Chaim Ferster is one of those incorrigibly weird ‘Holocaust Survivors’ whose story repeatedly comes up because it is so ludicrous. Despite this when Ferster died in 2017 he was uncritically lauded as if he’d done something truly remarkable which if his story were actually true might be arguable but unfortunately it is utter nonsense.
Writing at the time the BBC wrote that:
‘A Holocaust survivor who cheated death in eight Nazi concentration camps during World War Two has died in hospital.
Chaim Ferster, 94, was forced from his home in Poland by the Nazis and survived Auschwitz, malnutrition and typhus. He later settled in Manchester.
He died from pneumonia and a kidney infection earlier surrounded by his three sons and family, his rabbi said.
Rabbi Arnold Saunders said he “had nine lives and was an inspiration”.’ (1)
This seems fairly enough until we read the detail provided by the BBC, which is that:
‘Born into an orthodox Jewish family and raised in the Polish town Sosnowiec, Mr Ferster was forced from his home by the Nazis in 1943 aged 20.
He witnessed mass executions, children crying for their murdered parents, bodies being burnt in the gas chambers and survived death marches.
In one camp, Mr Ferster recalled: “There were bodies lying on pallets, six one way, six the other way.
“There were many many pallets with bodies, very, very high.”
He lost 30 relatives in the Holocaust including his mother, father and two sisters.’ (2)
The problem here is that the ‘Holocaust Educational Trust’ thinks Fester only went through seven concentration camps of which are only give the names of three which he was in between September 1944 and April 1945: Auschwitz Birkenau then on to Niederorschel (a labour camp that was a sub-camp of Buchenwald) in October-November 1944 then in early April 1945 he was transferred on foot (the claimed ‘death march’) to Buchenwald proper and the was ‘liberated’ the next day. (3)
The problem is of course is that Ferster was only in Auschwitz for six weeks so one finds it rather hard to believe he saw what he claimed he did especially the idea that he allegedly saw ‘bodies being burnt in the gas chambers’ – you don’t burn bodies *in* a gas chamber as Ferster claims occurred – but the fact there were a lot of bodies lying around waiting cremation makes sense given that Auschwitz had a high attrition rate due to the ongoing logistical collapse of the German infrastructure system and the German economy during late 1944 and the rampant contagious disease – notably scarlet fever and typhus (which Ferster rightly mentions as a serious problem at Auschwitz) – which had been a massive problem for the German authorities from 1940/1941 onwards.
It is also worth stating that Ferster’s claim to have been deported from the Sosnowiec ghetto in March 1943 is plausible – (4) since regular deportations of jews from the Sosnowiec ghetto to different labour camps were performed – but one rather wonders what four other camps was Ferster in-between March 1943 and September 1944 (when he is transferred to Auschwitz and specifically Auschwitz Birkenau [aka Auschwitz II])?
Ferster doesn’t tell us which is rather odd – it may be in his memoirs which I haven’t read but no one else seems to mention which other four camps he was in either! – and suggests that Ferster is probably exaggerating and/or telling porkies. A bit like how he claims to have been on multiple ‘death marches’ and was only on one claimed ‘death march’ – in reality just a transfer on foot between concentration camps at the very end of the war – between Niederorschel and its parent camp Buchenwald in April 1945.
One rather thinks Ferster is a bit of… well… a liar: no?
References
(1) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-38893479
(2) Idem.
(3) https://www.het.org.uk/news-and-events/618-chaim-ferster-1922-2017
(4) Idem.