: She had eight siblings.
Mark’s mom was from a textile manufacturing city; Eva’s from east of Prague.
Eva Clarke: She was a champion swimmer, junior backstroke swimming champion of Czechoslovakia.
Lesley Stahl: For the entire nation?
Eva Clarke: For the entire nation, yeah.
Lesley Stahl: Wow.
They usually every fell in love with their husbands as Europe was descending into battle.
Hana Berger-Moran: My late father was a journalist.
Lesley Stahl: How did they meet?
Eva Clarke:They met, I imagine, in a nightclub–
Lesley Stahl: Oh.
Eva Clarke: –across a crowded room.
Mark Olsky: She averted going into particulars. She talked about issues..
Mark’s mom by no means instructed him a lot about his father, however she did communicate of him to Mark’s son, her grandson Charlie.
Charlie Olsky: She instructed me that I regarded like him. And I stated, “Actually?” And she or he stated, “However that is it. He was so elegant. You are nothing like him.”
Lesley Stahl: And you are not.
Charlie Olsky: Um..
However quickly after the newly married couple moved into their first residence in Warsaw, German troopers got here one morning and seized it.
Charlie Olsky: She was nonetheless in her nightgown. She stated she nonetheless had her toothbrush. And she or he was simply despatched into the streets.
Hana Berger-Moran: They took my grandparents in 1942, my– my aunt in 1943.
Because the Nazis occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia, Jews had been rounded up in Ghettos and despatched to camps. Mark’s mother and father spent a lot of the battle within the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. Eva’s had been despatched to a Czech camp referred to as Terezin, the place she was conceived, in violation of camp guidelines.
Eva Clarke: To develop into pregnant in a focus camp was thought-about against the law by the Nazis.
Lesley Stahl: For a Jewish particular person to get pregnant was against the law?
Eva Clarke: Against the law, as a result of, you recognize, they had been making an attempt to murder– they had been making an attempt to annihilate each member of the Jewish individuals.
By mid-to-late 1944, the killings had accelerated. Remaining ghettos had been liquidated, and all three girls, newly pregnant, had been loaded from totally different cities onto packed freight vehicles headed for Auschwitz, Hana’s mom alongside her husband.
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Hana Berger-Moran: They had been sitting within the practice on the ground. And my mom is saying, “If it is a woman, it should be Hana. If it is a boy, will probably be Michael.”
Lesley Stahl: That is on the practice to Auschwitz–
Hana Berger-Moran: On the practice to Auschwitz.
Lesley Stahl: Did they know something about Auschwitz?
Hana Berger-Moran: Oh, they did. They already knew these had been loss of life camps.
The arrival platform on the Auschwitz-Birkenau focus camp was a spot of unimaginable cruelty. Households had been ripped aside, with most, together with moms with kids and the aged, despatched straight to loss of life in gasoline chambers that at their peak murdered 6,000 individuals a day. The fortunate few chosen for work, together with the three girls, had been stripped, shaven, and despatched to overflowing barracks.
Lesley Stahl: Did your mom ever see your father once more?
Hana Berger-Moran: As soon as, a couple of week after sh– they received there. She noticed him throughout the– barbed wire fence. And my dad stated to her, “Watch out and assume solely good ideas.” “Suppose solely good ideas.” He simply stored repeating that sentence.
Lesley Stahl: And that is the final time they ever noticed one another?
Hana Berger-Moran: Yeah. I want I might have identified him.
Prisoners endured frequent picks, some by Nazi physician Josef Mengele, identified for his grotesque experiments on camp inmates.
Hana Berger-Moran: When Mengele got here by–
Lesley Stahl: She met Mengele?
Hana Berger-Moran: She did. And Mengele is taking a look at her. She’s standing in the– within the line with different girls.
Lesley Stahl: Yeah.
Hana Berger-Moran: Sadly, bare. And he seems to be at her and says in German, “Good wanting lady. Are you pregnant?” And my mom says, “Nein, I am not.”
Wendy Holden: Every of them at that second needed to resolve whether or not to admit that they had been or to disclaim it, whether or not that may save them and their unborn little one or not.
Creator Wendy Holden has studied Auschwitz and written a ebook concerning the three infants and their moms.
Wendy Holden: Every of them sensed that they had been within the presence of nice hazard, they usually every denied it.
Lesley Stahl: All three girls lied to Mengele, and all three girls get despatched to a slave labor camp in Germany.
Wendy Holden: Freiberg, Saxony, sure.
Lesley Stahl: Did the three ever meet?
Wendy Holden: No, they usually by no means knew about one another. It was so essential that they did not reveal their pregnancies.
They had been amongst greater than a thousand girls prisoners working 12-hour shifts in a large transformed porcelain manufacturing unit, manufacturing elements for German fighter planes.
Wendy Holden: Dwelling on actually weight-reduction plan of water– ersatz espresso within the morning, and skinny soup, after which perhaps a tiny piece of bread each day.
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Lesley Stahl: How did they cover their being pregnant?
Wendy Holden: They got, every of them at Auschwitz, clothes from those that’d been gassed. They usually, every of them happily ended up with– with saggy clothes.
Eva Clarke: Throughout the six months she was there, she was turning into progressively increasingly starved and increasingly clearly pregnant. However happily, not one of the Germans realized she was pregnant, as a result of had they finished so, they may nicely have despatched her again to Auschwitz to be killed.
However by the early spring of 1945, the Allies had been advancing, Auschwitz had been liberated, and plans had been being made to do away with the slave laborers.
Wendy Holden: The Germans determined they needed to eradicate the proof, they usually had been going to ship them to be gassed, and simply kill all of them.
Lesley Stahl: They knew they had been dropping, the Germans. They knew that the People or the Russians had been going to come back in.
Wendy Holden: Sure.
Lesley Stahl: And they didn’t need them to know the way badly they’d handled these individuals.
Wendy Holden: Very a lot so, and likewise there was no extra work. The– all of the supplies had dried up. They didn’t– they weren’t actually even feeding them anymore.
That is when Hana’s mom went into labor on the manufacturing unit flooring.
Wendy Holden: On a plank that was put throughout a desk. And the guards watched. They usually took bets on whether or not it was going to be a boy or a lady.
Lesley Stahl: The guards watched the newborn being born?
Wendy Holden: Sure.
Hana Berger-Moran: My mother stated it was like a present. And I stated, “Mother, had been you embarrassed?” “I did not have likelihood to be embarrassed. You had been being born. That was all that mattered to me.”
Thirty six hours later, the slave laborers – and new child Hana – had been loaded onto the identical practice.
Eva Clarke: This time it was in open coal wagons. So open to the skies, and filthy.
Lesley Stahl: This was the loss of life practice.
Hana Berger-Moran: It was the loss of life practice. They had been on the lookout for a camp the place they might kill all these girls.
Eva Clarke: She stated it was a nightmare of a journey.
Sixteen days on the practice.
Eva Clarke: No meals and hardly any water.
Lesley Stahl: She’s 9 months pregnant, successfully–
Eva Clarke: Sure. And at one level, the practice was stopped, and the doorways had been opened, and a farmer walked by, and he noticed my mom. And he had such a shock. My mom described herself as wanting like a scarcely-living pregnant skeleton. And this farmer introduced her a glass of milk. She maintained that saved her life. Who is aware of.
Charlie Olsky: My grandmother, within the meantime, had gotten so ailing. She was below 70 kilos and 9 months pregnant. They usually put her within the sick automotive.
Lesley Stahl: Did individuals die on this automotive?
Charlie Olsky: Sure.
Mark Olsky: I imply, they actually threw them off the practice.
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Charlie Olsky: Yeah. She was mendacity down, and there was a girl with a foul leg, they usually ha– she needed to put her leg up on her pregnant abdomen, ‘trigger that was the best place within the practice to relaxation it.
Lesley Stahl: So she’s surrounded by dying individuals, and provides start with a girl’s foot on her abdomen. I imply, this is– past inhumanity.
Charlie Olsky: Sure.
Charlie Olsky: In some way she gave start. She did not assume she would.
Lesley Stahl: She thought she was going to die.
Charlie Olsky: And she or he figured she would’ve given start to a useless child; that her physique could not maintain it. However he was alive. And she or he figured, “However I will not have milk,” however she did.
She realized the date was April twentieth.
Charlie Olsky: Anyone introduced on the practice, “Ah, it is Hitler’s birthday right now.” And in order that was his birthday.
Lesley Stahl: You had been born on Hitler’s birthday?
Mark Olsky: Sure.
After 9 extra days on that practice, they reached a camp in Austria that was meant to be their finish: Mauthausen, one of many final camps standing. Eva’s mom went into labor simply because the practice arrived.
Eva Clarke: She needed to climb off the coal truck, unaided. She needed to climb onto a cart, as a result of the prisoners who weren’t robust sufficient to stroll up the steep hill to the camp, they needed to get on carts, they usually had been pulled up by others.
Lesley Stahl: I believe I might surrender. I am– I am positive I might surrender–
Eva Clarke: Effectively, that is what I used to say to my mom, that I might’ve given up on the first hurdle. I might’ve collapsed. She stated, “You haven’t any concept.” She stated, “You simply do not know what you possibly can face up to till it’s a must to.” And she or he stated, “And happily, most individuals are usually not examined.”
