02/15/2026: Generally Recognized as Safe, Youngest Survivors

Summary

60 Minutes (CBS News) - Podcast Summary

Episode: Generally Recognized as Safe, Youngest Survivors
Date: February 16, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode of 60 Minutes features two powerful stories:

1. A critical investigation into the health implications and regulatory loopholes around ultra processed foods in America, focusing on the "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) status and its ramifications for public health. This segment spotlights an unexpected alliance between Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler.
2. The remarkable survival and reunion story of the three youngest known Holocaust survivors—a riveting tale of resilience, fate, and reunion—spanning from their mothers’ unimaginable ordeals through the Holocaust to their lives and connection eight decades later.

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Segment 1: The Hidden Dangers of Ultra Processed Foods

Main Theme:
A growing, bipartisan alarm over the prevalence and lack of transparency in ultra processed foods, and how an outdated FDA loophole—the GRAS classification—has contributed to a national health crisis.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Bipartisan Outrage and Common Ground

  • Unlikely allies Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (current HHS Secretary) and David Kessler (former FDA Commissioner) join forces to warn about ultra processed foods.
    • "[Ultra processed food] is as large, if not larger [a threat than tobacco]." (Kessler, 02:03)

• The GRAS Loophole

  • The 1958 “generally recognized as safe” exemption lets food companies sidestep government safety reviews for new ingredients, creating a marketplace flooded with ingredients that may not be properly vetted.
    • "That loophole was hijacked by the industry... and it was used to add thousands upon thousands of new ingredients into our food supply." (Kennedy Jr., 04:28)
  • In Europe, only about 400 food ingredients are allowed, while in the US estimates run as high as 10,000—with regulators unsure of the exact number.

• Health Crisis Compared to Tobacco

  • Kessler draws stark parallels to Big Tobacco, highlighting the food industry’s role in engineering addictive foods:
    • "We change how this country views tobacco. We need to change how this country views these ultra processed foods." (Kessler, 13:41)
  • Ultra processed foods now constitute 50% of adult calories and 60% of children’s diets.

• New Dietary Guidelines & Push for Change

  • Kennedy Jr. has issued the first federal dietary guidelines warning against highly processed foods.
  • Kessler is pushing for revocation of GRAS status for certain problematic additives unless proven safe.
  • Both stress the epidemic of chronic illnesses (diabetes, fatty liver, heart disease) tied to dietary changes.

• The Cycle of Cheap Food and Disease

  • Michael Pollan points out that federal farm subsidies incentivize cultivation of corn and soy for processed food ingredients, simultaneously fueling and treating type 2 diabetes.
    • "We are supporting both sides in the war on type 2 diabetes. We're subsidizing the high fructose corn syrup that's contributing to causing it, and then we're paying for the healthcare costs. I mean, it makes no sense at all." (Pollan, 12:23)
  • The American Farm Bureau pushes back, emphasizing some shelf-stable foods offer necessary nutrients.

Notable Quotes

• On Industry Evasion and Health Consequence:
  • "There is no way for any American to know if a product is safe if it is ultra processed." (Anderson Cooper, 00:07)
• On the Impact of Ultra Processed Foods:
  • "It's not because they got indolent or because we became lazy... It's because we're being given food that is low in nutrition and high in calories, and it's destroying our health." (Kessler, 03:42)
• On Policy and Trust:
  • "If he's willing to take action on these ultra processed foods, I will be the first to applaud that." (Kessler on Kennedy Jr., 09:50)

Memorable Moments & Timestamps

• [00:07] — Opening statement on the inability to judge the safety of ultra processed products.
• [02:03] — Comparison to tobacco crisis.
• [04:28] — How the GRAS loophole allowed a flood of unvetted ingredients.
• [10:43] — Michael Pollan on farm subsidies and the twisted logic of food policy.
• [13:41] — Kessler’s call for a shift in public perception akin to the anti-tobacco movement.

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Segment 2: The Youngest Survivors of the Holocaust

Main Theme:
The extraordinary and harrowing tale of three babies born amidst the terror of Auschwitz and Nazi labor camps—now octogenarians, celebrated as living proof of resilience, miracle, and the unbreakable bonds of fate.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Introduction to Survivors

  • Eva Clark, Hannah Berger Moran, and Mark Olsky were born in April 1945 in Nazi camps as their pregnant mothers defied death to give them life.
  • Their story unveils not only survival, but decades-long journeys leading to an eventual reunion.

• Mothers’ Ordeals and Survival

  • Pregnant women in camps faced certain death; the three mothers concealed their pregnancies, endured starvation, forced labor, and transports—including the infamous “death train.”
  • Chilling moment:
    • "Mengele is looking at her... and he says in German, 'good looking woman, are you pregnant?' and my mother says, 'nein, I'm not.'" (Olsky, recalling his mother’s experience, 21:32)
  • All three women miraculously gave birth—in abysmal conditions, sometimes on factory floors, one with a stranger’s leg across her abdomen.

• Liberation at Mauthausen

  • Their camp, Mauthausen, was liberated by the US 11th Armored Division.
  • American medic Leroy "Pete" Peterson played a pivotal role in saving baby Hannah:
    • "A woman presented her baby to him... and he's now just seen all these dead bodies, and there's a baby. 'This one we have to try to save.'" (Anderson Cooper, 32:30–32:34)
  • The impact was lifelong for Peterson, who often wondered, “Whatever happened to that baby?”

