Joseph Schleifstein: The Little Boy Who Survived Buchenwald Concentration Camp

Joseph Schleifstein was just four years old when he became one of the youngest survivors of the Nazi concentration camp system. Hidden by his parents and fellow prisoners, he survived Buchenwald and later became one of the most recognizable child survivors of the Holocaust.Born on 7 March 1941 in the Sandomierz Ghetto in German-occupied Poland, he spent his early years hidden from the world. After the liquidation of the ghetto, Joseph and his parents, Izrael and Esther, were forced into the HASAG slave-labor camps, where children were routinely murdered because they could not work. Joseph survived only because his parents hid him in cellars and dark corners whenever SS guards approached.In January 1945, when HASAG operations were transferred to Germany, the family was deported to Buchenwald. Upon arrival, Joseph was sent to the left—to be killed. In the chaos of the selection line, his father shoved him into a large sack filled with leather-working tools and smuggled him into the camp. Anti-fascist German prisoners helped hide him, but he was eventually discovered. Instead of being murdered, the SS made him a mascot, dressing him in a child-sized striped uniform and having him appear at roll calls, where he saluted and declared, “All prisoners accounted for.” Yet during official inspections he had to vanish, and more than once stood in line for execution before his father intervened.On 11 April 1945, Buchenwald was liberated by the U.S. 6th Armored Division after prisoners sent a desperate SOS message to Patton’s army. Among the 21,000 emaciated survivors was Joseph, photographed clutching a wooden scooter, his face becoming one of the haunting symbols of the Holocaust. American soldiers fed him, cared for him, and gave him rides on tanks he remembered for the rest of his life.After the war, the family searched desperately for Esther and eventually found her alive. Joseph later testified at the Buchenwald Camp Trial, helping convict and execute Nazi perpetrators. In 1948 the family emigrated to the United States, where Joseph built a quiet life, raised two children, and struggled for decades with nightmares of darkness and hiding. His story later inspired the 1997 film Life Is Beautiful.This episode is part of the series Survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution.Watch the full documentary and explore hundreds of historical films at:WorldHistory.tv