Wendy Holden: She was hauled up by way of the wooded valley.
Lesley Stahl: Whereas she’s in labor?
Wendy Holden: Whereas she’s in labor.
Lesley Stahl: Oh my gosh.
Wendy Holden: And she or he remembers wanting again, you look down onto the River Danube. It was April, so there have been blossoms and birds singing. And she or he stated she thought it was probably the most stunning factor she’d ever seen. And she or he additionally thought it could be the very last thing she’d ever see.
But it surely wasn’t the very last thing she’d see, for a surprising motive. The final day the gasoline chambers at Mauthausen had been used was the day earlier than.
Eva Clarke: On the twenty eighth of April, 1945, the Nazis had run out of gasoline.
Lesley Stahl: So wait, you arrived in the future after the gasoline ran out?
Eva Clarke: Ran out. So had the practice arrived on the twenty sixth or twenty seventh, none of us would’ve survived.
Lesley Stahl: Each little tiny issue of this story is superb.
Wendy Holden: Sure. Effectively, I name them the miracle infants, and with excellent motive.
Household handouts 
Miraculous too, that they managed to outlive at Mauthausen for nearly per week — child Hana with contaminated sores throughout her physique — till lastly assist arrived.
Hana Berger-Moran: My mother, she noticed slightly inexperienced military automotive and music. “Roll out the barrels, da-da-da-da-da-da.” And she or he stated, “This isn’t German.”
Lesley Stahl: She knew the tune?
Hana Berger-Moran: Oh, yeah. And all of a sudden, younger soldier with a helmet, crimson cross on it, comes strolling by, and my mom says to him in English, “I’ve one thing to point out you.”
That “one thing” was Hana.
Hana Berger-Moran: He stated to my mom in English, “I will get the physician as a result of your child wants assist.” And he ran and introduced the physician. They took me.
Lesley Stahl: Wait, they took you off and left her with out you?
Hana Berger-Moran: Sure.
Lesley Stahl: And she or he allow them to do this?
Hana Berger-Moran: Sure. Sure, she did. She trusted them.
Lesley Stahl: Wow.
Hana Berger-Moran: And the subsequent day, a nurse got here, me wrapped in bandages, and my mom says, “Is she useless?
Lesley Stahl: Oh.
Hana Berger-Moran: And the nurse stated, “No. No, she’s not. She’s sleeping.”
Hana’s mom by no means forgot that younger American medic who saved her child’s life, and it seems, that medic by no means forgot Hana both.
Brian Petersohn: He all the time talked about, “I’m wondering no matter occurred to the newborn.”
Lesley Stahl: Actually?
Brian Petersohn: Sure.
The heroism of American fighters within the fierce battles of World Warfare II is known. However for a few of these younger troopers, amongst their most searing wartime reminiscences had been what they witnessed after the capturing stopped, after they entered Nazi focus camps as liberators.
Army portrait from Petersohn scrapbook 
A type of camps was Mauthausen, a fortress-like compound excessive on a hill west of Vienna, the place greater than 95,000 prisoners died — and the place three infants and their moms arrived on April 29, 1945.
Six days later, a small unit of two dozen troopers from the eleventh Armored Division of Gen. Patton’s Third Military was checking bridges within the space after they stumbled on the camp nearly accidentally. A warning: the pictures of what they discovered are disturbing. One of many troopers that day was a 22-year-old medic from Illinois named Leroy “Pete” Petersohn.
Lesley Stahl: That is the scrapbook that he stored?
Brian Petersohn: That is one in all a pair.
Pete Petersohn was drafted into the Military in 1942.
Brian Petersohn: My dad was a– a humble man. He all the time had a smile.
Brian Petersohn is Pete’s youngest son. He and his two sons have been re-building an Military-style Jeep that was his dad’s.
Son (off digital camera): You already know, Grandpa’s gonna–
Brian: He is gonna — he’ll be smiling on us.
Petersohn lived by way of a jeep explosion..
Brian Petersohn: That’s the precise time.
Lesley Stahl: When the Jeep was blown up.
Brian Petersohn: That is when the Jeep was blown up.
Lesley Stahl: And he survived.
And fought within the Battle of the Bulge, earlier than his unit liberated Mauthausen. He suffered, years later, from PTSD.
Lesley Stahl: Do you assume it was from the battles? Or do you assume it was from the camps?
Brian Petersohn: From the camps– the smells and the sounds and the sights that– that bothered him.
