The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shared about the legendary Luba Tryszynska, who took charge of the children of Dutch Jewish diamond cutters and manufacturers, whom the Nazis had hoped to exploit for their knowledge and skills that made her today, remembered as “The Angel of Belsen.”
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum took to their social media on Saturday, April 15, 2023, and shared the story of Luba Tryszynska, whose son was taken away from her during the war at Auschwitz and later murdered.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shared that when Luba Tryszynska arrived at Bergen-Belsen, she had already suffered one of the worst fates a mother could experience as her toddler son was taken from her at Auschwitz and murdered.
Not long after Luba Tryszynska was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, she heard the cries of children one night. At first, her mind played tricks on her. Luba allowed herself to hope that the crying could be her son.
Remembering her son Luba Tryszynska stated, “My mind was working like maybe my child was taken away someplace,” she recalled later. “A mother’s love is tough to describe.”
She took days and months hoping that her son would be back in her arms one day, but instead, she discovered a group of children outside her barracks, left in the cold, to die.
Luba Tryszynska found there were the children of Dutch Jewish diamond cutters and manufacturers whom the Nazis had hoped to exploit for their knowledge and skills. For months, the families were afforded some safety and kept together in separate barracks at Bergen-Belsen. But, in December 1944, they were torn apart.
The fathers were deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and the mothers to a subcamp of Neuengamme. The “diamond children” were abandoned.
Luba cared for them, with the help of other women in the barracks, getting what little food was available to sustain them.
When the British army liberated Bergen-Belsen on this day in 1945, Luba managed to save at least 40 children. Today she is remembered as “The Angel of Belsen.”
“I gave them my love because I had lost my child,” Luba said when she was honoured in 1995, the 50th anniversary of liberation, according to the Associated Press. Most of the “diamond children” reunited with their mothers, but very few of their fathers survived.
