IV: Even though it is impolite, I am going to take another cough drop so that my...
LW: not impolite.
IV: So that I don't cough into...cell phones off? All, just in case...
LW: Mine is not turned off. I can do that.
IV: Yes, it would be good to turn it off completely because otherwise there is a disruptive sound, even if it doesn't ring.
LW: So...
IV: On Saturday we spoke with Mr. Nasch and interviewed him.
Good, Mr. Weintraub. Let's begin.
We have planned to delve right into it, "in medias res" so to speak.
You came to Flossenbürg on a transport from Groß-Rosen.
Why don't you start there, with your memories, what you remember.
Perhaps the transport first and how you got there, what you knew about Flossenbürg.
LW: After the long winter in Groß-Rosen, that is, in an external commando of Groß-Rosen, and there were many,
the last one I was in was in Dörnhau.
We were collected in February and, it was mid-February, we traveled by foot.
And it was, it is correct to call it a death march.
Of course as always without an explanation, why and where to, just out of the barracks.
We didn't have any luggage, just the clothes we had on, nothing else.
And we were a huge column, the image imprinted in my mind is of white.
It was the second half of February. Snow.
And I...in front an endless line of dots, people.
And in back exactly the same.
Must have been a few thousand people
Once in a while a shot was heard.
Head turned away.
A soldier with a gun, someone had fallen down and was not able to walk.
And they gave him the coup de grace and left him there.
Then, some distanc apart, soldiers in green uniforms.
It was hard to say what rank they were, whether it was SS or Wehrmacht.
We couldn't tell the difference, with German shepherds.
Also vivid in my memory is how we were crowded into a barn in the evening, stuffed full.
And after two nights and on the third day we arrived at the station.
I am certain that it was Görlitz, today Zgorzelec.
And in the train. The train ride that for me, I can't describe how long that was.
But the whole time no food, no drink, were given nothing, we could grab a little snow...
to moisten our lips and the mouth, so dried up.
One image stays in my memory that someone took me into their arms and comforted me a bit.
I must have been totally exhausted and at the end of my rope.
And what remains is the name Nikolaj or Nikolai, a Russian.
And we were together until Flossenbürg.
When eh...
One explanation for my exhaustion from this brief time, after just a few days of death march, may have been
that I had come to Groß-Rosen from Auschwitz-Birkenau, after a short stay there.
But that was after almost five years of starving and doing hard labor in the LItzmannstadt ghetto on the territory of the Lodz ghetto.
A short digression: I never say "Ghetto in Lodz," because Lodz was a peaceful, normal city, there was never a ghetto there.
But in the city of Litzmannstadt, the name given to Lodz, in late 1939, named after General Litzmannstadt from the First World War.
That is how I arrived in Flossenbürg and I can perhaps be forgiven, that I kept in my memory so few details of my stay here.
But I arrived nearly unconscious.
I have no memory of the path from the station into the camp.
No memory of the shower, the clothes.
But I have a few images of the barracks and from the everyday life.
And the unpleasantness of waking up with a cold foot in my face.
Because we were, I know this now, and I always try to stress what I remember
as opposed to what I learned later.
I try not to mix them, to keep them apart.
Since to speak today with the knowledge of what I know today, as if it were then is not correct, would not be honest.
We laid two on a bunk and two in both directions.
So two with knees, my upper body and vice versa.
Me, with my feet on the other two prisoners.
And mornings, the roll call, out of sleep...the feverish unrestless sleep.
Pile of the dead at the entrance.
I still see it clearly in front of me, how they lay there, the dead prisoners, so that the number at the count would be correct.
Then the endless...today I have a clear memory. I found it to be endless.
It was perhaps a few minutes, half an hour, but for us, with hardly any clothing, it was, after all, late February.
According to a paper from Bad Arolsen that I received in Göttingen in the 1950s, it says that I was registered, admitted to Flossenbürg, on February 25.
Also a question of nomenclature, a human being is admitted.
And transported to Offenburg on March 22.
I...the smell was very strong, I still have a certain purely physical sensory perception of smells and touch,
of crowdedness, of lying on the bunk, four of us.
