Auschwitz survivor: ‘You worked until you could work no more – then you went to the chimney’
There are few who can say they’ve seen the inside of hell, but Albrecht Weinberg is one of them.
From the safety of his living room, the 99-year-old describes how, as a teenager, he survived three concentration camps including the Nazi’s biggest extermination centre, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
“Jews were only for the gas chamber. You worked until you could work no more. Then you went to the chimney,” he explains in a soft Brooklyn twang he picked up after years of living in New York.
Born into a Jewish family of five in the East Frisia region of Germany, Albrecht was a teenager when the Nazis first sent him to do forced labour in 1939.
Albrecht Weinberg survived three concentration camps
He was moved to various places in the next few years until, in April 1943, he and his sister were loaded on to a wagon to Auschwitz.
The Third Reich was accelerating its extermination of Jews as part of its “Final Solution” which would see more than six million killed in the Holocaust.
Albrecht had already been separated from his parents, who had been immediately sent to gas chambers.
Now, he was being unloaded at a place where they, and ultimately more than a million other people, were murdered.
Albrecht remembers that around 950 men, women, children and the elderly were on the train but he had no clue what Auschwitz was.
“I’d never seen a prisoner in a striped uniform and cap,” he says.
As the train doors opened, he remembers soldiers shouting, “Out! Out!” in German.
A photo taken by the Nazis in the early days of World War Two shows victims arriving at Auschwitz. File pic: AP
Terrified, exhausted and dehydrated after days on the train, people rushed out, stepping over one another.
The group was then forced to march in front of one of the commanders so they could be selected.
Some would be sent to work, the rest to their deaths.
“He sorted us like big and small potatoes,” Albrecht tells me, “[If] he thought maybe that you could do a day’s work, he gave you a sign that you should go to the right and the others had to go to the left.”
Albrecht was one of around 250 chosen to be kept alive so that they could work.
He was sent to Auschwitz III (Monowitz) camp where by day he had to do backbreaking labour, laying cables in the freezing weather.
Albrecht’s father, Alfred (sitting) with his brother Jacob during World War One
By night he had to sleep in a shared bunk in cramped, cold wooden huts, riddled with disease and with little sanitation.
This is how he spent almost two years.
“They came and they beat the daylights out of you and then you had to get outside. You can’t stay alive very long and do that kind of work with that little bit of food that you got,” he says explaining what his days were like.
In the camp, he met his older brother Dieter, who had been sent there before him.
The detainees weren’t seen as humans, he says they were reduced to less than animals.
‘Every day when I wash myself, I see my number,’ says Albrecht
Rolling up his sleeve, Albrecht shows me the now-faded grey tattoo scrawled onto his skin by the Nazis when he arrived.
“1-16-9-27: that was my name, my number, that was everything,” he says, lightly tapping his arm.
He remembers the SS guards would inspect them; if they looked too skinny, had sores or were too weak, they were executed.
“He wrote your number down, the next day you went to the chimney.”
Albrecht explains, quietly: “People died, that was their policy. Over a million people got burned.”
Somehow though, Albrecht managed to survive until January 1945 when the guards told him and a group of others they were leaving.
As Soviet troops closed in, the Nazis forced thousands of Auschwitz detainees on so-called “death marches”, moving people they thought could still work to other areas.
Albrecht was among them and remembers seeing starving and sick people die on the route.
Wearing thin clothes and ill-fitting wooden clogs, the detainees marched for miles.
Anyone who stopped or fainted was shot or beaten to death.
After the march, Albrecht was forced to work in a factory making rockets and bombs before finally being sent to Bergen-Belsen camp in northern Germany.
Years of forced labour, beatings, malnutrition and trauma meant by this time he was dying.
The filthy conditions of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945. File pic: AP
He remembers lying on the ground among a sea of corpses, too exhausted to go on.
That’s where he was when British forces arrived and liberated the camp.
“I must have moved my arm or something. I was 90% a dead man,” he says as he describes the scene that greeted the soldiers.
Albrecht says the Bergen-Belsen camp had become a “cemetery”.
“There were thousands of dead people lying on top of the ground. They were not buried, some of them were decomposing. The smell was awful,” he says.
After being worked as a slave and then left to die like an animal, Albrecht was finally free.
