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The Man Who Saved 900 Jewish Boys Inside a Death Camp

(Times of Israel) Brad Rothschild - Last month, Yad Vashem awarded its Righteous Among the Nations honor to Antonin Kalina, a Czech communist who saved over 900 boys in Buchenwald. In late 1944 the Nazis began liquidating their death camps, placing Jewish prisoners on brutal "death marches" toward the German hinterland. Buchenwald, a camp established in 1937 to imprison political opponents of the Nazi regime, swelled to over 100,000 inmates in the final months of the war. Antonin Kalina was the block elder of Kinderblock 66 deep in the filthy quarantine area where the SS was loathe to go. In April 1945, the Nazis decided to eradicate Buchenwald's Jews and the camp's commanders ordered all Jews to report for assembly. Kalina refused to comply. He commanded the boys not to report and changed the religion on their badges to Christian. When the SS came looking for Jews, Kalina told them that block 66 had no more. When the Allies liberated Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, over 900 Jewish boys survived. The writer is the producer of the documentary film "Kinderblock 66: Return to Buchenwald."
2012-08-17 00:00:00
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