The Angel of Belsen, part three.
- Feb 28
- 2 min read
Be sure reads parts one and two of Luba's story:
Bergen Belsen was liberated by the British on April 15, 1945, and although it was not an extermination camp, starvation, disease, and overwork took their toll. What the British troops found on that day were 60,000 half-dead prisoners and 13,000 corpses littering the ground. Imagine their utter shock when they searched the barracks and in one of them discovered 94 children being cared for by none other than 28-year-old Luba! (Fifty additional children had arrived in small numbers here and there in the past months and joined the little band of Dutch "diamond" children.)
Luba was placed in charge of the new children’s home established in the camp, and every effort was devoted to restoring the children to health. Thirty of the children had typhus as well as starvation-related illnesses and severe dehydration. In the five weeks following liberation, 13,000 former prisoners died, and tragically four of Luba’s children were included in that number.
Eventually the remaining children were strong enough to travel, and Luba accompanied groups of children to Holland. You may recall that the mothers of the "diamond" children had been sent to work in salt mines. This grueling work may well have saved their lives as it kept them out of the harshest winter weather. Miraculously, the majority of the "diamond" children were reunited with their mothers, but only three of their fathers had survived. Luba then accompanied her remaining orphans to Sweden, where they were adopted. But guess what? Luba met another former prisoner while in Sweden and… they married, and in the years that followed had their own son and daughter!
In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen Belsen, 32 of the "diamond" children gathered in Amsterdam to honor their own personal angel, Luba Tryszynska, the Angel of Belsen. That evening Luba was awarded the Silver Medal of Honor for Humanitarian Deeds on behalf of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
"I think the children gave me life," Luba said. "My own child was taken away and I had no feeling for life and I had no purpose. Then I found these children…"
Perhaps when all was said and done, she and the children saved one another…
