Manfred Goldberg, 95, survived five different Nazi camps before being liberated at age 15. He was only nine years old when World War II began, but recalls his harrowing years of survival as if it were yesterday. In the late 1930s, the Nazis began a widespread propaganda campaign, turning much of the population against Jews who were belittled as “human cockroaches”. 

Prior to the war, Jewish businesses were targeted by vicious rising youth groups who marched through towns, looting businesses, burning synagogues and murdering innocent people. 

“As an eight-year-old, I was terrified - I could look out of the window and see flames rising above the rooftops,” Manfred shares. 

Jewish people began frantically applying for visas to flee to the US before the war broke out, but the odds were slim. Only 30,000 visas were available annually, with more than 300,000 people on the waiting list.

In early 1939, as anti-Jewish laws tightened, Manfred’s father was arrested and sent to Poland. The Polish authorities refused to take him back, and he was returned to Germany. In a desperate attempt to save him, Manfred’s mother traveled to Berlin, where she secured a visa for her husband to the UK. However, the visa was only for his father, not the whole family, and he left Germany believing the rest of them would follow in six weeks. 

Days later, World War II broke out. Manfred and his family were trapped in Germany. Facing increasing hostility and hardships as food and resources grew scarce, they survived on the hope that one day their family would be reunited. 

Two years later, Nazi soldiers came to Manfred’s home, where he, his mother and little brother Herman were taken by train to the Riga Ghetto in Latvia.

“We were packed into a train and traveled for three days,” Manfred recalls. “We had no idea where we were going.” Upon arriving, they were marched into the ghetto where they were held under constant guard. Manfred’s family faced overcrowded living conditions, with 25 people crammed into one small house. His mother worked at a factory producing Nazi uniforms while he and his younger brother, who was seven, survived on a “starvation diet”.

Manfred’s memories of violence are stark. He witnessed his first murder when a woman was killed for hiding food to feed her children. “She was lined up and shot,” he remembers. “I was 11 years old when I saw my first death - I grew up very rapidly”.

People were frequently made to line up for inspection, deciding whether they lived or died.  “If you were disabled, weak, sick, and somebody so that you couldn't work, any of these things meant you lost your right to live.”

Manfred’s first year in a camp marked the moment he was forced to abandon his name and identity to a mere number. “I'll never forget it. 56478 and I was never ever again called by my name, always by this number”. In August 1943, during the morning line up, a series of numbers were shouted out, including Manfred, Herman and their Mother. 

Those selected were shoved into cattle trucks and embarked on a three day journey to their next camp. 

“We never, ever got any food or water on these journeys. There was a bucket for our bodily needs but there was barely any room to crouch down.

“They were packed so tightly that people just had to stand. And if anyone either fainted or sometimes people actually died, they couldn't fall down. The pressure of people pressing against them, held them in an upright position.”

Upon arrival, the Nazi’s separated children, elderly and the sick, who were killed. Manfred was 13, meaning he narrowly survived, yet his younger sibling “lost his right to live”. However, “a flicker of humanity” in one soldier spared four children their lives - Herman returned, yet only for a short while.

Two SS men came into the camp five weeks later with orders to take the children. 

“They decided that nonproductive Jew, why feed them? And they murdered them,” Manfred painfully shared.

“We were heartbroken at the loss of my little brother. Life was so cruel there. There was no such thing as mourning. 

“The next morning, hours after the loss of our young boy, we had to line up, shout our number and go to work as though nothing had happened in order to stay alive.”

“Every night people died in their bunk beds, either from starvation, sickness, lack of hygiene, whatever reason, in the morning, every bed had to be inspected, and the bodies lifted out.” 

On 26 April 1945, 4,000 people were forced to march from the Stutthof camp in columns. Manfred and his mother remained together, with their numbers called out on every occasion they were transferred between camps - the odds of which are astronomically small. 

After marching to a small port, those who survived were packed into four ancient, wooden barge. SS officers aboard selected people at random, dragging them to the top of the barge, and throwing them into the sea to drown. 

“For six days on board, not a scrap of food, no sip of water, and people have been starved before. There were quite a proportion of people who had now reached a stage where their heart was still beating, but their mind had ceased functioning.”

On the sixth day, the officers on board "disappeared" and survivors managed to row the barge to shore using broken floorboards as oars.. 

Despite initial fears that the SS might return, the arrival of British soldiers saved the group, says Manfred. “They began handing out water, food, loaves of bread, cheese, fruit, and they allowed us to sit down and rest for a long time, and then they marched us into a nearby town called Neustad. 

“And that was our liberation.”