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This official U.S. Military picture of People liberating Mauthausen captures the enjoyment of prisoners lastly being freed, however the pictures Peterson stored in his scrapbook present a far darker actuality.
Lesley Stahl: He took these?
Brian Petersohn: Sure.
Lesley Stahl: Oh.
Piles of emaciated corpses..
Lesley Stahl: Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
And on this picture, a person who died proper in entrance of Petersohn’s eyes.
Lesley Stahl: And take a look at this man. I imply, how are they–
Brian Petersohn: Simply pores and skin and bones.
Lesley Stahl: How– yeah.
Petersohn’s job was to triage which inmates might be helped, when he stumbled on a shocker exterior one of many barracks.
Brian Petersohn: A lady introduced her child to him and confirmed him that she was badly contaminated.
Lesley Stahl: He is now simply seen all these useless our bodies. And there is a child.
Brian Petersohn: This one we’ve to attempt to save.
Petersohn instructed Brian that he and the unit physician used penicillin — model new on the time — to deal with the newborn’s wounds and helped sew her up. He by no means received the incident out of his thoughts.
Brian Petersohn: Actually, each time that we checked out this ebook, that was his remaining ideas. “I’m wondering no matter occurred to that child.”
Within the weeks after liberation, that child, and her mom, like many freed prisoners, traveled again to their hometowns throughout Europe in hopes of discovering residing members of the family — and in Mark’s, Eva’s, and Hana’s moms’ circumstances, their husbands. Sadly, all three males had died. Whereas Mark’s and Eva’s moms later remarried, not one of the girls had different kids..
So Mark Olsky, Eva Clarke, and Hana Berger-Moran grew up as solely kids, studying concerning the battle in bits and items from their moms.
Mark Olsky: I used to be instructed that I had been– that I used to be born on a practice. However not– no particulars. And so I assumed, “Oh, hey, cool, I am born– I used to be born on a practice.”
However as he realized the reality, he turned enraged.
Mark Olsky: Once I was 12, 13 individuals requested me, “What do you wish to do along with your life?” And I stated, “I wish to go to Europe and simply kill as many Germans as I can.”
Lesley Stahl: [raises eyebrows]
Mark Olsky: Sure.
He vividly remembers his mom’s response.
Mark Olsky: In nearly the precise phrases, she stated, “They took a lot from us. If that is what you develop into like, they are going to have taken your soul.”
Lesley Stahl: Oh, she stated that to you? Wow. Wow.
Hana’s mom raised her in Czechoslovakia, however as an grownup, Hana moved to Israel, then to the USA for graduate faculty. Her mom despatched her off with a request: attempt to monitor down that younger American medic.
Hana Berger-Moran: And she or he says, “Please discover him.”
Lesley Stahl: Discover him?
Hana Berger-Moran: –“discover him.”
Lesley Stahl: How had been you supposed to do this?
Hana Berger-Moran: I did not know his title.
She found it was the eleventh Armored Division that liberated Mauthausen and despatched them a letter.
Hana Berger-Moran: I used to be getting varied messages. This title, that title. I received in contact with them. “Oh no, it isn’t me.” And at last, I get the message, “Oh. You wish to discuss to– to Pete Petersohn.”
Petersohn was 81 on the time.
Brian Petersohn: Dad talked about that he had heard from a woman– that he believes is the newborn that he saved at Mauthausen.
Lesley Stahl: Oh my God.
They met in Might 2005, 60 years after their first assembly.
Hana Berger-Moran: I used to be so glad to lastly contact him, see him.
Brian Petersohn: He was really staring and taking a look at her.
Lesley Stahl: I saved that particular person.
Hana Berger-Moran: That is you, that is you, that is actually you.
Hana Berger-Moran: And I used to be capable of thank him lastly. Actually thank him as a result of he saved my life. He did.
Lesley Stahl: Do you assume realizing that she survived helped with the PTSD, in any means?
Brian Petersohn: Oh completely. That lifted an enormous weight off of him.
Hana Berger-Moran: And I requested him if I can name him Daddy Pete.
Lesley Stahl: Daddy Pete?
Hana Berger-Moran: I did not have a father, you recognize? So he turned my daddy.
Lesley Stahl: He adopted you.
Hana Berger-Moran: Effectively, he had no alternative.
Lesley Stahl: You adopted him, let me put it that means.
Pete Petersohn died 5 years later. Hana spent per week with him throughout his remaining sickness.
Lesley Stahl: What’s your relationship now?
Brian Petersohn: She’s my massive sister.
Hana Berger-Moran: Precisely. And he higher hear.
Lesley Stahl: To his massive sister?
Brian Petersohn: Sure, yeah.
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