Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Rzeszów Flugmotorenwerke labour camp in Rzeszów, south-eastern Poland.
The Rzeszów Flugmotorenwerke labour camp was set up and run by Nazi Germany.
The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.
Flugmotorenwerke Reichshof 1941.
History
The factory was seized by the Germans in 1939. By 1941 it had a workforce of 2,000 among them 600 Jews who had by this time considerable technical experience. The prisoners wore civilian clothing and conditions compared to most labour camps were adequate. From 1942-43 the factory was run by Daimler-Benz and from September 1943 was under the control of the SS.
“I was in the custody of the SS. Captain Ester was in charge. He was a very brutal man. He tortured and killed anyone who displeased him.
I usually worked 12 hours in the factory and about four to six hours of outside work. This involved loading and unloading the railway, cleaning, and other jobs.
The Russian front came closer and they evacuated Rzeszów Camp. They treated us as a special cargo to be transferred to a special destination. First they took us to Flossenbürg, Bavaria … After a few weeks, they sent us to Oranienburg near Berlin. And a few weeks later, to Urbès, a little town in Alsace-Lorraine, near Colmar. We worked in a tunnel to set up the machines that they evacuated from Rzeszów.”
Israel ‘Jack’ Rubinfeld written testament 1995.
Rubinfeld was 14 years old when he was held in the camp.
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