• Post-liberation & Lifelong Search

  • The children grew up as only children to their survivor mothers, their fathers all perished in the Holocaust.
  • Hannah, at her mother’s insistence, began a long search to identify and thank her rescuer, culminating in meeting Pete Peterson 60 years later:
    • "That lifted a big weight off of him. And I asked him if I can call him Daddy Pete." (Hannah Berger Moran, 36:04)

• Fateful Reunions and Sibling Bonds

  • Each survivor thought they were alone, until serendipitous connections (through division newsletters and internet searches) brought them together at age 65 for their first meeting.
    • "We were all incredulous, absolutely incredulous. It was like we've known each other all this time and we just had to get caught up on what's happened for the last 65 years." (Mark Olsky, 39:18)
  • The trio now share a sibling-like bond, regularly participating in commemorative events.

Notable Quotes

• On Survival and Fate:
  • "Every little tiny factor of this story is amazing... I call them the miracle babies." (Leslie Stahl & Anderson Cooper, 27:43)
• On Strength and Survival:
  • "She said, you have no idea. You just don't know what you can withstand until you have to. Unfortunately, most people are not tested." (Eva's mother, quoted by Olsky, 26:44)
• On Forgiveness and Growth:
  • "If this is what you become, like, they will have taken your soul." (Mark's mother, on hating Germans, 34:06)

Memorable Moments & Timestamps

• [19:24] — Conceiving a child was a crime; the risks of pregnancy in a Nazi camp.
• [21:32] — Each woman’s perilous encounter with Dr. Mengele.
• [24:04] — Hannah’s mother gives birth on a factory floor as guards watch.
• [26:59] — Eva’s mother’s labor while entering Mauthausen, and a near-miss with death.
• [32:30]–[32:34] — Medic Pete Peterson’s moment of compassion, saving Hannah.
• [36:04] — Reunion with the medic; “Daddy Pete.”
• [39:11] — First meeting between the survivor “siblings” at age 65.
• [41:20] — “It’s one of siblings... We found each other. We should have been together from day one.”

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Segment 3: Final Reflection—Ken Burns on the United States

Main Theme:
Filmmaker Ken Burns shares his thoughts on how America has lived up to the Founders’ vision 250 years later.

Notable Points

• The Founders would be surprised and pleased by America’s endurance.
• Burns underscores the importance of vigilance in democracy and learning from complexity:
  • "My Hope for the 250th anniversary of our founding is that Americans understand that democracy and self governance requires our constant attention." (Ken Burns, 43:19)

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Summary Table of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Highlight | |-----------|-------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------| | 00:07–15:04 | Ultra Processed Foods & GRAS | Regulatory loopholes, health crisis, industry challenge | | 15:46–41:50 | Youngest Holocaust Survivors | Incredible survival, reunion, and legacy | | 42:06–43:39 | Ken Burns Last Minute | America at 250—cause for reflection and vigilance |

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Conclusion

This episode of 60 Minutes brings essential reporting: an urgent wakeup call about America’s silent processed food crisis and an unforgettable tale of survival, resilience, and reconnection from the Holocaust’s youngest survivors. It reminds listeners of the critical need for vigilance—whether in our diets, our history, or our democracy.

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Notable Quote To Remember:
"Life goes on. Lord be praised. To our life and to our mothers." (Mark Olsky, 41:57)

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For listeners seeking to engage deeply with current health policy, history, and the enduring power of human connection, this episode is both a sobering warning and an inspiring testament.

Transcript

[Anderson Cooper]

There is no way for any American to know if a product is safe if it is ultra processed. It's hard to find two people who disagree more on health policy than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And former FDA commissioner David Kessler. But they have found common ground over a common culprit, ultra processed food. How does this compare with tobacco? It's as large, if not larger.

[Leslie Stahl]

Everyone keeps calling you the babies and you're 80.

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes.

[Leslie Stahl]

Eva Clark, Hanna Berger Moran and Mark Olsky are among, if not the youngest survivors of the Holocaust.

[Anderson Cooper]

A woman presented her baby to him.

[Leslie Stahl]

He's now just seen all these dead bodies and there's a baby.

[Anderson Cooper]

This one we have to try to save.

[Leslie Stahl]

I'm Leslie Stahl.

[Anderson Cooper]

I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim.

[Leslie Stahl]

I'm Cecilia Vega.

[Anderson Cooper]

