The survival story of Sidney Sevek Finkel: A boy’s journey through hunger, typhus and war
Sidney Sevek Finkel survived the Holocaust as a child, enduring ghettoization, forced labor camps, starvation and a weeks-long evacuation transport from Buchenwald concentration camp to Terezín. Struck by typhus at war’s end, he recovered against the odds and went on to build a new life in England and the United States — carrying memories of loss, survival and unexpected kindness in former Czechoslovakia.
In the late spring of 1945, Nazi Germany lay in ruins. The Allies were advancing into the heart of the Reich from east and west, setting thousands of prisoners from concentration camps across Europe in motion. Some of them were headed to the territory of former Czechoslovakia — on foot in death marches and in so-called evacuation transports by train.
In the second half of April 1945, transports from the Buchenwald concentration camp were also headed to Terezín, arriving there by several different routes. One of the last living survivors of these evacuation transports is Sidney Sevek Finkel, originally a Polish Jew, who at the age of thirteen miraculously survived a bout of typhus in Terezín at the end of the war.
We meet in Arizona, where Sidney now lives in the suburbs of Tucson. He remains active and, even at a very advanced age, gives lectures at local schools. In the Czech Republic, where he spent the end of the war, he remains entirely unknown.
A childhood torn apart by war
Sidney Finkel was originally named Szyja Sevek Finkelstein and was born in December 1931 in the Polish town of Piotrków Trybunalski, south of Łódź. His life changed drastically in September 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland and the Second World War broke out in full force. Sevek’s brother Isaac joined the army and was wounded. The rest of the family soon found themselves in the Piotrków ghetto, which the Nazis established as the very first on occupied Polish territory.
Six years of persecution began, during which the adolescent Sevek lost almost his entire family. The Nazis murdered his sister Ronia after she secretly gave birth to a baby boy outside the ghetto. The new-born did not survive either. In 1942, the ghetto was gradually liquidated and the overwhelming majority of its Jewish population deported to the extermination camp at Treblinka. Sevek lost his mother and another sister.
A year later, what remained of the family, Sevek with his father, his brother Isaac, who had returned wounded from the front to the ghetto, and their remaining sister, were deported to the labor camp in Bugaj, and a year later to the far worse labor camp in Częstochowa. In December 1944 they were transferred again, this time to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. There Sevek survived for several months, and only shortly before liberation by the American army came the evacuation transport to Czech territory.
Evacuation transport: hunger, fear, and weeks in an open wagon
“They crammed all of us into an open freight wagon. My friend Harry and I got all the way to the back so that at least we could lean against the wall. There were so many of us in that wagon that I had no space at all,” he recalls his impressions of the evacuation transport.
“Only about half of us remained alive in the wagon. Human remains were all around us.”
The journey, which under normal circumstances would have taken only a few hours, lasted for weeks. Germany was devastated, the railways were bombed daily by Allied aircraft, and the train carrying prisoners moved mostly at night, while during the day it stood on sidings waiting for its fate. For Sidney Finkel, the greatest problem was hunger. He was thirteen and, according to preserved records, very tall for his age — according to the Buchenwald prisoner registry, he measured 175 centimeters.
“No one gave us anything to eat. I had long since eaten the ration we received in Buchenwald. Once the train stopped because the guards wanted to cook a meal. The smell of the cooking was literally driving me insane, because I had not eaten for many days. The guards allowed us to jump off the wagons for a moment and look for anything edible in the field. I found a few rotten potatoes, while my friend Harry even found a few pieces of beetroot.”
Later, he tried to stave off hunger cramps by gathering some grass, putting it into a cup, adding water, and trying to heat it up. “I tried to swallow it, but after a moment I vomited it back up.”
“One day our train was passing through a larger German industrial city. We arrived there in the middle of an air raid, so the explosions of bombs could be heard very close by,” he said in an interview I recorded with him at the end of January this year.
“Once I had a dream in which I heard the voices of my family telling me not to give up.”
From Germany, the train was approaching the borders of pre-war Czechoslovakia. During the journey, more and more prisoners were dying of malnutrition and disease. “Only about half of us remained alive in the wagon. Human remains were all around us, but at that moment the stench did not bother me so much. What tormented me most was hunger, and I kept trying to find anything to eat,” he adds.
Already on Czech territory, he also remembers help from local inhabitants. “The locals threw food and flowers to us along the railway line. It was a beautiful feeling, that I was no longer seeing only people who hated us and wanted to kill us.”
Terezín: Illness, quarantine, and miraculous survival
After arriving in Terezín, Sevek was surprised by its appearance. “It was not a camp like the ones I had known until then. Here it looked like a little town with streets and buildings. It was the end of the war. The guards had fled, freedom was near. No more hunger — could one believe it?”
But the nightmare was not over. With the prisoners from the evacuation transports, typhus was brought into Terezín. The Red Army set up field hospitals, delousing stations, and quarantine areas. The disease spread quickly.
“I was not feeling very well. My forehead was hot, and Harry had to help me down from the train. Then they took us into a building where we were to undergo quarantine. I had to take off my clothes, they shaved me — the same procedure as in Buchenwald. Only with the difference that everyone behaved kindly and without violence.”
“They saw that I was ill, so they took me to the infirmary. By then I was suffering from a fever. I had typhus. Typhus was a highly contagious disease, the one I feared most.”
“I just lay there, sometimes waking up and then falling asleep again. Once I had a dream in which I heard the voices of my family telling me not to give up. Then I woke from the dream and felt wonderful. The fever had broken. I knew I would live! And I was hungry again.”
Sevek was fortunate — he survived typhus. Hundreds of others, by contrast, succumbed to the disease in the final days of the war and even after liberation.
“When I was doing better, they moved me to a building where I could recover completely. I had a clean bed, food, and staff who took care of me, including many volunteers. Even so, a certain fear about the future came over me. Was I alone? What would happen to me? I had nothing. Who would take care of me?”
One day he heard his name from the street. “I immediately ran to the window, where I saw my older brother Isaac. I rushed down the stairs and embraced him at once.” Isaac was emaciated and exhausted, but he brought him a bar of chocolate — the first sweet thing in five years.
From the family, his sister Lola and his aunt Rachel also survived. His parents did not.
A new beginning in England and life in America
Sevek was included in a transport of Jewish orphans organized by the Jewish Refugee Committee in London. “We were offered a place among about a thousand children under sixteen who could go to England, where they would be cared for.” Isaac decided they would accept the offer.
In August 1945, about 300 children were flown to England to Windermere, where they were looked after. Isaac, then thirty years old, helped with the transport and was also able to go.
“When someone learned that we were survivors of concentration camps, someone would often give us something for free.”
Between liberation and the journey to England, Sevek spent several months in Czechoslovakia. He encountered young Soviet soldiers who were seeing running water and modern bathrooms for the first time, their arms laden with wristwatches. “They said that under no circumstances should we go to England or America, that we should go only to Russia,” he adds.
Prague remained forever in his heart. “What stayed with me most was the kindness of the local people. When someone learned that we were survivors of concentration camps, someone would often give us something for free. They wanted to help,” he concludes his story.
In 1951, Sevek moved from England to the United States to join his uncle and sister. He settled in Chicago, where he worked as a salesman and manager in an appliance store. He has five children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Today he lives in Arizona.
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