And being woken up, pushed out, it was still night, was dark, from dawn, lined up.
After we were counted, we had nothing to do.
We were not included in the work deployment because we were under quarantine.
It was cold and a...one could indeed call it an apocalyptic image, it could have been drawn by Bruegel.
It was cold, we snuggled up to each other, on the large roll call grounds.
New ones joined us, new ones and the image of several hundred people, snuggling up to one another, to warm each other.
A process took place such that the people who were at the core of this group wanted to get out, but they were close to suffocating, it was too crowded, they wanted out.
And those on the outer layer, their backs were cold, they wanted to get in.
so that they had other bodies on all sides, the biological temperature of 37 or 36 can radiate a certain amount of heat.
So like an ant hill that moves across the roll call grounds.
If you close your eyes and can imagine this, that is what is ingrained in my mind.
When, why and how we were moved on after these few weeks? It was probably because the second front had come closer.
IV: Do you have more memories...You were in the quarantine block.
LW: Yes.
IV: You didn't work. Do you have memories of the food, the treatment by the SS or the people who were there.
LW: No, I have only the image of sunshine and hills in the distance, probably above the main building.
in this direction.
I can only explain it, that I was really physically drained, that my ability to perceive things was very limited.
And that is why only a few images were ingrained in my memory.
I have...perhaps we will discuss it.
After arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau, when we were pushed out of the cattle car, these strange figures were standing there in pajamas, white and blue striped prisoner uniforms.
It was strange for us that these people were standing around in their pajamas.
And I just yelled "out, out, quickly, quickly."
And I saw there in the corner of my eye the fence with white isolators.
I had worked in the ghetto as an electrician and I understood: isolator, so electrical current on a fence.
Electrical...like a vertical electrical chair.
Where did we go?
The prestory is that we were all led astray, swindled.
Hans Biebow, I heard it myself, he promised that we would be moved away from the front, for our own security.
We would be given food along the way, we could take everything with us that we needed.
Without furniture, of course, or dishes, kitchen appliances.
And we would be brought to safety.
And I got off the wagon, overcrowded with people, said to my mother and my four...three sisters "We'll see each other inside."
And then with my own eyes...I saw what was inside.
Something happened to me that I can only describe as shock.
I entered into a condition, almost as if...in medicine it's called catatonia or autistic, like a shell closing.
My physical, bodily abilities were intact, everything.
I heard, I saw, I fulfilled orders.
But my brain cortex was, if not turned off, then very limited in its activity.
So that I have hardly any memories of having spoken to anyone, after climbing the ramp in Birkenau up to the liberation.
Just a few isolated words, but no...no friendships, no memories of a face.
One or two exceptions.
So that might explain why I kept so little.
IV: Do you think that was a defense mechanism...
LW: That's true.
Later, as a doctor, I am able to explain it perhaps as a self-preservation reaction.
To protect myself from the terrible, from the gruesome, to function only as a physical collection of tissue.
But if I had been conscious of what was happening around me and with me, then I would probably have gone nuts and not have withstood it.
My physical power of resistance would be so broken that I would suffer physically from it as well.
And that did happen, that people were simply unable to eat anymore, starved and quickly collapsed, so that could be right, that that is the explanation.
And that is not an apology, but an attempt at explaining why I remember so little from Flossenbürg.
When I look back on the time in the ghetto, from this short time in Birkenau, I have many more clear images and memories and a series of images from this time.
We left Flossenbürg in passenger trains, I think.
No, I am not sure, but after the external commando of the Natzweiler concentration camp we arrived in Offenburg.
That was the last twitches of the Third Reich.
I didn't realize that at that time.
But it wasn't so well organized, it was a bit of chaos, a little disorder and sloppiness.
We were housed in a building,maybe a school building or an empty normal building, with many levels.
And I have a few memories of that.
Besides one very drastic event.
I was supposed to wash the clothes of the guard staff.
And probably in a simple bathroom in a bathtub, hot water, the air foggy from the steam of the hot water.
And I see myself in a feverish condition, half conscious.
Like...like in a fever, washing these clothes and I must have done something wrong.
And I was sentenced to 25 beatings on my bare bottom.
Spread over a trestle.
