Egon Holländer and Sigmund Baumöhl story - They came to Sweden with UNRRA White Boat Mission - Kinderheim-

Egon Holländer - DP-2 card issued in Lübeck before the transport together with other Kinderheim children to Sweden by UNRRAs White Boat S/S Kastelholm. Sigmund was just 6 month old when WWII started.

Läkarkort - Medical card from Sundsgården of Holländer Egon born 1938 L/7897.

Sigmund Baumöhl - DP-2 card issued in Lübeck before the transport together with other Kinderheim children to Sweden by UNRRAs White Boat S/S Kastelholm. Sigmund was just 2 y old when WWII started.

List over people at the Sundsgården first week in August 1945. Kv - kvinnor - women, M - män - man, Barn - children. Total: 25 children, 14 women, and 1 man.

Läkarkort - Medical card from Sundsgården of Holländer Egon born 1938 L/7897. He and Sigmund Sigmund Baumöhl that was a friend of Egon arrived to Malmö together with Kinderheim group of children. Boys were inmates first in Ravensbrück camp and later in Bergen-Belsen.

Both were at the dr. Collis Children's ward at Round House in Bergen-Belsen.
Dr. Robert Collis wrote the following in his book Straight On:
A little white-skinned Slavonic person of about six years old lay very quietly in his cot. He neither moved nor spoke. He had had typhus; he was all skin and bones.

Egon Holländer (born in Martin, today’s Slovakia, in 1938) after his liberation from Bergen-Belsen. Egon Holländer’s mother Elisabeth died in Bergen-Belsen of typhus; she was 34 years old. 

At the end of spring 1944, the Baumöhl family and other Jewish families from Prešov ed to a small town nearby, Spišské Vlachy, thus hoping to survive the war. en they tried to go into hiding in a neighbouring village. eir plans were thwarted and the fugitives had to return to Spišské Vlachy. ere seemed to be no way to avoid deportation and their luggage was ready when, in the early days of October 1944, German soldiers came looking for them. They were rounded up in trucks and taken to Prešov. From there they were sent by cattle train to Ravensbrück. 

Soon after his arrival at camp, he witnessed two events that would remain engraved forever in his memory. first occurred when men, women, and children were separated, and when an SS officer allowed his father to hand over the blanket draped around his shoulders to his son. Sigmund then watched him kiss his mother and line up with the men’s column. e second occurred when, sometime later, while he was waiting inside a room, he caught a glimpse of the blue sky through the window, like a little corner of freedom. «I would always think of that moment, not only in the concentration camp but also later on in my life, during difficult times», he admits. Both his grandmothers died at the camp. Apart from a few happy moments, like playing with his friend Egon Holländer, who lives in Zurich today, and the birth of a little girl inside their barrack, their daily life was dominated by hardship and pain. Hunger was a steady companion and unbearable images have stuck to his mind to this day. Marta Baumöhl and her son were evacuated to Bergen-Belsen. Before leaving Marta Baumöhl was able to see her husband again… but young Sigmund did not recognize his father, because he was wearing a prisoner’s suit. Henrik Baumöhl was bound to die during a death march leaving from Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In Bergen-Belsen the child got weaker and weaker. Given that the only food available was turnips from a nearby eld, he suffered from chronic diarrhea and could barely leave the barrack. Sigmund met other children from Prešov, such as Irma Grosswirth and Ivan Lefkovits, who now lives near Basel and with whom he is very close. 

After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Sigmund Baumöhl’s mother disappeared from his sight. Later he was to learn that she had died of typhus shortly after the camp’s liberation. Sigmund was then looked after by an Irish pediatrician (dr. Robert Collis) who had set up an improvised hospital inside the camp. He weighed 10 kg. Sigmund Baumöhl was sent to the seaside town of Malmö in August 1945, on the southernmost tip of Sweden, for convalescence and rehabilitation. He spent almost ten months there, gradually trying to nd his way back to life. He holds fond and grateful memories of the doctor, the nurses, and the children. He returned to Prešov in 1946, but because of his weakened condition, he was admitted to a sanatorium for children in the High Tatras for three years. «A chapter of my life was coming to a close,» he says.

Egon left Sweden after one year and moved to Czechoslovakia. As the troops of the Warsaw Pact suppressed the 1968 Prague Spring, Egon Holländer, who had a degree in engineering, fled to Zurich. He became a corporate executive in the technology industry. He is married, and has two daughters and three grandchildren.