November 18: From Buchenwald to Davy Crockett

Jack Werber, a survivor of Buchenwald who saved hundreds of Jewish boys from extermination during the last year of World War II, died on this date in 2006 at age 92. Werber was the barracks clerk at Buchenwald when a train loaded with 2,000 prisoners arrived in August, 1944. The Red Army was already advancing into Germany, and guards at the slave labor camp were fearful of prosecution after the war. With some of them acquiescing, Werber — who had been at the camp for five years and was one of only 11 who survived among the 3,200 sent there with him in 1939 — worked with the camp’s underground to prevent some 700 kids on the transport from being sent on to death camps. After the war, Werber started a novelty company and became wealthy selling coonskin caps during the Davy Crockett craze of the 1950s. ”So many hats were being made that it was hard to get raccoon fur,” his son said. ”Dad came up with an idea: a plastic patch covering the top, sort of like a yarmulke, with the fur around it.”

” ‘Suffering a great personal loss drove me in my obsession to save children.’ That loss was the knowledge that his first wife, Rachel, and 3-year-old daughter, Emma, had been killed by the Nazis. . . . He heard this from an eyewitness who arrived at the camp . . . felt he had nothing to live for. . . . But soon after, the train with the children arrived . . .” —New York Times obituary