In the final weeks of the Second World War, three Jewish women gave birth in conditions that should have made survival impossible. Each had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau while pregnant. Each managed to hide her pregnancy from the Nazis. And each brought a baby into the world as the camps were collapsing around them.
Their children – Hana, Mark and Eva – are among the youngest survivors of the Holocaust. For 65 years, none of them knew the others existed.
Three births on the road to Mauthausen
The three mothers, Priska, Rachel and Anka, did not know one another. All three were sent from Auschwitz to work as forced laborers in a factory in Germany, and in April 1945, as Allied forces closed in, all three were put on a transport bound for the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
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- Priska gave birth to Hana on a table in the factory. She weighed about 31 kilos (70 pounds).
- Rachel gave birth to Mark in an open coal wagon, partway through a 17-day train journey with almost no food or water.
- Anka gave birth to Eva on a cart full of sick and dying women, as the transport reached the gates of Mauthausen.
All three mothers and all three babies lived to see liberation. Mauthausen was freed by American forces in May 1945.
A town that refused to look away
On April 21, 1945, the train stopped at the small Czech town of Horní Bříza. The stationmaster, Antonín Pavlíček, was horrified by what he saw inside the wagons. He argued with the SS officer in charge until he was allowed to help, and the next day the people of the town brought food and water to the prisoners. When they heard newborns crying, they brought baby clothes too.
Decades later, two elderly men from Horní Bříza who had watched the train as boys spoke about that day for the first time. Their memories are a reminder that even in the darkest moments, individuals made choices – and some chose to act.
Meeting for the first time, 65 years later
In 2010, at a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen, Eva Clarke, Mark Olsky and Hana Berger Moran met for the first time. Each had grown up believing they were the only baby born under those circumstances. They bonded immediately, and stood together with the American veterans who had liberated the camp.
Their story was later told by British author and former war correspondent Wendy Holden in her book Born Survivors (2015), which traced the three mothers’ journeys through research in 11 countries and interviews with witnesses. When Holden first contacted Eva about telling her story, Eva replied that she had been waiting 70 years.
Why their story matters
At the International March of the Living, we believe that every survivor’s story is a piece of history that must be passed on. The story of Hana, Mark and Eva is one of extraordinary courage – of mothers who protected their children against all odds, and of strangers who chose compassion when it was dangerous to do so.
As the generation of survivors grows smaller, it falls to us – and to the young people who march with us each year – to carry these stories forward.