I'm Anderson Cooper. Those stories and in our last minute, filmmaker Ken Burns with a surprise. Tonight on 60 Minutes. Today, an increasing number of Americans across the political spectrum, from make America Healthy Again activists to everyday shoppers are voicing concern about the health impact of ultra processed foods, those boxed and wrapped in plastic ready to eat items lining grocery store shelves. Leading the charge are two men who disagree on pretty much everything else about public health, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And Dr. David Kessler, the former commissioner of the U.S. food and Drug Administration. The two men have found common ground over a common culprit, a 67 year old government classification for substances in our food. It's called grass or generally recognized as safe. Kennedy and Kessler say it has allowed big food companies to use ingredients without a full government safety review and flood the market with ultra processed foods that now make up 50% of our calories and 60% of our children's diets. Over the last 40 years, the United States has been exposed to something that our biology was never intended to to handle. Energy dense, highly palatable, rapidly absorbable, ultra processed foods that have altered our metabolism and have resulted in the greatest increase in chronic disease in our history. Type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, hypertension, abnormal lipids, fatty liver, heart attacks, stroke, heart failure. From our food. From our food. David Kessler was commissioner of the U.S. food and Drug Administration during the 1990s when he helped expose how the tobacco companies manipulated nicotine levels to hook consumers. I am here to provide you with actual instances of of nicotine control and manipulation in the tobacco industry. If you raise your right hand. He was a driving force in bringing tobacco executives before Congress and turning public attention to the industry. He's now aiming to do the same with the food industry in terms of a public health crisis. How does this compare with tobacco? It's as large, if not larger. It's that significant. The scale of this. This affects everybody. Understand, not everybody smoked. Look at the number of people who consume ultra processed food. It touches all of us. 70% of Americans are either obese or overweight. And it's not because they got indolent or because we became lazy or because we suddenly developed giant appetites. It's because we're being given food that is low in nutrition and high in calories, and it's making. It's destroying our health. I see it when I go across the country. We met with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Last month after he issued new dietary guidelines that for the first time advise against highly processed food. You have said that these ultra processed foods are poisoning us. I think many Americans would be surprised to hear that we're seeing in our population people who are obscenely obese and at the same time malnourished. Who wants us? All right. Kennedy says that's largely because we don't know the health consequences of what we're eating. Thanks to the grass exemption enacted by Congress in 1958 that allows food companies to independently verify the safety of their ingredients with no government oversight if they are generally recognized by experts as safe. Pending White House approval, he intends to close that back door. That loophole was hijacked by the industry, and it was used to add thousands upon thousands of new ingredients into our food supply. In Europe, there's only 400 legal ingredients. This agency does not know how many ingredients there are in American food. We do not know. They do not know. The estimates are between 4,000 and 10,000. We have no idea what they are. How do we know what is safe to eat? There is no way for any American to know if a product is safe if it is ultra processed. For his part, David Kessler is petitioning Kennedy to go further and outright revoke the grasp status for dozens of processed refined carbohydrates, sweeteners and starches such as corn syrup and maltodextrin, unless the companies can prove they are safe and not fueling obesity. They took starch, right, Those cheap, easy calories, and they converted those into. Into a whole panoply of ingredients that it was able to reassemble. And those products are so rapidly absorbed in our system that they cause metabolic havoc. They target the brain reward circuits to keep us coming back for more, they trigger overeating. They deprive us of any sense of fullness, what we all call empty calories. Those calories are not just empty. They're ending up in your liver. And that fat in your liver is going to migrate into other organs, and it's the cause of cardiometabolic disease. Kessler, a pediatrician, filed his petition with the FDA after zeroing in on grass ingredients listed in plain sight on the backs of packaged foods. Pick up any one of these products, you have a look at the ingredient label. A lot of them are things I can't even pronounce right. Is that food? Corn syrup, corn solids, maltodextran, dextrose, xylose, high fructose corn syrup. And then these ingredients were subjected to industrial processing so that our system can't handle it. We will act on David Kessler's position, and the questions that he's asking are questions that FDA should have been asking a long, long time ago. Kennedy told us he will use gold standard science to review grass ingredients, but his credibility on that score has been widely called into question because of his history of vaccine skepticism and his agency's revision of the childhood vaccine schedule. Are you concerned at all that your stance on vaccines might make people reluctant to support you on ultra processed foods? My stance on vaccines? The same people should have good science and they should have choice. Some doctors worry that the new immunization schedule sows confusion and will lead some Americans not to vaccinate their children. People who want to get those vaccines can get them and they can get them fully insured. Secretary and I, you know, we disagree on a number of issues. I mean, in the strongest possible terms, when it comes to vaccines, I disagree. But if he's willing to take action on these ultra processed foods, I will be the first to applaud that. If you don't trust him on vaccines, why trust him when it comes to ultra processed foods? I don't think it's a question of trust, Bill. I mean, this country is ill. I'm a doc. I care about the public health of this country. And if we can make progress on that, let's do that. The impact on children has been particularly alarming. In December, San Francisco City Attorney David Chu filed a landmark lawsuit against 10 manufacturers of Ultra processed foods, alleging that, like the tobacco companies, they knowingly engineered and marketed addictive, dangerous products while hiding the risks and causing a public health crisis. The Consumer Brands association, one of the largest trade groups representing the food industry, declined to respond to us about the lawsuit. But in a statement to 60 Minutes said there's no agreed upon scientific definition of ultra processed foods. And companies adhere to rigorous evidence based safety standards and nutrition policy established by the FDA to deliver safe, affordable and convenient products that consumers depend on every day. And the granddaddy Oreos. We met with food author Michael Pollan, who for decades has been warning about inexpensive factory processed food. Granola bars. Those look very healthy. All of these would qualify as ultra processed foods, even though they're very different. You know, we have a snack food, couple snacks. Nature Valley, I would argue, because of the number of ingredients in it. So there's a lot of sugar in here, but this is sold as health food. Pollan commends Kennedy for shining a light on ultra processed foods. He ties their ubiquity to longstanding federal farm subsidies. We subsidize as taxpayers through the farm bill the least healthy calories in the diet, most of which goes to people farming corn and soybeans. What's wrong with corn and soybeans? When you hear corn and soy, you think food. This is not corn on the cob. This is commodity corn. It's not the sweet corn we eat in the summer. You can't eat it. In fact, it's all starch, big cobs. You'd break your teeth on it. And then soy, which is not in the form we grow it as a commodity, is not edamame. You can't eat it. These are raw ingredients for processed foods and animal feed. So the government is subsidizing crops that are making us unhealthy? Yes. Yeah. One way to look at it is we are supporting both sides in the war on type 2 diabetes. We're subsidizing the high fructose corn syrup that's contributing to causing it, and then we're paying for the healthcare costs. I mean, it makes no sense at all. In a statement, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest general farm organization in the US Told us a healthy diet relies on a variety of nutrient dense foods and a balance of healthy fats, carbohydrates, protein and fiber, some of which can come from shelf stable foods. Why are there not subsidies to produce more of the healthy foods? Cheap food is the goal of all governments. If you were to remove these corn subsidies, there's concern that the price of corn would raise and that would be a problem for the whole food industry, which of course is a very powerful lobby and would be a problem for the consumer. Conceivably, when you're taking on ultra processed foods, you're also taking on powerful industries, big, aggressive, big food. What makes you believe you will prevail? My belief that I will prevail is because we have the President behind us. But the President has shown himself to be pretty much against regulations. So why would he support regulating ultra processed foods? Well, I'm not saying that we're going to regulate ultra processed food. Our job is to make sure that everybody understands what they're getting, to have an informed public. There are Americans who live in so called food deserts with little access to whole foods and these are foods that many of them can't afford anyway. So how do you speak to that American? We are laser focused on making all of these foods affordable and accessible to every American. The Consumer Brands association told us the GRAS process enables companies to innovate to meet consumer demand and that food companies adhere to FDA's science and risk based evaluations of ingredients before and after they are in the marketplace. David Kessler says that's not enough. We change how this country views tobacco. We need to change how this country views these ultra processed foods. Would you like to see the CEOs of Big Food companies come before Congress and raise their hand and be questioned like the tobacco industry was? I'd like them to understand the consequences of what they are doing and to do something about it.

