“The only reason I survived was luck.”
This was the only explanation that Martin Weiss, a Holocaust survivor, could give at Sunday night’s portion of the 32nd Holocaust Lecture Series annually held at Vanderbilt.
After moving to America, raising a family and pressing forward after the war, Weiss found his voice after remembering the promise he made to himself while working in a labor camp in Austria.
“I promised myself at camp that if I lived I would speak out so it couldn’t happen again,” said Weiss, who is now “fighting prejudice wherever it is” because without the attempt “there is no hope for us.”
As Weiss began to tell his story, he reached a block. “I cannot begin to describe the severity or the nastiness of these people and that will be my struggle here tonight,” he said. Before his capture, he watched the progression of the war change the atmosphere of his small town. “Instead of fighting evil, people would go out and participate in it,” Weiss said.
At the age of 15, Weiss and his family were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Austria where he and his father were selected for forced labor.
“You have no idea how scared we were,” Weiss said. “I didn’t know what the penalty was for not passing. I just knew that I passed.” Weiss and his father were transported to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria and then to the subcamp of Melk.
In Melk, the men built tunnels into the mountain where “people were dying left and right due to pure exhaustion.”
“I clearly remember kicking the person in front of me because I would doze off while walking to work,” Weiss said. With the mention of SS troops, Weiss recalled that “they counted us like prized possessions. They didn’t care if someone died but God forbid if someone was missing.”
After spending time at Melk, Weiss was chosen to participate in a march across Austria.
“We had no hope, but we thought a march could be better.” When it rained people would get stuck in the mud and stick their hands up for help but “we would just walk by because we thought we were doing them a favor — they would be finished with it all.”
In May 1945, Weiss was liberated by U.S. troops at the Gunskirchen camp but was “scared to walk out for fear that it was a trick.” After running into a relative, Weiss traveled in search of food, new shoes and warm clothing.
“We didn’t feel like humans,” he said. “We were as dehumanized as humans can get.”
When asked about vengeance or hatred towards the people who committed these horrific acts, Weiss responded: “Vengeance destroys you and the enemy. My vengeance is my wonderful wife, my two children and my four beautiful grandchildren.”
