In the fall of 1944, ten-year-old Thomas Buergenthal found himself all alone in Auschwitz, destined for the gas chamber
In the fall of 1944, ten-year-old Thomas Buergenthal found himself all alone in Auschwitz, destined for the gas chamber. Thomas had already survived the Kielce ghetto and a forced labor camp by the time German authorities deported him and his parents to Auschwitz in August 1944. Typically, children were taken on arrival and murdered in the gas chambers, but, because there was no selection when Thomas and his family arrived there, he managed to survive. His mother was taken to the women's section of the camp, but Thomas and his father remained together. However, Thomas remained in grave danger. The SS guards regularly selected prisoners to be murdered in the gas chambers and as a child Thomas stood out. While he had survived a number of selections by hiding, this time, Thomas had been caught. "They saw me as a child, and they motioned me to go one way, and my father go the other way," Thomas remembered. "And that's the last I saw of ... my father." Thomas and...
