Boy From Buchenwald: The True Story of a Holocaust Survivor

Romek Wajsman was born in a Jewish shtetl in the Polish village of Skarżysko-Kamienna on February 1931. He was the youngest of six children. By the end of the war, he and his sister Rachella (Leah) were the only living members of their immediate family. When he immigrated to Canada in November 1948 at the age of 17, Romek changed his name to Robert (Robbie) Waisman. These are just a few details provided in the introduction and epilogue of Boy From Buchenwald, a gem of a memoir that deserves a wide readership. While the publisher suggests the book is suitable to readers nine years and up, it is perhaps best suited to readers in their teens.

In clear prose and re-imagined dialogue, along with rare photographs, Boy From Buchenwald recounts the traumatic adolescence of a Jewish boy who was forced to work in a munitions factory in Poland as a slave laborer prior to being transported to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany where his survival depended upon his ability to provide more slave labour. When American soldiers liberated the camp in April 1945, they discovered about 1000 boys under the age of 18. Elie Wiesel is probably the most famous of these boy prisoners, yet he says very little about his time in Buchenwald in his ground-breaking biography Night. Elie and quite a few other boys are featured in Waisman’s memories of Buchenwald and especially afterwards in France where many of them were transported to a post-war rehabilitation centre run by the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, the OSE, a Jewish children’s relief organization.

In telling his story to co-author McClelland, Waisman admits in the introduction that he “may confuse timelines and occasionally combine two characters into one. But the themes, our transition, how we boys who had lost everything found meaning again, are all true.” Both Waisman and McClelland in the acknowledgments also identify some academic scholars who helped ensure that the work is historically accurate, and the OSE provided access to archival files. Historians may object to the use of re-imagined dialogue, but overall, the book stands out as a fine memoir for a young audience, but one that can be enjoyed by adults of all ages.

In general, the horrors of the Holocaust are well documented, and the quantity of memoirs published continues to grow, even as the survivors dwindle in numbers each passing year. Boy From Buchenwald stands out for its description of the Holocaust from a teenager’s experience of life in a concentration camp and, especially, in the challenging period of post-liberation adjustment to a normal life. The narrative is engaging and multi-layered. The co-authors capture the despair that many of the boys experienced. Some had lost their faith and became atheists, others turned to communism as an aspirational ideal, and others remained firmly committed to the faith of their ancestors. Physical and psychological trauma haunted the survivors. Efforts by the amazing staff and mentors of the OSE to help heal the boys were praiseworthy.

There are many things that may surprise readers. One is the semi-feral nature of the 427 boys taken to France by the OSE. There was violence between boys from different European nation states. This decreased when staff changed their room sharing plans from dorms based on age to one based on where the boys came from. Long after arriving, boys continued to hoard food. The OSE staff worked with the International Red Cross to try to locate family members. Waisman was informed that his sister Leah had been located in a Red Cross camp in Bavaria. He was able to visit her there but learned that she was now engaged to Abram and they had decided to relocate to Palestine where many other Jewish refugees were hoping to find a new start. Dejected, he returned to the OSE facility. Leah had recognized before Waisman was ready to accept that there was no home and family left for them to return to in Poland.

Waisman was matched with a Parisian family that had two boys of comparable age. Visits with the family and outings with the boys allowed him to learn about life in the free world and societal norms. In a surprising turn, he learns that Rose, the mother of the two boys Jacques and Henri, is the sister of his father, and that the boys who shared French comics and who ventured to see films featuring Tarzan and animation were his real cousins. One question never addressed is why Waisman was not able to stay with this real life family. One can assume that the family was already struggling to survive and couldn’t imagine adding another permanent member.

Waisman was also introduced to a wealthy woman, Jane Renaud-Brandt, who brought Waisman to socialize with her three children and who took him on outings to the symphony, theatre, fancy restaurants and even the film festival in Cannes so that he could experience new things and gain new hope for a post-war life. Her children became playmates and friends and expressed appreciation that, by his accompanying their mother to the opera, they did not have to go. Eventually Jane and her husband Jean offered to adopt Waisman. He decided that he did not want to lose his family name. Instead, he eventually decided to set out for a new beginning in Canada.

Waisman’s psychological development is one of the most intriguing storylines. Gradually, he comes to see that his father was really trying to help him survive, even if he appeared to be pushing him away. He recounts efforts by men in Buchenwald to nurture the boys by sheltering them from authorities when they were sick, by giving them parts of their rations, by teaching them when they were forbidden to do so, and by encouraging them to remember the situation so that they could survive and tell others. It would be years later that Waisman came to understand the extent of the Buchenwald underground or resistance and its role in protecting the boys and other inmates. Even in the midst of inhumanity, many held onto the human desire to help one another. Friendships that Waisman made with peers at the OSE, with Jane’s children and his cousins continued for life. Waisman’s generosity is shown in the epilogue where he notes that he would go on to sponsor immigration to Canada of Leah, Abram and their first child, as well as his cousins Jacques and Henri.

The book includes a helpful timeline of the rise and fall of Nazism. There is no index. While the acknowledgments identify some people and sources consulted including the documentary film Boys of Buchenwald, produced by David Paperny Films, it would have been nice to have a formal bibliography with sources for junior and senior readers.