Born Survivors

THREE young women who defied convention and tradition to marry for love in a time of war.

Three devoted husbands who risked everything to spend intimate moments with their brides.

Three unborn babies, growing secretly in spite of the Nazis' determination to kill all Jews.

Only hope and a mother's love can save these women and their babies, along with the courage and kindness of strangers.

In a never-before-told true story, Born Survivors by British author and former war correspondent Wendy Holden is a heart-stopping, life-affirming celebration of the human capacity to love amid inconceivable cruelty.

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Priska, Anka and Rachel were beautiful, articulate, intelligent young women when the outbreak of WWII broke shattered their dreams. Newly married or about to become engaged to three handsome, debonair young men - Tibor, Bernd and Monik - none of these young lovers believed that the war would go on much longer. All prayed that the Allies would save them. As the months rolled by and the Nazi restrictions made their worlds increasingly smaller, each defied them in their own way.

Priska continued to teach secretly, and her husband Tibor prepared anti-German propaganda. Anka sneaked to the cinema from which all Jews were banned, while her husband carried on working for the Germans who were unaware of his race. While Rachel and Monik did what they could to help the destitute children and families trapped in the ghetto with them. Priska was newly pregnant when she and Tibor were wrenched from their tiny apartment by the Nazis and crammed into a cattle truck headed for Auschwitz. Clinging to each other fearfully, they agreed to name their unborn child. Hours later, the cattle wagon doors were thrown open and they arrived in Hell.

Anka couldn’t wait to follow her husband Bernd to the ghetto of Terezin. Proudly wearing her yellow star on a tweed suit chosen to complement its colour, she put on her best hat, shoes and coat. Their three years there, systematically losing everyone they loved, were only made bearable only by their unlawful trysts. When Anka fell pregnant, a condition punishable by death, the Nazis made them sign a declaration at gunpoint that their child would be killed. In the end, their sickly son died a few weeks after he was born. Then Bernd was despatched ‘East.’ Volunteering to follow him, pregnant again and oblivious to the dangers, Anka was loaded onto a train bound for Auschwitz.

Monik never even knew that Rachel was pregnant. They’d met secretly in the ghetto they’d been forced into, where she, her parents and nine siblings shared one small room. Each time the Nazis came for people to put on the transports Rachel’s father hid his family behind a secret wall he’d constructed. Monik was elsewhere the day they were tricked into leaving their hiding place and rounded up. Pushed into cattle wagons, the family arrived in the inferno of Auschwitz only for the oldest and youngest amongst them to be yanked from their grasp as Rachel and three of her sisters, fit and healthy enough to work, were pushed into a separate line.

Having been passed through the well-oiled machine of Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the three pregnant women were stripped, shaved and marched outside, standing in cold wet clay for hours alongside hundreds of other terrified young women. They were to be inspected for their suitability for Venichtung Dürch Arbeit (Extermination through Work). None of them knew whether revealing their pregnancies might save them and protect their unborn babies, but each defiantly answered ‘Nein’ when Dr Josef Mengele asked them, ‘Are you pregnant, pretty lady?’ Saved from immediate gassing or his experimentation wing, they were given random clothing and sent to a German munitions’ factory.

For the next seven months of their pregnancies the women worked fourteen hours a day, seven days a week on a largely water-based diet. They lost so much weight that they were all less than 70lbs at full term, a loss that helped them hide their pregnancies from their guards. Priska was the first to go into labour, giving birth to a baby girl on a plank. The following day she and the other surviving prisoners were loaded onto a train and sent to Buchenwald to be gassed. But the camp was liberated so their two-day train journey without food and water turned into 17 days as their train of death snaked its way further south while the SS looked for a camp that could gas them. A week into their journey Rachel gave birth to a baby boy in the middle of a deluge, as her sisters watched. Neither were expected to survive.

Incredibly, all three women and their babies were saved by the courage of a Czech stationmaster who – once their train was halted in his town – defied the Nazis and rallied the townspeople to make pots of soup and bread rolls for the hapless prisoners, an act of compassion that ensured their survival.

By the time the train rolled on and reached the town of Mauthausen in Austria, Anka was in labour and she gave birth to a baby girl at the gates of the notorious camp. They arrived there on April 29 but on April 28 the gas had run out. Then, on April 30, Hitler killed himself and a week later the Americans liberated the camp.

Now published in 22 countries and translated into 16 languages, Born Survivors is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller as well asa bestselling title in Germany, the Czech Republic, China, Portugal and Brazil. Adopted by teachers for the syllabus in schools across the US, UK, Europe and beyond, it is described by the New York Times as, 'An exceptional fresh history, a work of prodigious original research, written with zealous empathy.' And by the Jewish Chronicle, as, 'Intense, powerful and moving...a worthy testament to these three women and the miraculous survival of their children.'

Holden says of the book: ‘I came across these women’s stories by chance and, although I was deeply moved by them, I never expected them to touch people’s hearts around the world in the way that they did. Born Survivors is, without doubt, the most important book I will ever write, and it has changed my life.’

To learn more, read Born Survivors, follow author Wendy Holden on Instagram at @wendyholdenbestsellingauthor or on Twitter @wendholden, listen to her podcasts online, or at http://wendyholden.buzzsprout.com, or subscribe to her YouTube channel at https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCl-hBBGrQhBDQaV2yFqqyug

These three 'babies' will be be the last living survivors of the Holocaust. They are the voices of the voiceless. As long as their stories are told, we can never forget.