[Leslie Stahl]

Michael Pollan's Food Rules to Live by.

[Anderson Cooper]

If you can't pronounce the ingredients, it's not [e-mail] hey, this is Richard Deitch, the host of the sports Media podcast. If you're interested in what's happening with all the places where you consume sports, the sports media podcast has you covered. I've been turning down interviews all week. Hoda Kapi reached out. Oprah, George Stephanopoulos. So I said no. I was booked on the Deitch podcast before the Taylor Swift phenomenon. I must live up to to my responsibility. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Leslie Stahl]

Last spring marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe and the liberation of the last remaining Nazi concentration camps. It might feel nearly a century later as though there are few Holocaust survival stories left to tell. But then we found this one. It begins with three young women who were married and newly pregnant in 1944 when they were sent to the notorious death camp Auschwitz, then assigned to work as slave laborers in Germany. With pregnancy an offense punishable by death. In the camps, the story of how these three women managed to deceive their Nazi captors and and give birth to three tiny babies who are now 80 years old. Involves narrow misses, seemingly impossible twists of fate and luck, Unimaginable suffering and miracles. Everyone keeps calling you the babies, and you're 80.

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes.

[Leslie Stahl]

Are you okay with that?

[Anderson Cooper]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

[Leslie Stahl]

We're proud of it.

[Anderson Cooper]

Totally.

[Leslie Stahl]

Eva Clark, Hannah Berger Moran and Mark Olsky are among, if not the youngest survivors of the Holocaust.

[Anderson Cooper]

April 12, April 20, April 29.

[Leslie Stahl]

Born in April 1945, just before Germany's surrender in May. At the time, they were Nazi prisoners. But their story begins long before that, when Eva's mother, Anka from Czechoslovakia, Mark's mother Rachel from Poland, and Hannah's mother Prisca, also from Czechoslovakia, Were young Jewish women in a world that was about to be shattered.

[Anderson Cooper]

My dear late mother grew up in a small town, and her parents were owners of a little cafe, little Jewish cafe. She had eight siblings.

[Leslie Stahl]

Mark's mother was from a textile manufacturing town. Eva's from east of Prague. She was a champion swimmer, Junior backstroke swimming champion of Czechoslovakia. For the whole country.

[Anderson Cooper]

For the whole country.

[Leslie Stahl]

Yeah. Wow. And they each fell in love with their husbands as Europe was descending into war.

[Anderson Cooper]

My late father was a journalist.

[Leslie Stahl]

How did they meet? They met, I believe, in a nightclub.

[Anderson Cooper]

Across the crowded room. She avoided going into details. She talked about things.

[Leslie Stahl]

Mark's mother never told him much about his father, but she did speak of him to Mark's son, her grandson Charlie.

[Anderson Cooper]

She told me that I looked like him. And I said, really? And she said, but that's it. He was so elegant. You're nothing like him.

[Leslie Stahl]

But soon after, the newly married couple moved into their first apartment in Warsaw. German soldiers came one morning and seized it.

[Anderson Cooper]

She was still in her nightgown. She said she still had her toothbrush, and she was just sent into the streets. They took my grandparents in 1942, my.

[Leslie Stahl]

Aunt in 1943, as the Nazis occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia, Jews were rounded up in ghettos and sent to camps. Mark's parents spent much of the war in the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. And Evas were sent to a Czech camp called Terezin, where she was conceived in violation of camp rules.