After the war, he was reunited with his brother and sister who also managed to survive Auschwitz.
Left to right: Albrecht, his brother Dieter and his sister Friedel
He later relocated to America, only returning to Germany in 2011.
Albrecht will be at home as the world gathers to remember the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
He has only returned to the camp once – “once was enough,” he says.
Instead, he is one of several survivors whose memories are being broadcast online as part of a project by the Jewish Claims Conference to mark the anniversary.
In total, around 41 members of Albrecht’s family were murdered by the Nazis.
He says he “cannot forgive” Germany.
He knows that younger generations are not responsible for the crimes of their grandparents, but he’s also deeply concerned about ongoing antisemitism.
Last year, someone knocked over the gravestones in the Jewish Cemetery in Leer where he lives.
Albrecht was so terrified he couldn’t go out.
He says he thought it was a “second Holocaust”.
In March, he will celebrate his 100th birthday.
He doesn’t know for how much longer Auschwitz survivors will be able to tell their stories and he’s worried the world is already forgetting the horrors of the Holocaust.
Albrecht’s mother Flora and her sister Carolina
For this extraordinary man, a survivor of indescribable trauma and a witness to some of the darkest acts in history, there is no peace.
“How can I forget when I think about my family, my mother, my father, my grandma? Every day when I wash myself, I see my number,” Albrecht says.
“How can I forget?”
Pro-Western candidate Nicusor Dan has unexpectedly beaten hard-right populist George Simion in the Romanian presidential election.
Mr Simion, 38, and his rival – a centrist who’s mayor of Bucharest – faced off in the second round of the contest.
According to the official tally, Mr Dan was leading by nearly nine percentage points with more than 98% of the votes counted.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Dan and his supporters celebrated the exit polls. Pic: Reuters
After exit polls suggested he wasn’t going to win, Trump-supporting Mr Simion rejected the result and said estimates put him 400,000 votes ahead.
Speaking after voting ended, Mr Simion said his election was “clear” as he posted on Facebook: “I won!!! I am the new President of Romania and I am giving back the power to the Romanians!”
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Romania’s last election was annulled after its highest court ruled the leading candidate, nationalist Calin Georgescu, should be disqualified due to claims of electoral interference by Russia.
The result is surprising because in the first round, 38-year-old Mr Simion, founder of the right-wing Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), took 40.96% of the vote – almost 20 points ahead.
George Simion rejected the polls but official counting saw him slip behind. Pic: Reuters
Supporters of Mr Dan celebrated on the streets of the capital Bucharest. Pic: AP
An opinion poll on Friday had it much closer, but still suggested the two men were virtually tied.
Mr Dan, a 55-year-old mathematician, is running as an independent and has pledged to clamp down on corruption.
He is also staunchly pro-EU and NATO, and has said Romania’s support for Ukraine is vital for its own security.
When voting closed at 9pm local time, 11.6 million people – about 64% of eligible voters – had cast ballots. About 1.64 million Romanians living abroad also took part.
About 11.6 million people – 64% of eligible voters – cast ballots. Pic: AP
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The election is being closely watched across Europe amid a rise of support for President Donald Trump.
After polls closed, Mr Dan said “elections are not about politicians” but about communities and that in the latest vote “a community of Romanians has won, a community that wants a profound change in Romania”.
“When Romania goes through difficult times, let us remember the strength of this Romanian society,” he said.
“There is also a community that lost today’s elections. A community that is rightly outraged by the way politics has been conducted in Romania up to now.”
Israel has said it will allow a “basic quantity of food” into the besieged enclave of Gaza to avoid a “starvation crisis” following a near three-month blockade.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was “based on the operational need to enable the expansion of the military operation to defeat Hamas”.
Gaza, where local authorities say more than 53,000 people have died in Israel’s 19-month campaign, has been under a complete blockade on humanitarian aid since 2 March.
It comes as global food security experts warn of famine across the territory and after a UN-backed report issued last Monday which warned one in five people in Gaza were facing starvation.
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Israel ramps up bombing in Gaza
The statement from the prime minister’s office said it would “allow a basic quantity of food to be brought in for the population in order to make certain that no starvation crisis develops in the Gaza Strip”.
