Joseph Schleifstein: The Little Boy Who Survived Buchenwald Concentration Camp

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · Aug 17, 2026 · 11m

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…