My arms clasped down in front and my legs in back, pants down and I had to count.
It was a rubber pipe...hose..elastic but filled with sand to make thie impact stronger.
So that it weighs more.
I was able to count along to eight and then it was over, I was gone.
And my memory is that for the next few days I was only able to lie on my stomach, couldn't lie on my back.
We also didn't do any work in Offenburg, it was also just a transport container.
They probably didn't know what to do with us at this time.
Then one day we were called out of the...no not beds...we were lying on the ground.
Collected is the right word, to the station and this time it was definitely passenger trains.
We had only traveled for a few hours when airplanes arrived.
We heard explosions and then it was quiet and we stood still.
After a while we were pushed out of the wagons and into the woods...chased. Up the hill, down the hill.
That was the Black Forest.
That was just beyond Donaueschingen.
After a few hours, I think it was hours, we dragged ourselves, we had formed a group.
Coincidentally, I don't know why, I didn't know them, I was the youngest, five young people, a bit older than me.
Had fallen behind a bit, fallen behind, were so weak.
And all of a sudden the main group had disappeared, was out of our sight, beyond our vision.
And the guard was gone too and then we saw a few pieces of uniform lying in the bushes.
Jacket, hats with the SS sign.
Without many words we looked at each other and ran into the bushes and squatted there and waited and waited.
Towards late afternoon, it was starting to turn gray, we heard shots again.
And since I was so light then, I weighed 35 kilos then, we looked for a tree.
They helped me climb up, I climbed up and was able to look down into the valley.
And I saw a locomotive from the left, we had come from the right, connected to the train.
And people, like little black dots, being pushed into the train.
And that was Alexander Laks, as I learned yesterday.
He continued on to Immendingen, I think.
I stayed in the bushes, the train departed.
We set off in the opposite direction of the train.
It was difficult, constantly having to go through water, the whole night, but the Donau makes such curves, luckily not deep, so just wading through.
Towards daybreak, we approached a country road.
And there I saw clearly three uniforms coming towards us on bicycles.
As they got closer, they curved away from us and we curved away from them.
They were afraid of us and we were afraid of all uniforms, they were something hostile.
And after a few hundred meters there was a clearing in the forest, and a a truck came towards us from behind a curve.
Something unfamiliar. A black face with a white head.
Now I know that it was a turban on a machine gun.
We were so scared that we...all jumped into the bushes and then we heard the shots.
We came out with our hands up, moved towards them.
And showed the "KL" sewed in white onto the jacket, the two letters "KL" and pointed to our heads.
This part had been cut out with a haircutter, to identify us as prisoners so that if someone fled they would be immediately visible.
So our head was not totally shaved, just in parts.
But in the middle the hair had been carefully removed with a haircutter.
Then a tall soldier came towards us, in a different color uniform, brown, khaki colored, lighter.
With a pistol in his hand and when we showed him this
I can still see how he threw the pistol into the air and caught it with the left hand and said "Comment ça va?"
And pointed with his thumb "go that way". That is where our...
That was the moment of liberation, the actual liberation...because then I was no longer in captivity.
We went into the first best house, were so starving and thirsty.
Those scared...I see those people, not German faces, but huddled down and fearful.
Something to drink, I don't think I ate anything.
And then we continued on our way and after a few kilometers, just before Donaueschingen, we saw a large fast a horde of, now I know that they were foreign workers, with handcarts stuffed full of things.
We joined them, we were a group of five people.
After Donauschingen, the city seemed totally empty, we didn't see any people.
They were probably hiding or didn't dare to come outside.
Then we saw the restaurant "Zur Sonne" and we went inside, no one there.
Even back then, before I became a doctor, I had retained enough sense to know not to overeat.
I found some flour in a cupboard.
Added a little water to it, warmed it up, added a little salt and that is what we ate.
I couldn't sleep, it was a feather bed, so soft and a duvet.
I tried to fall asleep but whenever I woke up I had the feeling I was falling, falling.
I had to lie on the ground before I could fully fall asleep.
Later...what happened next, that is all later...
Worth briefly mentioning perhaps that a few days later, most of them had gathered, and fled.