“Such a crisis would endanger the continuation of Operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ to defeat Hamas,” it added.
“Israel will act to deny Hamas’s ability to take control of the distribution of humanitarian assistance in order to ensure that the assistance does not reach the Hamas terrorists.”
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Gaza is ‘a slaughterhouse’ says surgeon
It comes after a British surgeon working in Gaza said in a video to Sky News the enclave is now “a slaughterhouse” amid Israeli bombardment.
Israel has just ramped up its offensive in Gaza, with Palestinian health officials reporting at least 130 people were killed overnight into Sunday.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed troops had begun “extensive ground operations throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip”.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 464 people had died in Israeli military strikes in the week to Sunday.
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In a statement on Sunday, IDF said its air force struck “over 670 Hamas terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip to disrupt enemy preparations and support ground operations” over the past week.
Israel has launched an escalation to increase pressure on Hamas, seize territory, displace Palestinians to the south and take greater control over the distribution of aid.
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A British surgeon working in southern Gaza has compared the region to a “slaughterhouse” because of the daily bombardment from Israeli forces.
Dr Tom Potokar, who is based at the European Hospital near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, offered his assessment of Israel’s military offensive after Palestinian health officials reported at least 130 people were killed overnight into Sunday.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have confirmed their troops have begun “extensive ground operations throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip”.
In a video, Dr Potokar said it was “another day of devastation here in Gaza”, adding: “The stories coming from the north… absolutely horrific… particularly around the Indonesian Hospital.”
“I mean, it’s difficult to describe in words what’s happening here… [with the] constant sound of bombardment jets overhead.
“If Cambodia was the killing fields, then Gaza now is the slaughterhouse.”
Mourners at a funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Al Shifa hospital, in Gaza. Pic: Reuters
His reference to Cambodia’s killing fields refers to when more than a million people were murdered in mass executions and buried by the extreme communist guerrilla group, the Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot, between 1975 and 1979.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 464 people had died in Israeli military strikes in the week to Sunday.
In a statement on Sunday, IDF said its air force struck “over 670 Hamas terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip to disrupt enemy preparations and support ground operations” over the past week.
A family in grief at a funeral on Sunday in Deir al Balah, central Gaza. Pic: Reuters
Dr Potokar described the impact on those on the ground, saying: “We’ve been operating all morning so far and [treating] awful explosive injuries… [including] one young woman with leg fracture and shoulder fracture and a large wound on her buttock, who came in yesterday and is not yet aware that everyone in our family was killed in the onslaught.”
Israel has launched an escalation of its war in Gaza to ramp up pressure on Hamas, seize territory, displace Palestinians to the south and take greater control over the distribution of aid.
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Israel ramps up bombing in Gaza
On Sunday, it announced and launched “extensive” new ground operations in Gaza.
It came after airstrikes killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children, overnight and into Sunday, hospitals and medics said, and forced northern Gaza’s main hospital to close.
A spokesperson for the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said: “Complete families were wiped off the civil registration record by Israeli bombardment”.
The ministry also said the bombardment had forced the closure of the Indonesian Hospital, the main hospital serving people in northern Gaza.
Nasser hospital, in the southern city of Khan Younis, said more than 48 people – mostly women and children – were killed in the area which includes tents sheltering displaced people.
In Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, at least 12 people were killed in three separate strikes, according to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and the Nuseirat camp’s Awda Hospital.
Meanwhile, the Gaza health ministry and the Palestinian Civil Defence – which operates under the Hamas-run government – reported that 19 people were killed in several strikes in Jabalia in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes.
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How Israel has escalated Gaza bombing campaign
Ceasefire talks are taking place in Qatar this weekend – with Israel saying they involve discussions on ending the war as well as a truce and hostage deal.
A statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said any lasting truce must include the demilitarisation of Gaza as well as the exile of Hamas militants.
But a senior Israeli official added there had been little progress so far during talks in Qatar’s capital Doha.
Sky News Arabia reported Hamas had proposed freeing about half its Israeli hostages in exchange for a two-month ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
A Palestinian official close to the discussions said: “Hamas is flexible about the number of hostages it can free, but the problem has always been over Israel’s commitment to end the war.”
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