Antonin Kalina

One person who was gifted in humanity during World War II was Antonin Kalina. He was born in Sechbieche, Moravia in 1902, and he was the second of twelve children. His father was a shoemaker, and his mother took care of the children at home. His parents were social democrats. He joined the communist party in 1923.

Antonin Kalina was arrested by the Germans in 1939 because he was a communist. He was sent to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Since he was a political prisoner, Antonin was put in charge of Lager 66. He was responsible for 1,300 children, of whom 1,200 of them were Jews. From the beginning, he risked his life to save the children. He insisted that they all take Christian identities.

Therefore, he had to lie to the SS. He saved the children by hiding them, and when he was told to send some to the gas chambers, he would switch their files with files of children who had already died.

At the concentration camps, the Germans never went near any cells that were marked as a cell for people with sicknesses or diseases. Antonin Kalina knew that, and used that information to save many children. What he did was he rounded up all of the children he could and put them in a large cell, and put a sign on it that said that they had typhus. One day, Antonin was notified that he had to make six Belgian boys disappear, he knew that it was a warning that they would be called to the gas chambers. What he did was switch their files with those of children who were already dead, and made up different things that they could have died from. At the liberation party in 1948 a person told him that there were some men from Belgium looking for him. There were five boys there, now men, big! They picked him up in the air and almost broke his ribs!

Antonin Kalina saved 1,300 lives. He believes that he only survived because of his optimism, “You know, I’m an optimist. If I would not be, I would not exist. I believe in people. It was necessary to believe in one, and those who lost that belief were lost. All the children lost their parents, their whole families. They are now old men.”

I think that what Antonin Kalina did was truly amazing. It took must have taken a lot of courage to risk his life to save those 1,300 children. What Antonin Kalina did was what everyone would like to think they would have done, but, most people know they would have been too scared to help. To me what Antonin Kalina did means that in the world there is always hope. Hope in the form of a single person, or in a large group of people. It shows that there is always good in a world that seems all evil.

References

Type: Website
Title: http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/
Author: Simon Wiesenthal
Information: The website had information about what Atonin Kalina did to help during World War II. Pictures also from the website.

Type: Book
Title: The Courage to Care
Author: Carol Rittner and Sondra Myers
Year: 1989
Information: The book had information on Antonin Kalina’s background and what he did to help during World War II.