Because they had heard that in a village not far from Donaueschingen the Werewolf was active and had shot people.
That had scared people, I didn't feel good, probably had caught a cold or gotten a fever.
And asked where I could find a doctor. I was told to go to the French army doctor.
And he only asked me where I came from, I said "from the guesthouse 'Zur Sonne.'"
"Aha, there were already to cases of typhus there."
And referred me to the hospital in Donaueschingen to the typhus ward.
I spent a few weeks there.
The day of liberation was April 23.
And freed from Mr. Brückner on the same day, I learned that it was a Monday.
I knew it, didn't have any thoughts about researching which day of the week it was.
But I knew the date.
And, eh, after a few weeks, it was...
That means, I was probably in this hospital for all of May because I was released in June.
And I stood in front of the gate of the hospital with my three things on my body.
To add to this, when we arrived in Donaueschingen in the guesthouse "Zur Sonne," after we had eaten something, we looked for something to wear.
We were still wearing the old torn-up clothes.
We went into a few buildings, no people, I took a pair of pants, not even underwear, a pair of pants, socks, a pair of shoes and a jacket.
Others stuffed themselves full, but it didn't occur to me to take more than I needed at the time.
So I stood there the way I had arrived in the hospital, I stood there.
And I don't know how, I can't remember, I learned that there was a group of former concentation camp prisoners in a nearby village.
It was maybe ten, eleven kilometers away, I pretty much dragged myself there, so weak after being in the hospital.
And I arrived there, happy. This time the lucky fellow, not the unlucky one. They were just getting ready.
They had all found bicycles and were planning to go to Bodensee, Lake Constance.
We had heard that there was a group there, someome there that would look after us.
We didn't have any papers, no money, no ID, nothing.
We were just there, the way we were.
SInce I didn't have my own bike and wasn't in a condition to ride a bike, I was taken along either on the frame or on the bike rack all the way to the train.
Where was that, either Tuttlingen or Villingen.
Arrived at the train and again: no ticket, no money. We just said "KZ".
And the soldiers there, the guards and civil servants, German officials, looked passed us and didn't send us away.
No ticket, on to the train.
We arrived in Constance and then the new life began...not the new, the life.
IV: When you were freed...what was that like, do you remember good feelings. What was that like for you?
Was it like "Now I survived, I did it" or did it not really register amidst all the chaos?
Can you remember a little how you were? At some point it was clear: The Nazis are gone.
LW: Few events stirred me.
And that probably shows what mental state I was in, what was hidden inside me that had come to the surface.
Because right after the liberation in this Donaueschingen group or right before I have this image that two people hanged themselves.
It may have been SS men, and one might say they were getting it back.
And that affected me very badly and almost revolted me.
We were going to be the same way, the same as them.
If we do the same that they did to us, then are we any better?
That was the first awakening of a consciousness, of finding myself in a new present.
And I can't do to them what was done to us, because then I am not any better.
But I don't want to be like that. And this was a clear image that I had, it was like a reflex: revenge.
I heard from others too that in Birkenau, when Rumkowski, the Jewish elder, arrived there, that the people nearly tore him to pieces.
And it happened to others too, like the police, ghetto police, Jewish police were also killed.
These things happened.
to their own but mostly against the German SS men.
That was one of my first conscious realizations after liberation.
And from this moment on I thought about it: revenge.
I mentioned this yesterday in a talk with young people because they were Christian youth, to think about the world: Revenge, punishment.
Is punishment also revenge? Or is revenge also a punishment?
And secondly: Perpetrator. Should the perpetrator be punished if he acted according to the prevailing laws at the time?
If the laws that applied in that country, in this governance, were legal but in the general understanding were criminal?
So those are complicated thoughts about criticism and morality.
Now it is easier, because through the United Nations we have a code for human rights, guidelines.
So that a perpetrator can no longer say "I only carried out...orders. It was not my own initiative, my intention, but I had to carry out the orders."
Now there are guidelines, where one has to say: "Can I do this, regardless of the order? Is it right?"
And can appeal to "No, the universal human rights say that is not good."
My brother-in-law was president of the highest court in Cologne.
IV: I have to interrupt here because the cassette is full.
LW: OK