Steiner, Buchler and Reich in Givat Haviva (Itzik Ben Malki)

Yehoshua (Robert) Buchler and Yehuda (Ladislov) Reich sat yesterday with Dr. Fritz Steiner and talked incessantly. Richler and Reich had not seen Steiner for 61 years, since they were separated at the Auschwitz death camp. Yesterday, at an emotional meeting at Givat Haviva's Moreshet Center for Study and Research of the Holocaust, they began to try to bridge the gap of the years.

The three natives of Slovakia were deported to Auschwitz at the end of September 1944, with another 2,500 Slovakian Jews. Buchler was 14, Reich and Steiner a year his junior.

"When the transport arrived and the selection was made at the ramp, about three-quarters of the people were sent immediately to the gas chambers”, Buchler recalls.
"By some miracle, the three of us survived that”.
The three were then sent to a mens barracks, and it was there that they first met. A few days later they were taken, along with about a thousand other children to the "children's barracks" in the "Gypsy camp”, which had emptied out.

"The children from Poland and Hungary who had been there for a long time told us we would soon be sent to the gas chambers," Buchler says. "I didn't believe them. I thought they were just trying to scare us”.
The children banded together by country of origin and language, and supported each other but had no clue as to the depth of the disaster around them, the three men said. They recall long talks about sports and delicious meals of goulash and cookies they "cooked" in their imaginations.
One evening, Reich was separated from his friends and sent for a whole night into a gas chamber, until a drunken Gestapo guard opened the door and shouted to him to get out.
Three weeks later, the three were transferred to another barracks, and the next day doctors arrived. "All the children were told to stand at one end of the barracks, and the doctors examined them one by one," Buchler recalls. Those to be sent to the gas chambers were thrown out immediately, he says. "Somehow we passed that selection as well”.
The three, together with another 45 children, were the only ones to remain alive out of about 1,000. They were the only Slovakians left. They were transferred to Brraks 29 in Camp D in Bikenau, where numbers were tattooed on their arms. Buchler says he realised that the numbers were tattooed on those slated to work, and would save him and his friends. He called the other two to stay close to him, and the three received consecutive tattooes: Buchler's was B-14564, Reich's was B-145645 and Steiner was B-14566.

A brush with Dr. Mengele

Gil Reich, Yehuda's son, says he heard about the horrors of the camp from his father through the years.
"Yehoshua (Buchler) was the eldest. I think of him as a chess player. He was always thinking a few steps ahead, and that's how he knew how to take care of all three of them”, the younger Reich says.
The three boys were sent to work in a huge potato warehouse, where any weakness was punished by a beating, they recall.
At one point, Reich and Steiner got sick and were sent to the camp infirmary. There, Reich survived another brush with death when Dr. Mengele grabbed his shirt, but then let go. A Slovakian doctor took pity on them and gave them tips that helped them survive the hospital.
After the Red Army arrived, Reich and Steiner began to make their way home. Reich, who weighted 25 kilograms, was left alone in the world. Steiner lost his father; his mother and two sisters survived.
Buchler, who survived two death marches, returned to Bratislava, where he met up with Reich in the Shomer Hatzair youth movement. The two came to Israel and were among the founders of Kibbutz Lahavot Haviva.
Buchler is the director of the archive at Moreshet; Reich left the U.S. with his family 27 years ago. Through the years the two often thought of their friend Fritz Steiner, whom they were convinced had not survived the war.
About a year ago, Buchler received a letter from Germany, from the long-lost Steiner. He had remained in Czechoslovakia after the war and become a pediatrician. In l968 he moved to Germany.
"All along I believed Ladislav and Robert were dead”, he said. A year ago, he says, he was reading an article in the German magazine Stern, which he says is not his usual reading material.
"All of a sudden I saw a familiar face. I read the article and I realized it was Robert (Buchler)”, Steiner says. "I wrote to him right away and he answered”. Reich also contacted Steiner. "During that first phone call I told him the number on my hand and I said I remembered his number, too”. Reich says.
"I wouldn't have believed that 61 years later, he would still be alive”.