Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Skarzysko-Kamienna labour camp in south-central Poland.
The Boys were teenagers and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.
In the Third Reich, the German Leipzig based company HASAG, Hugo Schneider AG, became a Nazi arms-manufacturing conglomerate with dozens of factories across German occupied Europe. They used slave labour on a vast scale and tens of thousands of Jews from Poland died producing armaments in HASAG factories.
Arrival
Skarżysko-Kamienna was for many of the Boys their first experience of a labour camp. Those members of the Boys who were taken to the camp were teenagers. Some had just been separated from their families in selections while other would lose their relatives in the camp. Menachem Silberstein was one of them. He also fell ill from typhoid and almost died.
“Shots were fired in the air and people rushed out their houses at once. In the main street, a dozen open lorries stood waiting and all the young men and boys were ordered to climb in I was one of them … Looked around for my parents and caught the sight of my father standing gazing down in horror from the first floor window of the Jewish Council. His hat was off and both his hands were clasping his face in despair as the sight of his young son being driven away. That was the very last time I saw my father. I did not see my mother again either.”
Salek Orenstein quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors (Wiendenfeld & Nicholson, 1996).
Orenstein was 14 years old when he was held in the camp.
Others had already experienced the concentration camp system and had been transferred from the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, among them was 15 year old Chaim Olmer. They were shocked by what they saw, he later said, “The site that greeted us was like something out of hell. Yellow people, dressed in paper sacks, shuffled along as if in a dream.”
Structure
Conditions in Skarżysko-Kamienna made it one of the most notorious camps. The camp was filthy and overcrowded. Prisoners wore their own clothes, and KL was painted on the back of the garments that were soon rags.
The Skarżysko-Kamienna factory was divided into three separate camps, A, B, and C. Werk C was considered the worst section as the work which involved chemicals. The chemicals turned the prisoners yellow. There was no protective clothing, and many died within weeks.
“I remember when I first came to Skarsżysko camp. I was put on thread machines and lots of oil was spraying on me. All my clothing got soaked with oil, and from that I got sores on my body which festered. After a while I was transferred to a capstan machine and was supposed to produce a hundred rounds of two centimetre bullets an hour. In one hour at the beginning I could not produce that amount. One of the German overseers, with a kapo, took me into the office, put me over a chair, and the two of them started to beat me. By the time they were finished I could not move.”
Sam Frieman quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors (Wiendenfeld & Nicholson, 1996).
Freiman was 16 years old when he was held in the camp.
In 1942 there were about 5,000 prisoners in the camp, but that figure rose after the defeat of the German army at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43 as munitions production became increasingly important. Of the 25,000-30,000 prisoners in the camp as estimated 18,000-23,000 died of exhaustion or starvation or were murdered by the guards.
The atmosphere was extremely violent. Sick prisoners were shot in the forest and there were also frequent hangings of prisoners. Salek Orenstein also recalled that one day volunteers to go to Palestine were requested. Some men volunteered as there were rumours of prisoner exchanges. The next day he was ordered with a group of others to collect their clothes from the woods. He said, “The terrors imposed in the camp were horrendous.”
Dissolution
The camp was evacuated as the Red Army approached. The prisoners were moved to the HASAG complex in Częstochowa.
A large number of the Boys came together as a group in Skarżysko-Kamienna and they became skilled armaments producers. They would be used as slave labourers in other HASAG plants as the war went on.
Aftermath
The factory still exists and in the late 20th century produced lawnmowers.
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