Carver was born Josef Rafael Schnitzer in Leipzig in Germany in 1931.
Carver was a member of a group of Holocaust survivors known as the Boys, despite the fact the group consisted of over 200 girls.
The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after World War II for rest and rehabilitation.
Members of the Boys were held in Nazi labour and concentration camps and used as slave labourers. They had also survived World War II in hiding or as lone children.
His parents were Aron and Sara. He had three brothers: Isidor, Max and Ralph.
The family were deported to Poland in October 1938 as his parents were from territory that was then Polish but had been part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. The family then went to the industrial city of Łódź. His older brother left for the Palestine Mandate in July 1939.
Wartime
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the family were in the Łódź Ghetto. In November 1942, his mother and younger brother were taken away, presumably murdered. His older brother and father died, the later of typhoid. Only Schnitzor and his brother survived.
Slave Labour
When the ghetto was liquidated, he was deported to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp in July 1944 when he was sixteen years old. He was then in the Gross Rosen concentration camp.
Carver was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. He was used to clear bomb damage in the nearby city of Weimar. In the camp he witnessed cannibalism.
Carver was finally liberated after a death train in the Theresienstadt Ghetto in May 1945. He briefly went back to Poland but quickly returned to Czechoslovakia.
Joe Carver’s Journey 1938-1948
Pre-war life: Leipzig, Germany. Forced Journey: → Deportation to Poland → Łódź Ghetto → Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp → Gross Rosen concentration camp → Death train to Buchenwald concentration camp → Death train to Theresienstadt Ghetto. After liberation: → Prague, Czechoslovakia → Joins 1st Group of the Boys → Windermere reception centre, UK → London, UK.
A New Life
Carver came to the UK as part of the first group of the Boys in August 1945 and was cared for in the Windermere reception centre. He was lived in the hostel in Manor House in London.
While at Manor House, he wrote his story up for publication but it was rejected by a publisher as a “fairy-tale”. Furious, Carver burned the manuscript in the fireplace in the publisher’s office.
Carver was accepted to study at the London School of Economics but found the course too challenging so went to City of London College.
Carver, married and had three daughters.
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