Sam Ash

His father carried him into Buchenwald hidden in a sack. He was 3 years old, and the SS were not supposed to know he existed. Joseph Schleifstein was born in March 1941 in Sandomierz, Poland, while the town was under German occupation. His parents, Israel and Esther, kept him hidden in cellars and dark corners, because the Nazis took away small children who were too young to work. Then the family was deported. His mother was sent to Bergen-Belsen. Joseph and his father were sent to Buchenwald, in Germany. At the camp, small children and the old were sent away to be killed. So his father, a leather worker, put the little boy inside the big sack that held his tools, told him to keep absolutely quiet, and carried him in. With the help of other prisoners, his father hid Joseph inside the camp. He spent his fourth birthday there. According to his story, the guards did eventually find him. Instead of killing him, some of them made the little boy a kind of camp mascot. When senior Nazi officials came to inspect, he still had to disappear. In April 1945, American soldiers liberated Buchenwald. Joseph remembered that day with joy: he no longer had to hide, there was more to eat, and the Americans gave him "lots and lots" of rides on their tanks and jeeps. He and his father went looking for his mother. They found her alive in Dachau, and after the war the family started over in New York. Joseph worked for AT&T for 25 years. He did not talk about Buchenwald for decades, not even to his own children. Then a film came out about a father who hides his little son in a concentration camp, Life Is Beautiful, and an archivist came across his old file. A search for the real boy began. They found him living quietly in New York City.