Members of the Boys were held in Nazi labour and concentration camps and used as slave labourers.
From 1933-1945 Nazi Germany operated over 1,000 concentration camps and subcamps in its own territory and across German occupied Europe. Among them was the Birnbämel concentration camp.
As the camps were dissolved thousands of people, among them members of the Boys, endured horrific evacuations from the camps on foot, in freight wagons and open top trains, as well as perilous journeys across the Baltic Sea.
The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.
During World War II, from October 1944 to January 1945, a branch of the Gross-Rosen camp operated in the Polish town of Gruszeczka, then known by its German name of Birnbäumel, to which about 1,000 Jewish women from the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp were sent.
“Then we were told again that the war was getting nearer this camp and we would march again. This time we march on foot. We marched for 21 days.
Now dates don’t mean a thing to me because I don’t know what dates they were. But I know we marched for days and days without food and many people didn’t make it because they fell by the wayside and the guards shot them.
We had no food so we used to scavenge in the fields for things to eat, raw potatoes, raw turnips. There were quite a lot of raw turnips that we could eat. But that was a danger as well because you had to run out of line to go and get one.”
They performed earthworks on field fortifications being built in the area. Historical accounts record very poor living conditions. The camp consisted of 10 round wooden barracks.
On 23 January 1945, the camp was liquidated and the prisoners were sent to the Bergen-Belsen camp. Little is known about the death march, which was well over 500km long. The exact route is not known.
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