| Original caption: “Six-year-old war orphan with Buchenwald badge on his sleeve waits for his name to be called at roll call at Buchenwald camp, Germany, for departure to Switzerland.” Stefan Jakubowicz, later Stephen B. Jacobs (December 16, 1939 – December 14, 2021) during a roll call after liberation. Jacobs was born in 1939, the year that Germany invaded Poland. When he was 4 months old, he and his family were forced by the occupying authorities to move into the ghetto of Piotrków Trybunalski. From 1942, between 18,000 and 22,000 Jews were deported from this ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. The Jacobs family avoided this fate, which meant certain death, because they were working as forced laborers outside of the ghetto in Piotrków. When the labor camp was disbanded at the end of 1944, the Schutzstaffel (SS) sent Stephen, his father Doctor Maurycy Jakubowicz, later Maurice Jacobs (December 9, 1895 – December 3, 1981) and brother Jerzy Jakubowicz, later George Jacobs (born January 9, 1934) to Buchenwald, where they were initially forced to endure the conditions in the Little Camp. His mother Lena Jakubowicz, later Lena Jacobs (June 1, 1907 – April 12, 1983) and grandmother went to Ravensbruck. Thanks to a trick, 5-year-old Stephen was recorded in the camp’s registers as a 16-year-old. He worked in the grounds of Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (“German Equipment Works”), an SS armaments factory near the concentration camp. At Buchenwald, Jacobs managed to survive both through luck and the assistance of an underground resistance that worked to save children. He spent his days at the shoemaker’s shop, which allowed him to get out of the daily roll call, where guards likely would have killed him because of his youth. Later he hid in the tuberculosis ward of the camp hospital, where his doctor father was working as an orderly. All of Jacobs’ immediate family survived the war, though his grandmother died shortly after the camps were liberated. On April 11, 1945, Stephen, his brother and his father were liberated by the United States Army in Buchenwald. Stephen and George were photographed when they were part of the congregation at a Jewish service for orphans in the SS Cinema at Buchenwald on May 18, 1945. The family left for Switzerland in 1945, where they lived for 3 years. In 1948, they moved to the United States, settling in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood. Jacobs would go on to become a prominent American architect, founding his own firm in New York and Vermont and teaming with his interior designer wife, Andi Pepper. His career ended up bringing him back to Buchenwald. He was commissioned to create a memorial for the “little camp,” a quarantine zone where new prisoners, including Jacobs, stayed in brutal conditions. Jacobs agreed, but would not accept compensation because he did not want to be paid by the former camp, and “these are things you don’t do for a living.” The memorial was inaugurated in 2002. He also designed The Tirana memorial for Albanians who rescued Jews. Stephen Jacobs died in Lyme, Connecticut. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0548.jpg |
| Image Size | 772.63 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2401 x 2910 |
| Photographer | G. A. Haynia |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | June 19, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Buchenwald |
| City | Weimar |
| State or Province | Thuringia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-111-SC-208199 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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