Born In a Concentration Camp

"When Anka arrived at Auschwitz, the heinous Nazi 'doctor' Joseph Mengele asked her if she was pregnant. She lied, and her life was spared. Hitler’s henchmen sent her to work at an armaments factory."

By Michael Golden

Eighty years ago today, the United States Army liberated the 40,000 remaining prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Only days earlier, the Nazis had destroyed the camp’s gas chambers in an effort to vanish any evidence of their mass murder system that had snuffed out the lives of more than 200,000 men, women and children.

But Eva Clarke wasn’t one of them. In fact, she was born inside the concentration camp — just one week before its liberation. She was one of three babies born into the darkness of Mauthausen who survived.

Eva’s mother, Anka Kaudrová, had voluntarily followed her husband, Bernd, to Auschwitz-Birkenau just months earlier. Both of them had originally been imprisoned and spent three years in Theresienstadt ghetto before Bernd was transported. Anka was pregnant with Eva when she arrived at Auschwitz, but Bernd never knew, and he was murdered by the Nazis on January 18, 1945.

When Anka arrived at Auschwitz, the evil Nazi SS “doctor” Joseph Mengele asked her if she was pregnant. She lied, and her life was spared. Hitler’s henchmen sent her to work at a German armaments factory.

When the Nazis moved Anka to Mauthausen, she and hundreds of other Jews were thrown into an open coal car of a train that would travel for 17 hours. The conditions were as filthy and sickening as any transport story you’ve heard about the Holocaust.

When the train entered the Mauthausen and Anka saw the sign — realizing the notorious camp that she was about to be caged in — the shock of it sent her into labor. Right at that moment. Eva was three pounds when she was born; her mother was down to 70.

Eva Clarke, aged four months, with her mother, Anka Kauderová, in 1945.

Six days later, the U.S. Signal Corp freed all of the prisoners at Mauthausen. Nearly all of Anka and Eva’s family had been murdered.

Three years later, Anka was able to get a birth certificate issued for Eva by the Stanesamt not far from where the camp had been located. This enabled Anka to take Eva and emigrate from Prague to the United Kingdom. Eva has been living there ever since — living a full and meaningful life. She married

She worked for 20 years as an administrator at the Cambridge Regional College. And in 2000, she began speaking publicly about family’s experiences during the Holocaust. She volunteers for and supports several the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Anne Frank Trust and the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre. A few years ago, Eva was awarded the British Empire Medal for her public service in Holocaust education.

Eva married a Cambridge professor in 1968, Malcolm Clarke, and the couple have two sons.

Eva Clarke holds her birth certificate, 2019.

You might be wondering if there’s a larger point or angle to my retelling this story about Anka Kaudrová and Eva Clarke — beyond the amazing notion of being born in a Nazi concentration camp and celebrating her 80th birthday last week.

Believe me, I ask myself the same question. I push all of our writers at JEWDICIOUS to make their pieces as personal as possible. Have a hook. Make a point — and staple it to our readers’ foreheads.

I confess that I don’t have that today. I have no personal connection to Anka and Eva’s story. I just wanted to tell it. I want to keep doing what I long ago said I would always do, which is to remind people of what happened to the Jewish people less than a century ago.

Because the Holocaust was absolutely unthinkable, we must continue to think about it. Since that time, we have seen other mass murder events get rationalized by their executors, and even by observers. It is happening right now.

For someone to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that we won’t see another genocide at the scale of the Shoah is to be ignorant of very recent human history.

If you read JEWDICIOUS, it is inevitable that you will see more stories like this one. For those who don’t know — it is compulsory education.

**Editors’s Note: For more fascinating dates in Jewish history, check out our Substack partner, DUST AND STARS.

MICHAEL GOLDEN is the Editor-In-Chief of JEWDICIOUS and founder of The Golden Mean.

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