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?”
At least 20 people have died after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Afghanistan, the Taliban has said.
The tremor was recorded near the city of Mazar-e Sharif, in the northern Balkh province, at around 12.59am on Monday (8.29pm in the UK).
The Taliban Health Ministry added that 320 were injured, while ministry spokesperson Sharfat Zaman said that the numbers of dead and injured might rise.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) has issued an orange alert on its system of quake impacts, and suggested that “significant casualties are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread”.
A rescuer works following an earthquake at an unidentified location in Afghanistan. Pic: Afghan Red Crescent / Reuters
Previous events at that alert level have required a regional or national level response, according to the USGS’s alert system.
Balkh province spokesperson Haji Zaid added that the earthquake destroyed part of the city’s holy shrine, known as the Blue Mosque.
Soldiers dig up debris after an earthquake in Mazar-e Sharif, northern Afghanistan. Pic: Haji Zaid
Damage to the Blue Mosque in Mazar-e Sharif. Pic: Haji Zaid
The United Nations in Afghanistan said on X that it is on the ground assessing needs and delivering aid, and that: “We stand with the affected communities and will provide the necessary support.”
Mazar-e Sharif is the fifth-largest city in Afghanistan, with a population of around 523,000.
Located on two major active fault lines, Afghanistan is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes: More than 1,400 people were killed and at least 3,250 others injured after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit the country’s eastern regions in September.
That tremor wiped out villages in the Mazar Dara valley, which Sky’s Asia correspondent Cordelia Lynch visited in October.
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In 2015, an earthquake struck northeastern Afghanistan, killing several hundred people in Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan.
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Four large earthquakes also struck in the Herat province in 2023, each magnitude 6.3. The Taliban said at the time that at least 2,445 people had died.
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A total of 28 people have died following Hurricane Melissa’s rampage across Jamaica, the government has confirmed.
Melissa, one of the strongest storms on record to make landfall in the Caribbean, brought with it winds of up to 185mph when it hit the island earlier this week.
The Red Cross described it as a “disaster of unprecedented catastrophe”.
Melissa ravaged through Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.
It weakened by the time it reached Cuba on Wednesday morning but still brought devastation – with houses collapsed and roads blocked.
A statement from the government of Jamaica said it was “deeply saddened to confirm 28 fatalities associated with the passage of Hurricane Melissa”.
It went on: “We extend heartfelt condolences to the families, friends, and communities mourning their loved ones.”
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The confirmation came as the first British repatriation flight was setting off from the island on Saturday evening local time.
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The flight, chartered by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, was for those “unable to leave Jamaica on commercial routes”.
Essential relief supplies are now rolling into some of the hardest hit areas.
Humanitarian aid has arrived and is waiting to be distributed. Pic: AP
The UK government is mobilising an additional £5m in emergency humanitarian funding – on top of £2.5m announced earlier this week – to support the region’s recovery.
This new funding will enable the UK to send humanitarian supplies – including more than 3,000 shelter kits and over 1,500 solar-powered lanterns to help those whose homes have been damaged and those without power.
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The UK is working with the World Food Programme and Red Cross, to ensure emergency relief reaches those who need it most.
At least 25 people died in the southern Haitian coastal town of Petit-Goave after the La Digue river burst its banks as a result of the hurricane, according to the town’s mayor Jean Bertrand Subreme.
Ukrainian soldiers encircled by Russian forces in the key eastern city of Pokrovsk have started surrendering, the defence ministry in Moscow claims.
But Ukraine‘s military has pushed back on the report by the TASS state news agency, saying the situation is “difficult and dynamic”.
Kyiv has also claimed its positions in some districts of Pokrovsk have improved despite its city being infiltrated by Russian troops.
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Ukraine is increasing its number of assault troops in the area, the 7th Rapid Response Corps said on Facebook.
And Ukrainian troops are also working to cut Moscow’s military logistics routes, it added.
The Russian defence ministry also said its forces defeated a team of Ukrainian special forces that headed to Pokrovsk in a bid to prevent Russian forces from advancing further into the city.
‘Footage of Ukrainian troops after surrendering’
It later posted videos of two Ukrainian troops who, it claimed, had surrendered.
The footage showed the men, one dressed in fatigues and the other in a dark green jacket, sat against a wall in a dark room, as they spoke of fierce fighting and encirclement by Russian forces.
The videos’ authenticity could not be independently verified, and there was no immediate public comment from Kyiv on the Russian ministry’s claims.
Ukrainian police officers on patrol in Pokrovsk. File pic: Reuters
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously acknowledged that some Russian units had infiltrated the city. But he maintained that Ukraine is tackling them.
He said Russia had deployed 170,000 troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, where Pokrovsk is located, in a major offensive to capture the city and claim a big battlefield victory.
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Multiple Russian missiles strike Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia
‘Operation to destroy enemy forces’
Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Saturday the situation in Pokrovsk remained “hardest” for Ukrainian forces, who were trying to push Russian troops out.
But he insisted there was no encirclement or blockade as Moscow has claimed.
“A comprehensive operation to destroy and push out enemy forces from Pokrovsk is ongoing. The main burden lies on the shoulders of the units of the armed forces of Ukraine, particularly UAV operators and assault units,” Mr Syrskyi said.
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Why is Pokrovsk important?
One of Moscow’s key aims has been to take all of Ukraine’s industrial heartland of coal-rich Donbas, which comprises of the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Kyiv still controls about 10% of Donbas.
Capturing Pokrovsk, which Russian media has dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk”, and Kostiantynivka to its northeast, would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
‘Key Russian fuel pipeline struck’
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military intelligence, known as HUR, has said its forces have hit an important fuel pipeline in the Moscow region that supplies the Russian army.
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In a statement on Telegram, HUR said the operation late on Friday was a “serious blow” to Russia’s military logistics.
HUR said its forces struck the Koltsevoy pipeline, which is 250 miles long and supplies the Russian army with gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from refineries in Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow.
The operation, which targeted infrastructure near Ramensky district, destroyed all three fuel lines, HUR said.
The pipeline was capable of transporting up to three million tonnes of jet fuel, 2.8 million tonnes of diesel and 1.6 million tonnes of gasoline annually, HUR said.
Russia ‘targets gas production site’
Also overnight, Russia launched an attack on a gas production site in Poltava, in central Ukraine.
A fire broke out, the local administration said, but no injuries were reported.
Kyiv condemns ‘nuclear terrorism’
Ukraine’s foreign ministry has condemned Russian strikes this week on substations powering some of its nuclear plants.
It accused Russia of carrying out “targeted strikes on such substations” which “bear the hallmarks of nuclear terrorism”.
Elsewhere, a civilian died and 15 more were injured on Saturday morning after Russia struck the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine with a ballistic Iskander missile, local official Vitaliy Kim said.
A child was among those hurt in the strike, he added.
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