[Anderson Cooper]

To become pregnant in a concentration camp.

[Leslie Stahl]

Was considered a crime by the Nazis. For a Jewish person to get pregnant was a crime. A crime because, you know, they were trying to murder. They were trying to annihilate every member.

[Anderson Cooper]

Of the Jewish people.

[Leslie Stahl]

By mid to late 1944, the killings had accelerated. Remaining ghettos were liquidated, and all three women, newly pregnant, were loaded from different cities onto packed freight cars headed for Auschwitz. Hannah's mother alongside her husband.

[Anderson Cooper]

They were sitting in the train on the floor and my mother is saying, if it's a girl, it's going to be Hannah. If it's a boy, it will be Michael.

[Leslie Stahl]

This is on the train to Auschwitz.

[Anderson Cooper]

On the train to Auschwitz.

[Leslie Stahl]

Did they know anything about Auschwitz?

[Anderson Cooper]

Oh, they did. They already knew those were death camps.

[Leslie Stahl]

The arrival platform at the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp was a place of unimaginable cruelty. Families were ripped apart, with most, including mothers with children and the elderly, sent straight to death in gas chambers that at their peak murdered 6,000 people a day. The lucky few selected for work, including the three women, were stripped shaven and sent to overflowing barracks. Did your mother ever see your father again?

[Anderson Cooper]

Once, about a week after they got there, she saw him across the barbed wire fence. And my dad said to her, be careful and think only good thoughts.

[Leslie Stahl]

Mm.

[Anderson Cooper]

Hmm. Think only good thoughts. He just kept repeating that sentence.

[Leslie Stahl]

And that's the last time they ever saw each other.

[Anderson Cooper]

Yeah. I wish I would have known him.

[Leslie Stahl]

Prisoners endured frequent selections, some by Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, known for his gruesome experiments on camp inmates.

[Anderson Cooper]

When Mengele came by, she met Mengele. She did. And Mengele is looking at her. She's standing in the line with other women, unfortunately naked. And he looks at her and says in German, good looking woman, are you pregnant? And my mother says, nein, I'm not. Each of them at that moment had to decide whether to confess that they were or to deny it, whether that would save them and their unborn child or not.

[Leslie Stahl]

Author Wendy Holden has studied Auschwitz and written a book about the three babies and their mothers.

[Anderson Cooper]

Each of them sensed that they were in the presence of great danger and they each denied it.

[Leslie Stahl]

All three women lie to Mengele and all three women get sent to a slave labor camp in Germany.

[Anderson Cooper]

Freiburg, Saxony.

[Leslie Stahl]

Yes. Did the three ever meet?

[Anderson Cooper]

No. And they never knew about each other. It was so, so important that they didn't reveal their pregnancies.

[Leslie Stahl]

They were among more than 1,000 women prisoners working 12 hour shifts in a massive converted porcelain factory, manufacturing parts for German fighter planes, living on really diet.

[Anderson Cooper]

Of water, ersatz coffee in the morning and thin soup and maybe a tiny piece of bread every day.

[Leslie Stahl]

How did they hide their pregnancy?

[Anderson Cooper]

They were given, each of them at Auschwitz, clothing from those who'd been gassed, and they, each of them fortunately ended up with baggy dresses.

[Leslie Stahl]

During the six months she was there, she was becoming progressively more and more starved and more and more obviously Pregnant. But fortunately, none of the Germans realized she was pregnant, because had they done so, they might well have sent her back to Auschwitz to be killed. But by the early spring of 1945, the Allies were advancing. Auschwitz had been liberated, and plans were being made to get rid of the slave laborers.

[Anderson Cooper]

The Germans decided they had to eradicate the evidence and they were going to send them to be gassed and just kill them all.

[Leslie Stahl]

They knew they were losing the Germans. They knew that the Americans or the Russians were going to come in, and they did not want them to know how badly they had treated these people.

[Anderson Cooper]

Very much so. And also, there was no more work. All the materials had dried up. They weren't really even feeding them anymore.

[Leslie Stahl]

That's when Hannah's mother went into labor on the factory floor on a plank.

[Anderson Cooper]

That was put across a table. And the guards watched, and they took bets on whether it was going to be a boy or a girl.

[Leslie Stahl]

The guards watched the baby being born.

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes. My mom said it was like a show. And I said, mom, were you embarrassed? I didn't have chance to be embarrassed. You were being born. That was all that mattered to me.

[Leslie Stahl]

36 hours later, the slave laborers and newborn Hannah were loaded onto the same train. This time it was in open coal wagons, so open to the skies and filthy. This was the death train.

[Anderson Cooper]

It was the death train. They were looking for a camp where they could kill all these women.

[Leslie Stahl]

She said it was a nightmare of a journey. Sixteen days on the train, no food and hardly any water. She's nine months pregnant. Effectively, yes. And at one point, the train was stopped and the doors were opened, and a farmer walked by and he saw my mother, and he had such a shock. My mother described herself as looking like a scarcely living pregnant skeleton. And this farmer brought her a glass of milk. She maintained that saved her life.

[Anderson Cooper]

Who knows? My grandmother, in the meantime, had gotten so ill. She was under 70 pounds and nine months pregnant, and they put her in the sick car.

