In ‘Children of Auschwitz,’ a German writer confronts history and himself .

 BERLIN (JTA) — Alwin Meyer knew about the Holocaust when he made his first trip to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp, in 1971. At 21, the young German man had grown up in its shadow.

But he was still shocked by some of what he learned.

“I knew about Auschwitz, but not that there were newborns and children in the camp,” Meyer recently told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It was almost unbelievable. But it is true.”Meyer has devoted his life since to uncovering and documenting the stories of children who were imprisoned at Auschwitz, and his book about 27 of them comes out this week in English for the first time. “Never Forget Your Name: The Children of Auschwitz” highlights stories of survival and hope, yet does not flinch from the stark reality: that such qualities were rare in this death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland – especially for children.

Translated from German by Nick Somers, the book weaves together the biographies of 27 people who were children when they arrived in Auschwitz, ranging in ages from 1 day to 15 years. Four were born there.

Pregnant women who arrived at the camp were usually murdered immediately. The few babies who were born in the camp were birthed secretly, with help from other inmates and in filthy conditions. Virtually all born in the camp were killed soon after birth.

The survival of any child represents “a type of resistance to the only fate that Germans had planned for the children — namely, extermination,” Meyer writes in his book. “Very many of the children and juveniles in this book are fully aware that their survival was a matter of pure luck.”

The people Meyer interviewed represent a tiny fraction of the children who spent time imprisoned at Auschwitz. Of about 230,000 children – most of them Jewish – who arrived in Auschwitz from the time it opened in 1940, only a few hundred survived, including 60 newborns. In 1971, just 80 of the child survivors were still alive.