Kalina Antonin

Kalina, Antonin In the final months of World War II, as the German army retreated on all fronts, the camps in the east were evacuated and their inmates marched westwards. Thousands of victims of the death marches arrived at Buchenwald concentration camp, among them many Jews, the last remnants from the camps and ghettos of East Europe. Members of Buchenwald’s Communist Underground organization, many of which had been incarcerated in the camp for long years, were placed in key positions such as Block elder or Kapo, according to the inmate hierarchy enforced by the SS. Although they were aware of the approaching end of Nazi Germany and knew that they would soon be free, the Communist Underground tried to alleviate the suffering of the incoming inmates and managed to place several hundred Jewish children and teenagers who had arrived with the death marches in a special Barrack, Block 66, in the so-called Small Camp of Buchenwald. Antonin Kalina, the Block 66 elder, had been born in 1902 in Trebic, Moravia (today the Czech Republic). His father was a shoemaker and the family had twelve children. When Antonin was 21 he joined the Communist party and became an active member. He married, but the marriage remained childless. On 1 September 1939 he was arrested for his communist activity. After one month in the Dachau concentration camp he was transferred to Buchenwald, where he would remain incarcerated for almost five years. When the Communist Underground came into being, Kalina became an active member. In December 1944 the underground arranged for him to become the Block elder of Barrack 66, and soon, with the help of the underground, Kalina began to gather youngsters and children from all over the camp and concentrate them in the barrack. Kalina used his position and his contacts with the Underground to improve the conditions of his wards, to obtain additional food for them, to have the roll-call held inside the barrack and not in the freezing cold outside,and to generally protect them from the many dangers of daily life in the camp. Alex Moskovic was 13 when he was deported with his family to Auschwitz from the town of Sobrance in Slovakia. At the end of January 1945 he was taken on a death march. He met his father and one of his brothers on the way, after being separated from them for eight long months. Upon arriving in Buchenwald Alex and his brother, Zóltan, were brought to Block 66. Kalina was engraved in Alex' memory as the protector of the youth – a source of warmth and love in the hostile environment of the camp. Though there were no means of writing, Kalina tried to teach his wards and to foster their education. Another youth was Lázár Lászlo, from Oradea in Hungary (today Romania) who was 14 years old when he was deported with his family to Auschwitz. He too arrived in Buchenwald with the death marches and was placed in Kalina's block. He told Yad Vashem of the hopeful atmosphere that Kalina managed to instill in his wards. "Due to his boldness, he enabled the youngsters and children to survive in relatively humane conditions, as much as this was possible", he told Yad Vashem. Another youth, Naftali First (born in 1932 in Petrzalka, Slovakia) had also come to Buchenwald with the death marches and was first placed in Block 45. Several days later he was separated from his brother Shmuel and transferred to Block 66. When Kalina saw how First suffered from the separation from his brother, he arranged for Shmuel to be transferred to his block. Naftali retained a vivid memory of the lessons held in the barrack and of Kalina's constant encouragement and his instilling hope in the hearts of the children, telling them that the end of the war was near and that soon their suffering would be over. In an interview that was held with Kalina in 1988 he described how he tried to conceal the Jewish identity of the children; Henry Kinast and Victor Borger, both from Poland, reported that Kalina had told them toremove the yellow triangle from their inmate uniforms so that they would not be identified as Jews. Once, upon hearing of plans to transfer the children to another camp, he hung a sign on the barrack door: "Danger. Typhoid". On other occasions he would assure the SS men that all the Jews had already been removed from the barrack. On 10 April 1945, an order was issued to evacuate Block 66 and for all the Jews to assemble in the camp's central square. Soon, however, a siren sounded and Allied airplanes were seen flying over the camp. Kalina seized the opportunity and ordered his children to run back into the barrack and remain there. The camp was liberated on the following day and the lives of some 900 youths in Block 66 were saved. In the 1988 interview, Kalina was asked why he saved the children. "Most of my life is already behind me", he said, "and these children had still theirs to live". When asked if he would have done this again Kalina replied without hesitation: “certainly”. After liberation Kalina returned home. He remained a loyal communist until his death in 1990. Although he did criticize the Stalinist terror, he remained a firm believer in the basic principles of Socialism. On July 3, 2012, Yad Vashem recognized Antonin Kalina as Righteous Among the Nations.