MIRACLE BABIES

MIRACLE BABIES

We associate the Nazi concentration camps with so much death and suffering that it’s nearly impossible to imagine anything good coming from them. Yet against all odds, seven babies born inside a camp survived their ordeal healthy and unharmed. Their mothers were Jewish women of Hungarian origin locked up in an auxiliary camp in Kaufering. They took great pains to hide their pregnancies from the Nazi eyes to avoid being killed or transferred to the more infamous camp at Dachau. The other prisoners helped the mothers by hiding the babies and taking care of them whenever the mothers had to work. One Jewish woman who oversaw the camp for the Nazis even bore a severe beating after she brought a stove to the mothers’ quarters to help them survive the winter.

For the US soldiers who later liberated the camp, it was an uplifting sight to see the live and healthy mothers and their babies among the dead and emaciated prisoners.