‘I saw normal people in Auschwitz and I saw sadists there who killed people’ – As Europe faces a new wave of extreme nationalism, one of the last survivors of Auschwitz looks back.

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/01/25/holocaust-survivor-i-saw-normal-people-in-auschwitz-and-i-saw-sadists-there-who-killed-people/

by Ok_Solution_7314

18 comments

  2. This article is truly worth reading, it’s a good reminder not only through this man’s life story but also through additional commentary of how things were before 1939 and how the wave of hate formed.

  7. Poor fellow seeing everything fall apart at the end of his life

  8. Albrecht Weinberg, six weeks shy of his 100th birthday, sits upright and alert as he talks in German – with the occasional jokey English word – about his remarkable centenary of life.

    We are sitting in his former schoolhouse in the town of Leer in [Germany](https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/germany/)’s northwest region of East Friesland, near the North Sea coast and Dutch border. As the watery winter light dwindles outside, along with our conversation inside, Weinberg sighs and admits how, for more than 80 years, he has drifted off to sleep dreaming of his murdered family.

    Each morning, despite his failing eyesight, one of the first things he sees is the fading number 116927. He rolls up his sleeve to display the tattoo on his arm – a souvenir of [Auschwitz](https://www.auschwitz.org/en/) and part of his body since April 1943.

    “I only have to wash my face and it’s all there again,” he says.

    Albrecht Weinberg, six weeks shy of his 100th birthday, sits upright and alert as he talks in German – with the occasional jokey English word – about his remarkable centenary of life.

    We are sitting in his former schoolhouse in the town of Leer in [Germany](https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/germany/)’s northwest region of East Friesland, near the North Sea coast and Dutch border. As the watery winter light dwindles outside, along with our conversation inside, Weinberg sighs and admits how, for more than 80 years, he has drifted off to sleep dreaming of his murdered family.

    Each morning, despite his failing eyesight, one of the first things he sees is the fading number 116927. He rolls up his sleeve to display the tattoo on his arm – a souvenir of [Auschwitz](https://www.auschwitz.org/en/) and part of his body since April 1943.

    “I only have to wash my face and it’s all there again,” he says.

    Weinberg spent nearly two years in the camp from April 1943. Days before the liberation on January 27th, 1945, he was enlisted in the first of three so-called death marches he endured to other notorious Nazi camps. He survived them all: Dora-Mittelbau, Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. It was here that teenage diarist Anne Frank and her sister Margot died of starvation and typhus in the last days of the war in April 1945.

    Four years older than Anne would be now, Weinberg remembers he was “living between the living and the bodies”, when the British soldiers arrived and liberated Bergen-Belsen, near Hanover. He is now one of a dwindling number of survivors of the Nazi extermination of European Jews. Those first 20 years of his life have haunted everything that followed. Even now, in his last years, it won’t let him go.

    “I saw normal people in Auschwitz and I saw sadists there who killed people,” he said. “Why? I cannot explain to you.”

    Eight decades on, the search for answers has taken on an added urgency – and not just for him. As the last survivors leave us, Europe is facing a new wave of extreme nationalism, flirtations with far-right politics and would-be fascist salutes. As memories fade, surveys show a plummeting level of information about the Holocaust. Facts are under attack.

  9. It is crazy that history is forgotten by crazy people voting extreme right

  10. Chilling reminder of the dangers of unchecked nationalism. We must learn from the past to prevent similar atrocities

  11. And right now half of Europe is arguing about which of those two groups they would have belonged to, as if it made a difference.

  13. I’m devastated reading this man’s words. Enough internet for the day.

  14. I just had the privilege to see him today at a reading of his book. Almost two hours that went very fast. The storys that were read from the book and told by him were very touching and deeply saddening. Still unbelievable what humans are able to do to each other. For me it’s unbelievable that he came back to Germany, but he has done very good things here in the region, especially for getting young people in touch with the topic and against forgetting the past. The pupils from a school he visited regularly have propesed to name their school after him and were successful. He’s doing a lot that this dark past will be remembered, but soon the last survivors will be gone. We really have to fight in a united way so that there won’t ever be a chance that a new generation of people exists that will have survived something like the holocaust. Especially today, as hate and nationalism rise, Europe needs to stand united for democracy and humanity.

  15. I’m with him, the mosques that’s been popping up and people getting killed for saying anything that could be seen as negative.

  16. Really good article and it’s both sad and scary how things are developing.

    It’s one thing to be against unchecked migration or green policies, but discussing and threatening to deport legal german citizens, constantly making remarks that belittle the holocaust and the people who took part, constantly trying to create more tension based on ethnicity and religion, often through disinformation and propaganda, all of that is deeply concerning.

  17. How shallow and clumsy.

    “The Holocaust Happened, Therefore European Peoples Have No Right To Self-Determination And Must Accept Infinity Migrants” isn’t working any more.

  18. Imagine being that guy. It breaks my heart that maybe today’s world just makes him feel like it was all for nothing.

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