A Lucky Child

After the liberation, Buergenthal was sent to an orphanage:

For me, the Jewish orphanage served as a halfway point from one life to another. It was here that I underwent a gradual transformation from being a perennially frightened and hungry camp inmate struggling to survive to an eleven-year-old child with a relatively normal life (131).

Not everyone in the orphanage was a real orphan and not all had been to concentration camps. Most children in the orphanage were like Tamara, whose legs were deformed because she hid in an attic for over two years. Buergenthal became famous because he was the only Auschwitz survivor in the orphanage. He was still underweight and placed on a special diet:

Never before had I eaten so well! There were moments when, on seeing all that wonderful food in front of me, I felt sure that it was all a dream and that, instead of the white cream I thought I saw, I would wake up and look down on the snow we ate on the Auschwitz Death Transport (134).

Buergenthal still did not know how to read or write. He attended a Polish grade school, and he spent his time playing sports and growing vegetables in the orphanage garden.