Dresden-Zschachwitz

Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Dresden-Zschachwitz labour camp in Germany, a subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

Flossenbürg concentration camp was operated by Nazi Germany. The camp had 80 subcamps.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

The Dresden-Zschachwitz camp operated from mid-October 1944 to the end of April 1945 near Dresden, eastern Germany.

Prisoners were forced to manufacture assault guns and light tank destroyers, as well as engine parts for tanks for the Mühlenbau und Industrie AG.

History

The first group of 404 prisoners arrived from the Kraków-Płaszow concentration camp among them Max and Alfred Schindler and their father. A further 327 arrived from Mauthausen and 20 from Auschwitz II-Birkenau. By December 1944, 1,000 prisoners were registered at the camp who worked alongside German civilians.

They were quartered on the first and second floor of the factory building. Jews slept on the top floor. The remaining prisoners included convicted criminals. Food rations were gravely insufficient, and the German guards were notoriously violent.

^{Max Schindler in 1946.}

“Men are weak and thin, sickly and have difficulty completing their jobs. There is a civilian German man here, the only one in all the places I have been during the war, who feels any concern for me. He sneaks me bread from his home. I hide it at work, then share with Dad and Fred in the residence. It melts in my mouth … This man is putting his life and mine at risk by giving me bread. We are very careful that no guards are watching when he hands it to me. I am dumbfounded by his courage and kindness.”

Max Schindler, Two Who Survived: Keeping Hope Alive While Surviving the Holocaust. Schindler was 15 when he was held in the camp. His brother Alfred was 13 years old.

At least 80 prisoners were killed during the bombing of Dresden in February 1945.

Dissolution

The camp was disbanded at the end of April. The prisoners capable of walking, among the Schindler brothers, were forced to march to the Leitmeritz concentration camp and were liberated at the Thereseinstadt Ghetto.

Schindler recalled that the march took a few weeks. They walked in the snow with no food and no jackets. Although they passed through several town’s no one offered them anything. The brothers helped support their father who by now was extremely weak.

The remaining prisoners were transported by train in the direction of Bohemia.