I am replying to a posting by Dogdaddy including a photo of a young boy and a man taken at Buchenwald. I'm writing a book on the rescue of children and youths at Buchenwald and can identify the boy as Josef Shliefstein from Sandomierz, born 1941, and his father, Israel Schleifstein, a leather craftsman. They arrived at Buchenwald after having been in a series of Hasag (ammunition) factory camps for several years on January 20 from Czestochowa. The father bribed the way for the child to remain in the prior camps. Here the boy was registered as a political prisoner.
Josef was one of the two youngest children found at Buchenwald, each born 1941, each just 4 years old. The other was Stefan Jerzy Zweig (Juschu) from Cracow.
These two were among over 900 children and youths found at the camp among 21,000 surviving prisoners. They had been rescued by an internal effort by the clandestine underground. They had been clustered in barracks and prevented from being sent out. They were watched over in the camp, a story to be told in the volume I'm writing.
After the war, Shliefstein, father and son, were reunited with the boy's mother, and came to NYC (she didn't die at Buchenwald or anywhere else). Josef grew up in NYC, attended NYC schools, worked for IBM, is now retired....
kenwaltzer
Hi Gang,
I wanted to share this photo with you. I'm sure you will recognize the face of the little boy if you've ever watched a documentary about the Liberation of Buchanwald. It came from the estate of the GI who took the photo, who wrote the description on the back.
Dogdaddy
