Antonín Kalina: The Angel of Children from Hellish Buchenwald

Just like Sir Nicholas Winton or Oskar Schindler, he helped save hundreds of lives. Yet his name and fate remain almost forgotten. That is exactly why I would like to share his story with you.

In the dark times of the Second World War, when it seemed that humanity was buried under layers of barbarism, heroes who, with their courage, managed to illuminate that darkness, emerged. One of them was Antonín Kalina, an ordinary shoemaker from Czechoslovakia town Třebíč, who became the savior of hundreds of children in the Buchenwald concentration camp. His story is full of risky ideas, unbreakable will, and profound humanity.

From Shoemaker to Political Prisoner

Antonín Kalina, born on February 17, 1902, into a poor shoemaker’s family, grew up as one of twelve children. He trained as a shoemaker, got married, and in 1923 joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as an active member. His life changed dramatically after the German occupation in 1939, when he was arrested during the “Grilles” operation, imprisoned for political reasons in the Dachau concentration camp, and eventually transferred to Buchenwald.

In Buchenwald, thanks to his natural authority and excellent knowledge of German, Kalina earned respect not only among the prisoners but also from the guards. He had mastered fluent German already in childhood, when he attended the German school in Třebíč for the free snacks. Fellow prisoners elected him as the block leader, or “Blockälteste,” giving him some influence over the camp’s self-administration. His language skills—in addition to German, he also spoke Russian, Hungarian, and Polish—helped him navigate the chaotic and horrific environment.

Children Without a Chance

It was 1944. As the Red Army advanced, the Germans began liquidating concentration camps in Eastern Europe and sending the still-living prisoners on death marches. Some of them were directed to Buchenwald.

Among the decimated and starved survivors, Kalina noticed children, mostly boys aged 3 to 18, predominantly of Jewish origin. He knew they had no chance of survival in the regular blocks. The camp was not just for political prisoners; there were also criminals who would beat them for fun, or they would face hunger, typhus, and selection for extermination.

Despite opposition from the secret camp resistance, which feared that concentrating the children in one place would make their liquidation easier, Kalina pushed through the creation of a special children’s block No. 66-the “Kinderblock.”

Kinderblock – An Island of Hope

His idea was brilliant in its simplicity and courage. With the help of his closest collaborator, the Prague doctor Jindřich Flusser, who served as his clerk, he devised a plan. He placed a sign in front of the block warning of typhus - a disease the Nazis feared. This ensured that the SS men avoided the block like the devil avoids the cross. The children thus did not have to attend roll calls on the Appelplatz, where the guards might notice them and very likely send them straight to a transport. Buchenwald was, for the children, only a transit station.

To protect them, Kalina came up with various tricks. One of the most ingenious was “Aryanization,” or changing Jewish identities. Flusser recalled how Kalina ordered new arrivals to be recorded with ordinary pencil. Then at night he erased Jewish first names like Moše or Izak and replaced them with Aryan ones, such as Gustav or Leopold. He told the children: “When the SS come tomorrow, none of you is a Jew. You are Dutch, Poles, Czechs, Russians. Anyone who says he’s a Jew gets a spanking!” When an SS man later shouted: “Where are your Jews?”, Kalina calmly replied: “There are none here; we sent them away long ago. Look at the list.”

In the block, he often told the children stories, taught them songs, mathematics, and history - just to give them at least some sense of normalcy in a place that otherwise resembled hell on earth. Before the evacuation, he resewed the Jewish patches on their clothes and marked them on paper as Christians. In total, around 900–1,000 children passed through the block.

Fellow prisoners in the block knew about his actions and helped as best they could. They organized barter trade for food, clothing, shoes, and blankets. Some prisoners even gave up their own rations for the children. Kalina, as the organizer, was known for being able to “get anything, even a submarine.” Once they raided a Red Cross package warehouse, carefully cut out a corner, took out cigarettes (the camp currency), and put everything back. Another time he managed to obtain 700 blankets at once.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

The most dramatic moment came at the end of the war. When Kalina was momentarily away from the block one day, the SS drove the children toward the gate for transport. Fortunately, Kalina spotted it, ran over, and confidently shouted at the commander: “Sir, you promised me the kids would go last!” It was a fabrication, but his authority and perfect German did the trick. The commander told him: “Then take your kids and go to hell with them!” Kalina thus risked his life; his papers were marked “return not desired.”

When other fellow prisoners asked him in 1945 whether it was worth risking so much when the war was ending and they just had to hold out, he replied: “I’ve already lived my life, but those kids have to survive.” Born in 1902, he was 43 years old and considered himself an old man.

Among the children he saved were well-known names—for example, physicist Felix Weinberg or future Nobel Prize winners Elie Wiesel (Peace) and Imre Kertész (Literature).

Quiet Life After the War

After liberation, Kalina returned to Třebíč, where he became the national administrator of the Baťa factory. He later moved to Prague, worked at the Ministry of Light Industry, got divorced, and spent his retirement alone. He moved to a cottage in Černý Most, where he made homemade wine, distilled apricot brandy, and grew some veggies and fruit in the garden. He also refused medical treatment and medications on principle. When he felt bad, he treated himself with homemade spirits and mulled wine. And if even that didn’t make him feel like a fish in water, he would call his old friend, Dr. Flusser.

Remembrance

During his lifetime, Antonín Kalina received no recognition, partly due to his modesty and also because he did not consider his actions heroic - they were simply a moral duty for him. He died on November 26, 1990, in Prague at the age of 88.

Posthumously, in 2012, he was awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations. This honor is given to non-Jews who helped save Jews during the Holocaust. In 2014, he was then awarded the Medal of Merit, First Class, by Czech President Miloš Zeman.

He has not been forgotten in his native Třebíč either, where a memorial hall was built for him with a Tree of Life, its leaves symbolizing the 860 saved children. His story is also detailed in the book Antonín Kalina’s Children” by Stanislav Motl, and it reminds us that even in the darkest times, where there is humanity, there is also hope.