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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Limor Regev
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January 29 - February 11, 2024
Although he was a prisoner himself, he demanded from the German who was in charge of supplies to get 2000 blankets.
he managed to create a situation where each boy got two blankets. Most of the children remained silent in light of these significant gestures.
When the Germans began to prepare for the evacuation of the camp, Kalina gathered all the children in the block and changed their shirts,
which had the Jewish identification badge. He asked them to remember that they were Christian Poles, and under no circumstances would they respond to the German call, when it came. Kalina even threatened the children that he would beat any child who said he is Jewish.
he stood before them fearlessly and said emphatically that there were no more Jews in the block.
He showed the Nazi commander paperwork prepared ahead of time with the help of friends, which showed the children were registered Christians. 22,000 Jewish prisoners had been sent from Buchenwald on death marches since April 6. Kalina was able to rescue 904 children from the clutches of the Germans thanks to his courage, resourcefulness and determination.
Among the boys saved by Kalina were two who would later become Nobel laureates: Eli Wiesel and the Hungarian writer Imra Curtis.
After the end of the war, Kalina returned to his home country and continued his life in anonymity. The boys he had saved, like many Holocaust survivors, threw themselves into trying to rebuild their lives and put behind them the years of horror.
In the sole interview he gave to a pair of American journalists in 1988, Kalina shrugged when asked about the huge rescue operation for which he was responsible. He did not see it as a great achievement, beyond his duty as a human being. He said, “I had already lived my life; their lives were still ahead of them.”
This interview is the only photographic testimony left of a great and humble man.
He never told anyone of his close associates and the amazing rescue story he was in charge of, and expected nothing for it.
In 2013, he published a book called “Kalina’s Children,”, which was made into a documentary.
“The Children of Block 66.”
In 2012, after pressure from several survivors andled by Naftali (Duro) Furst, one of the children of Block 66, Kalina was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
Kalina was posthumously awarded a medal of honor by the President of the Czech Republic.
“The Angel of the Buchenwald Children.”
nicknamed the “Czech Schindler.”
Businessman Oscar Schindler saved about 1,200 Jews as a free and well-to-do man, with close links to the authorities. Antonin Kalina was himself a prisoner, facing real and immediate danger to his life, and yet he proactively and independently led one of the largest rescue operations during the Holocaust.
Where many found it difficult to maintain their humanity, Kalina was a human being in the fullest meaning of the word.