[Leslie Stahl]

Did people die in this car?

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes. I mean, they literally threw them off the train. Yeah. She was lying down, and there was a woman with a bad leg. And she had to put her leg up on her pregnant stomach because that was the highest place in the train to rest it.

[Leslie Stahl]

So she's surrounded by dying people and gives birth with a woman's foot on her stomach. I mean, this is beyond inhumanity.

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes. Somehow she gave birth. She didn't think she would.

[Leslie Stahl]

She thought she was gonna die, and.

[Anderson Cooper]

She figured she would have given birth to a dead baby, that her body Couldn't sustain it, but he was alive. And she figured, but I won't have milk. But she did.

[Leslie Stahl]

She learned the date was April 20.

[Anderson Cooper]

Somebody announced on the train, ah, it's Hitler's birthday today. And so that was his birthday.

[Leslie Stahl]

You were born on Hitler's birthday?

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes.

[Leslie Stahl]

After nine more days on that train, they reached a camp in Austria that was meant to be their end. Mauthausen, one of the last camps standing. Eva's mother went into labor just as the train arrived. She had to climb off the coal truck unaided. She had to climb onto a cart because the prisoners, who were not strong enough to walk up the steep hill.

[Anderson Cooper]

To the camp, they had to get on carts and they were pulled up by others.

[Leslie Stahl]

I think I would give up. I'm sure I would give up. Well, that's what I used to say.

[Anderson Cooper]

To my mother, that I would have given up at the first hurdle. I would have collapsed.

[Leslie Stahl]

She said, you have no idea. She said, you just don't know what you can withstand until you have to. And she said, unfortunately, most people are not tested.

[Anderson Cooper]

She was hauled up through the wooded.

[Leslie Stahl]

Valley while she's in labor, While she's in labour. Oh, my gosh.

[Anderson Cooper]

And she remembers, looking back, you look down onto the River Danube. It was April, so there were blossoms and birds singing. And she said she thought it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. And she also thought it would be the last thing she'd ever see.

[Leslie Stahl]

But it wasn't the last thing she'd see, for a stunning reason. The last day the gas chambers at Mauthausen were used was. Was the day before, on 28th April.

[Anderson Cooper]

1945, the Nazis had run out of gas.

[Leslie Stahl]

So, wait, you arrive one day after the gas ran out.

[Anderson Cooper]

So had the train arrived on the 26th or 27th?

[Leslie Stahl]

None of us would have survived. Every little tiny factor of this story is amazing.

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes. Well, I call them the miracle babies. And with very good reason.

[Leslie Stahl]

Miraculous, too, that they managed to survive at Mauthausen for almost a week. Baby Hannah, with infected sores all over her body, until finally, help arrived.

[Anderson Cooper]

My mom, she saw a little green army car and music. Roll out the barrels, roll out the barrels. Da da da da da da. And she said, this is no German.

[Leslie Stahl]

She knew the song.

[Anderson Cooper]

Oh, yeah. And suddenly, young soldier with a helmet, red cross on it comes walking by. And my mother says to him in English, I have something to show you.

[Leslie Stahl]

That something was Hannah.

[Anderson Cooper]

He said to my mother in English, I'll get the doctor, because your baby needs Help. And he ran and brought the doctor. They took me.

[Leslie Stahl]

Wait, they took you off and left her without you?

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes.

[Leslie Stahl]

And she let them do that?

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes. Yes, she did. She trusted them. And the next day a nurse came me wrapped in bandages. And my mother says, is she dead?

[Leslie Stahl]

Oh.

[Anderson Cooper]

And the nurse said, no, no, she's not. She's sleeping.

[Leslie Stahl]

Hannah's mother never forgot that young American medic who saved her baby's life. And it turns out that medic never forgot Hannah either.

[Anderson Cooper]

He always mentioned, I wonder whatever happened to the baby. Really? Yes.

[Leslie Stahl]

That part of the story when we come back. The heroism of American fighters in the fierce battles of World War II is legendary. But for some of those young soldiers, among their most searing wartime memories were what they witnessed after the shooting stopped, when they entered Nazi concentration camps as liberators. One of those camps was Mauthausen, a fortress like compound high on a hill west of Vienna where more than 95,000 prisoners died and where three babies and their mothers arrived on April 29, 1945. Six days later, a small unit of two dozen soldiers from the 11th Armored Division of General Patton's 3rd army was checking bridges in the area when they came upon the camp almost by accident. A warning. The images of what they found are disturbing. One of the soldiers that day was a 22 year old medic from Illinois named Leroy Pete Peterson. This is the scrapbook that he kept.

[Anderson Cooper]

This is one of a couple.

[Leslie Stahl]

Pete Peterson was drafted into the army in 1942.

[Anderson Cooper]

My dad was a humble man. He always had a smile.

[Leslie Stahl]

Brian Peterson is Pete's youngest son.

[Anderson Cooper]

All right, here's the gasket.

[Leslie Stahl]

He and his two sons have been rebuilding an army style jeep that used to be his dad's.

[Anderson Cooper]

Oh, Grandpa's gonna. He'll be smiling at us.

[Leslie Stahl]

Peterson lived through a Jeep explosion.

[Anderson Cooper]

That is the exact time when the.

[Leslie Stahl]

Jeep was blown up.

[Anderson Cooper]

That's when the jeep was blown off.

