Holocaust Survivor: Naftali Weinberger

Born 1928 in Szarvas, Hungary. Jewish communal life before German arrival. From Szarvas ghetto to Szolnok, April 1944. By train to Strasshof camp, Austria. Labor at Potendorf farm till November 1944. Back to Strasshof and deported to Bergen-Belsen, end November. In Bergen-Belsen, evacuation and march to railroad station. Liberated by Americans. In Farsleben and Millersleben after liberation.

For Papa

In April they started evacuating the people from the Bergen-Belsen camp. The first transport was of Hungarian and Dutch Jews from the Sonderlager. Each of us was given bread and a can of preserves. We started marching to the railway station 6-7 kilometers away. My father was very feeble. His face was swollen. He had diarrhea and was barely able to walk. Mama and my sisters carried their own bundles while I carried mine and Papa's. We had marched about 3-4 kilometers when I realized it was getting dark, and I rushed ahead to the head of the procession. On reaching the train, I and several acquaintances seized places in one of the wagons and I rushed back to help Papa. I knew what was likely to happen to anyone left behind. The road was a difficult one, climbing and descending sharply. On either side was the German army.

Among the soldiers were many Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans, many of them from Hungary, who hurled threats and curses at us as we passed. When I got to the top of a hill, an SS man, one of those escorting our procession, who spoke fluent Hungarian and was apparently a Volksdeutscher, stopped me and asked: "Is that your father sitting on that rock up there?" I saw Papa sitting on a rock. Apparently, he was unable to go on. The soldier said he would wait till I got him. "If you don't bring him," he said, "the soldiers will kill him." I, a 16-year-old boy, ran madly. Papa hugged me and said: "I thought I'd never see you again." He was totally spent. I carried him on my shoulders till we got to that soldier. We walked together to try to catch up to the rear of the procession. Along the way the soldiers from the camps threatened us, and the SS soldier threatened them back, waving his gun at them and shouting: "Go be heroes at the front, not here against unarmed people!" Gradually, with our last strength, we reached the train.

We were liberated by the Americans. My father was very weak and was sent to the hospital and Farsleben. We were sent to Millersleben. We lived in villas that had been occupied by SS people. When I visited the hospital, I couldn't find my father. He had died a week after the liberation, on the 8th of [the Jewish month] Iyar. He had been buried in a mass grave in a corner of the Farsleben cemetery. The man in charge of the cemetery told me that a number of people had been buried together that day, and there was no way of knowing where Papa was buried. Before I left I asked the chairman of the Magdeburg Jewish community to see to it that the cemetery was tended, that a fence was built around it, and that a monument to the victims was put up.

Two days after the liberation I met that SS soldier, dressed in civilian clothes. He said he wanted to go home to his family, and he had no time to go to a prisoner-of-war camp. He asked me not to tell anyone about him. I promised: "I won't say a word. But if someone else informs on you..." I don't know if anyone did. I never set eyes on him again. I only want to say that I couldn't have informed on him. In any event they were released a few months later.

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