Concentration camp 'babies,' author to speak at Paramount Theatre May 11

Hana Berger Moran was born in a concentration camp in April 1945.

Her father had been murdered by the Nazis. But a 22-year-old Aurora medic found the 3-week-old clinging to her mother, her tiny body covered in boils.

That baby, now 71 years old, will be at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 11, along with Dr. Mark Olsky, who was born on a train en route to the same concentration camp.

Medic LeRoy "Pete" Petersohn, of Aurora, was part of Patton's Third Army, Eleventh Armored Division. He and Sgt. Albert Kosiek, along with their unit, discovered the Gusen labor camps on the morning of May 5, 1945. On their quest to find the "mother" camp, Mauthausen, they also discovered little Hana Berger.

The actions they took next led to the liberation of both camps and the survival of thousands, including not two, but three babies and their mothers.

The story will be told by Petersohn's son, Brian, and Kosiek's son, Larry, along with two of the surviving babies. Wendy Holden, author of the book, "Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance and Hope" also will speak. She lives in England.

The "babies," Hana and Mark, live in California and Wisconsin, respectively.

Brian Petersohn says that the event is "really about the book."

But the book's story is also Petersohn's dad's story. His father died of brain cancer in 2010 at the age of 87.

"My dad for the longest time did not talk about the war, as far as the bad stuff," Petersohn said.

Before he was drafted in 1943, Pete Petersohn worked in the mailroom of the local newspaper.

"Dad was born at 111 Root St., in Aurora," Petersohn said. "He entered the war at The Battle of the Bulge" in December 1944.

"'Til the day he died, he did not know how he became a medic," Petersohn said. "When he was drafted, he was sent to Camp Polk in Louisiana for basic training. When he got there they were calling out the guys and putting them in trucks and taking them off. And it started to get dark out and he was pretty much by himself and a jeep pulls up and the guy says, 'Hey, you, are you Peterson?' And he says, 'No, I'm Petersohn.' "'LeRoy?' 'Yes.' 'Then hop in.'

"He took him away and said, 'You are being assigned to be a medic.' My dad had no idea why.'"

"But back to the book," Petersohn says. "Wendy Holden did a great job of describing the events that took place from her interviews with the babies."

"The events" are gut-wrenching.

"The three mothers started out at Auschwitz," Petersohn said. "All three denied their pregnancies in front of (Angel of Death) Dr. Josef Mengele. They were transferred to a labor camp in Freiberg. By 1945, the Russians were coming in from the east and the Americans from the west. So they put the prisoners on a train of 45 cattle cars for what is normally a seven-hour drive to a camp in Austria. Their journey took 17 days."

Hana was born before the transport, on April 12, 1945. Mark was born on the train a week or so later. "They don't know the exact day he was born," Petersohn said. "However, an S.S. guard told his mother to 'say the boy was born on Hitler's birthday, April 20' because 'it might save him.'"

The train arrived at the Mauthausen Camp on April 29. "The Germans had run out of poisonous gas on the 28th," Petersohn said. (The third baby, Eva Clarke, was born the day they arrived.)

The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945, and the war ended three days later, on May 8.

On May 5, Sgt. Kosiek's unit entered Mauthausen. (They didn't know it, but they were seeing a very small portion of a complex of dozens of other camps). When they opened the gates, the inmates ran out and began eating grass - because eating grass was better than eating nothing, Petersohn said.

This is where Pete Petersohn came in. He was driving a jeep with Major Harold Stacy, Division Medical Officer, on board.

"He could never figure out why or what led him down to the lower women's camp," Petersohn said. "That's where he found Hana and her mother Priska, a Slovak prisoner. Hana was covered in boils that were badly infected from the conditions on the train. Somehow, he convinced the major that out of the thousands of dying people, this baby was worth trying to save."

They took Hana from her mother to the Gusen camp, a cleaner facility where the major lanced and drained the boils. "Dad went and picked up penicillin from a medical battalion that had refrigeration," Petersohn said. "Penicillin was brand new in 1944-45, and there was little information on how to use it. But the doctor had dad treat the boils topically - and many required sutures to close them up.

"They wrapped her head to toe in gauze and handed her to a nurse to take back to her mother. The nurse took her back to Mauthausen and dad didn't see her again until May 2005 when they met in Austria, at Mauthausen," Petersohn said.

Hana's mother had always pushed Hana to "find her saviors" - to seek out the doctor and medic who saved her life. That didn't happen until the early 2000s, when, via an internet search, Hana learned that it was the Eleventh Armored Division that liberated the camp.

"She found the division's website and started asking questions. And that's how it got back to my dad," Petersohn said.

At one time, Petersohn noted, unbeknownst to them all, two of the three babies, Mark and Hana, and two of the liberators, his dad and Sgt. Kosiek, all lived within 35 miles of each other. "Hana lived on the south side of Chicago and then Skokie, Mark and Sgt. Kosiek were in Chicago and dad was in Aurora," he said.

When they were all united in Austria in 2005, it was for the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Mauthausen's liberation. "The Austrian government paid for my brother, my father and I to participate with Hana in that event," Petersohn said.

Journalist and author Wendy Holden heard about Eva and her mother being survivors of Mauthausen, Petersohn said. When she told Eva that she wanted to write the book, Eva's response was, "I have been waiting for 70 years to tell this story."

During her research, Holden found that there were at least two other babies living in the camp with their mothers.

Holden's book came out in hardback a year ago. The U.S. launch was at the Holocaust Museum in Skokie.

The paperback version is being launched May 6 in Washington D.C. with a presentation at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Between the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation, Petersohn said, several events could have taken his dad's life or at least taken him in a different direction. He was shot at and injured in one, and in another, the major he was working for offered to send him back to the states and put him through medical school.

Pete Petersohn declined the offer. He said his job was there, his son said.

When he did get home, he returned to the news business where he worked in the composing room of The Beacon-News for more than 45 years.

It was fate, Brian Petersohn said, that led his dad to one particular mother and her baby.

The ordeal wasn't something Pete Petersohn talked about much, but whenever he would get his scrapbooks out, he always ended the time of reminiscing with, "I wonder whatever happened to that baby."

Now Brian Petersohn is sponsoring the May 11 event because he wants people to remember.

"I want to try to get young people there," he said. "We just can't forget or history will repeat itself. Genocide is still happening in this world today.

"And I want people to know that you never know what the domino effect is from one small act of kindness. Both Hana and Mark entered medical fields."

Holden's book will be offered for sale during the Paramount event at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 11.

A similar program is set for 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 10, at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie.