In 1964, the East Berlinbased Berliner Zeitung am Abend located the child upon whose story the story was based: Stefan Jerzy Zweig, who survived Buchenwald at the age of four with his father Zacharias, with the help of two prisoner functionaries: Robert Siewert and Willi Bleicher. Bleicher, a former member of the Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) and the kapo of the storage building, was the one who convinced the SS to turn a blind eye to the child. When Zweig was to be sent to Auschwitz, prisoners who were tasked with compiling the deportees' list erased his name and replaced him with Willy Blum, a sixteenyearold Sinto boy. Zweig moved to Israel after liberation, and later studied in France. After he was discovered to be the 'Buchenwald child', he settled in East Germany, where he remained until 1972. Zweig received much media and the public attention in the country. Blum's fate was only disclosed after the German reunification.
A remake of a 1963 film by the same name, which itself is based on a 1958 novel, also by the same name, written by Bruno Apitz and translated into over 30 languages around the world.
Released on DVD in UK as "The Camp"