[Leslie Stahl]

He survived and fought in the Battle of the Bulge before his unit liberated Mauthausen. He suffered years later from ptsd. Do you think it was from the battles or do you think it was from the camps?

[Anderson Cooper]

From the camps. The smells and the sounds and the sights that bothered him.

[Leslie Stahl]

This official US army photo of Americans liberating Mauthausen captures the joy of prisoners finally being freed. But the photos Peterson kept in his scrapbook show a far darker reality. He took these.

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes. Oh.

[Leslie Stahl]

Piles of emaciated corpses. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And in this photo, a man who died right in front of Peterson's eyes. Look at this.

[Anderson Cooper]

Man, just skin and bones.

[Leslie Stahl]

Peterson's job was to triage which inmates could be helped. When he came upon a shocker outside one of the barracks, a woman presented.

[Anderson Cooper]

Her baby to him and showed him that she was badly infected.

[Leslie Stahl]

And he's now just seen all these dead bodies, and there's a baby.

[Anderson Cooper]

This one we have to try to save.

[Leslie Stahl]

Peterson told Brian that he and the unit doctor used penicillin, brand new at the time, to treat the baby's wounds and helped sew her up. He never got the incident out of his mind.

[Anderson Cooper]

Literally, every time that we looked at this book, that was his final thoughts. I wonder, whatever happened to that baby?

[Leslie Stahl]

In the weeks after liberation, that baby and her mother, like many freed prisoners, traveled back to their hometowns across Europe in hopes of finding living family members. And in Marx, Eva's and Hannah's mother's cases, their husbands. Sadly, all three men had died. While Mark's and Eva's mothers later remarried, none of the women had other children. So Mark Olsky, Eva Clark, and Hannah Berger Moran grew up as only children, learning about the war in bits and pieces from their mothers.

[Anderson Cooper]

I was told that I had been. That I was born on a train, but no details. And so I thought, oh, hey, cool, I was born on a train.

[Leslie Stahl]

But as he learned the truth, he became enraged.

[Anderson Cooper]

When I was 12, 13, people asked me, what do you want to do with your life? And I said, I want to go to Europe and just kill as many Germans as I can. Yes.

[Leslie Stahl]

He vividly remembers his mother's response.

[Anderson Cooper]

In almost the exact words, she said, they took so much from us. If this is what you become, like, they will have taken your soul.

[Leslie Stahl]

Oh, she said that to you?

[Anderson Cooper]

Wow. Wow.

[Leslie Stahl]

Hanna's mother raised her in Czechoslovakia. But as an adult, Hannah moved to Israel, then to the United States for graduate school. Her mother sent her off with a request. Try to track down that young American medic.

[Anderson Cooper]

And she says, please find him. Find him, Find him.

[Leslie Stahl]

How were you supposed to do that?

[Anderson Cooper]

I didn't know his name.

[Leslie Stahl]

She discovered it was the 11th Armored Division that liberated Mauthausen and sent them a letter.

[Anderson Cooper]

I was getting various messages. This name, that name. I got in touch with them. Oh, no, it's not me. And finally, I get the message. Oh, you want to talk to Pete Peterson?

[Leslie Stahl]

Peterson was 81 at the time.

[Anderson Cooper]

Dad mentioned that he had heard from a woman that he believes is the baby that he saved at Mauthausen.

[Leslie Stahl]

Oh, my God. They met in May 2005, 60 years after their first meeting.

[Anderson Cooper]

I was so happy to finally touch him, see him. He was actually staring and looking at her.

[Leslie Stahl]

I saved that person.

[Anderson Cooper]

That's you. That's you. That's really you. And I was able to thank him, finally, truly thank him, because he saved my life. He did.

[Leslie Stahl]

Do you think knowing that she survived helped with the PTSD in any way?

[Anderson Cooper]

Oh, absolutely. That lifted a big weight off of him. And I asked him if I can call him Daddy Pete.

[Leslie Stahl]

Daddy Pete.

[Anderson Cooper]

I didn't have a father, you know, so he became my daddy.

[Leslie Stahl]

He adopted you.

[Anderson Cooper]

Well, he had no choice.

[Leslie Stahl]

You adopted him. Let me put it that way. Pete Peterson died five years later. Hana spent a week with him during his final illness. What's your relationship now?

[Anderson Cooper]

She's my big sister. Exactly. And he better listen to his big sister from the past. Nobody survived, so I have my family. I am so lucky.

[Leslie Stahl]

And she was about to get even luckier. I had found out that it was.

[Anderson Cooper]

The 11th Armored Division that had liberated Mauthausen.

[Leslie Stahl]

Eva, whose mother had raised her in the uk, Reached out to the liberators a few years after Hannah had, sending a picture of her mother and three generations of descendants. The photo appeared on the COVID of the division's next newsletter. I opened this magazine, and I said to my mother, you're not going to believe this.

[Anderson Cooper]

There was Hannah's story.

[Leslie Stahl]

Another baby. Another baby. Up to that point, my mother had.

[Anderson Cooper]

Always thought that we were the only ones.

[Leslie Stahl]

So she had no idea about these other two? No idea. The two babies spoke and made plans to meet just after their 65th birthdays at the Mauthausen camp, now a preserved memorial where the anniversary of liberation would be celebrated. And that's where baby number three comes in. That same spring, Mark's son Charlie was struggling to find a 65th birthday present for his.

