The SS cleared the Auschwitz concentration camp in January 1945. Naftali Fürst was thirteen, his brother Shmuel only one year older. In below-freezing temperatures, the two were en route for days, first on foot, then in open goods wagons. They came from a Jewish family that had been forced to live in a labour camp since 1942. In early November 1944, they and their parents were deported to Auschwitz, where the family had been separated. In Buchenwald, the brothers were put in the children’s block. In April 1945, when the camp was liberated, Naftali was still there, seriously ill. Shmuel was on a death march for several weeks, and not liberated until early May. The brothers and their parents were reunited in Bratislava in the summer of 1945. They later emigrated to Israel.
