Kielce-HASAG

Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Kielce-HASAG labour camp in Kielce, Poland.

The Boys were teenage 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.

History

The HASAG-Granat grenade factory in Kielce had a forced labour camp attached to the factory from September 1942-August 1944. It was located on ul. Karczówkowska. The camp held 500 Jews.

^{Charlie Shane.}

“The people from Staszow were the fourth transport to arrive and soon after we were shown to our barracks. A barrack consisted of two rows of bunks on each side of the hut. Every bunk was divided into three stacks, the height between each stack was about one meter just enough to sit up and wooden boards to lie on. In the middle of the hut was one long table and on each side a long bench to sit on. A few feet away from the table was one stove which was heated with compressed sawdust, the stove was very efficient and gave out a lot of heat. I managed to get the top part of the bunk, which was the best part in a corner.

After that we started laying the road in the camp. People not used to heavy work had to push heavy wheelbarrows laden with stones or sand, the guards behind us were screaming ‘you dirty Jews you came here to work and die’. Each one of them had a thick wooden truncheon in one hand and a leather whip in the other and every time they hit someone with the truncheon or leather whip, they had that sadistic grin on their face.

Most of the guards came from the Ukraine; some were Polish Nationals of German descent and also Germans from special units. The Ukrainian guards who volunteered for that job were the most vicious; they showed no compassion to women or men, we were nothing to them.”

Chaim Szlamberg, later Charles Shane, written testament 1995. Szlamberg was 15 years old in 1942.

Many of the Boys in the camp arrived with their families and were separated from them while there among them were Jacob Ajzenberg and Meyer Bomstyk. Bomstyk’s parents were taken to another camp after a selection. The kapo, the prisoner in charge, who he worked for, told him they would not survive and stopped him from volunteering to go with them. After four weeks his parents died but his sister, who was selected with them, survived.

In their testimonies the Boys say that they worked 12-hour shifts day and night. They worked alongside Poles who worked for eight hours and were paid. Bomstyk says that the food was insufficient but at this point the Jewish prisoners still had money and jewellery which they gave to the Polish workers in return for food they brought into the camp. The Poles worked eight-hour shifts and were paid.

Dissolution

As the Red Army approached the factory was evacuated from Kielce to Częstochowa in 24 hours. According to Jacob Ajzenberg, the evacuation was pressurised and during the speedy departure many people were seriously injured.