[Anderson Cooper]

He's very hard to shop for. So I thought, maybe I'll do some research, see if I can find somebody who has a story. It must have been really miraculous to have a baby in a concentration camp.

[Leslie Stahl]

A Google search brought him to the website of the 11th Armored Division, where he saw Eva's family photo and story.

[Anderson Cooper]

And I looked at the story, and it was everything I'd ever heard from my grandmother. Everything matched up. It was the labor camp in Freiburg that the mother had, the pregnancy that they had run out of gas. The dates, everything lined up, and I couldn't believe it.

[Leslie Stahl]

The website's administrator connected him to Eva and Hannah. Within an hour, Hannah was in San.

[Anderson Cooper]

Francisco and wrote me back immediately, oh, my gosh. And said, this is Incredible. We're meeting for the first time in two weeks at the camp. So it's too bad you're just finding us now. And I thought, too bad, nothing. This is great.

[Leslie Stahl]

We're coming.

[Anderson Cooper]

First thing he said, first thing out of his mouth that I heard was, would you like to go to Austria with me around the time of your birthday? My mind is one of my kids wants to spend a bunch of time with me. Sure, yeah, why not? I'm there.

[Leslie Stahl]

And that's how the three babies met for the first time in May 2010.

[Anderson Cooper]

We spent the whole of the Saturday.

[Leslie Stahl]

In one cafe, talking, laughing and crying.

[Anderson Cooper]

And talking about our mothers and comparing and contrasting their three stories. Does your mother do this? Does your mother do that? And we were all incredulous, absolutely incredulous. It was like we've known each other all this time and we just had to get caught up on what's happened for the last 65 years.

[Leslie Stahl]

Hell of a birthday present.

[Anderson Cooper]

It was the best birthday present I ever got. The next year I was like, I'm just getting you a gift certificate.

[Leslie Stahl]

That year, at age 65, they marched in the annual commemoration at Mauthausen. This past year, at 80, they marched again at the special 80th anniversary celebration where thousands came from all over the world to remember the prisoners who worked and died here and their liberators, the US delegation. Bryan Peterson made the trip to honor his father, while the son of the US Sergeant who led his soldiers into the camp played taps. And while the babies were far too young to have their own memories, they told us inside one of the still standing barracks that they couldn't help but sense the presence of their mothers. What are you feeling in this place? Do you carry her emotions with you?

[Anderson Cooper]

All I am thinking about is, I've been here before. I've been here before. I have been here before, but I left.

[Leslie Stahl]

At all the 80th anniversary commemorations, like this concert in Vienna, the three babies were celebrated guests of honor.

[Anderson Cooper]

Happy birthday.

[Leslie Stahl]

Quite the journey from how their lives began. How would you describe this relationship?

[Anderson Cooper]

It's one of siblings, and I'm very.

[Leslie Stahl]

Glad to have siblings.

[Anderson Cooper]

We found each other. We should have been together from day one.

[Leslie Stahl]

You certainly, and your mothers absolutely were marked for death. You were supposed to be annihilated, My mother occasionally would say, and in the end we won because you all survived and we have families. How many grandchildren?

[Anderson Cooper]

I have four. I have two. I have five grandchildren.

[Leslie Stahl]

And their mothers live to be 96. 90 and 84. The lines go on.

[Anderson Cooper]

Life goes on. Lord be praised. To our life and to our mothers. To our mothers.

[Leslie Stahl]

Our strong mothers.

[Anderson Cooper]

Yes. The last minute of 60 minutes. Filmmaker Ken Burns has given viewers new understanding of American history with his documentaries, including the Civil War and the American Revolution. To mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we asked Burns what would surprise the nation's founders about America today. I think the founders would be very pleased that their revolution became a model for democracies around the world.

[Leslie Stahl]

I think they would also be surprised.

[Anderson Cooper]

Pleasantly so that we are still here 250 years later. They were hugely concerned about the strains on the new country. If they were to magically arrive in this moment. I think they would be troubled about.

[Leslie Stahl]

How stressed our system of checks and.

[Anderson Cooper]

Balances is, but equally impressed that we've been able to overcome significant national and global challenges. They would be disappointed, I think, not because of how divided we are, we always have been, but how we are increasingly struggling to acknowledge our shared values. My Hope for the 250th anniversary of our founding is that Americans understand that democracy and self governance requires our constant attention. The best way to commemorate the 250th is to study our history in all.

[Leslie Stahl]

Its complexities and to vote.

[Anderson Cooper]

I'm Anderson Cooper. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. But coming up next, a special CBS News Things that Matter. Town hall with Maryland Governor Wes Moore. Paramount celebrates black voices with stories of excellence in dreaming whilst black and Watson mysteries of what we do. Of love in lawman Bass Reeves. My heart hurt when we apart and of community in the neighborhood and the shy.

[Leslie Stahl]

Well, if you need anything at all, I got you.

[Anderson Cooper]

We family explore series movies and more in the black voices collection on Paramount plus stream. Now Pluto TV has thousands of free.

[Leslie Stahl]

Movies and TV shows.

[Anderson Cooper]

If I'm lying, I'm dying. Like Dream Girls, SpongeBob SquarePants and Ghosts free. This is my day. Huzzah.

[Leslie Stahl]

Pluto TV.

[Anderson Cooper]

Stream now pay never.