LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas –
Auschwitz survivor and President of the Holocaust Educational Foundation Theodore Weiss spoke to a packed house at the Freedom Chapel May 20. Introduced by longtime friend Holocaust scholar Col. Edward Westermann, Mr. Weiss delivered a stirring account of his experience at Auschwitz-Birkau.
"He ... has been instrumental in the development of ... Holocaust courses in colleges around the world," said Colonel Westermann.
Colonel Westermann offered several different perspectives on the Holocaust from his various experiences studying it. Most profound, though, seemed to be his perspective from that of a parent.
"As a father, I am always [pierced] by ... the deportation of French children," he said. "As a parent, these images always remind me that the Holocaust is a story of individuals, not simply an account of faceless victims who perished."
Mr. Weiss himself was a child of only 13 years when his family was told to leave their home in rural Eastern Europe and were taken to Auschwitz, one of the most famous Nazi concentration camps.
"At Birkau, they almost all the time gassed and killed," said the soft-spoken educator. "They split us up into two groups, some going to the right and some to the left.
That was the last time I saw my mother and my sister. Women and children were taken to the gas chambers immediately."
Looking back, Mr. Weiss said the German soldiers at the camps did everything in their power to make sure the prisoners did not survive.
"It was a mean-spirited place," he said. "But a place where you knew you were alive if you had to work."
Even remembering some of the hardest times, though, Mr. Weiss said he was surrounded by people who made things better than they could have been.
"Life was difficult, but it had its good moments," he said. "We were fortunate to have some pretty good people. There was a poet there who would read poetry to us from memory."
Mr. Weiss also said there was a dentist who gave him such good advice about how to keep his teeth and gums clean that he still has all of his teeth 60 years later.
Mr. Weiss' salvation, however, came in the form of the infamous Nazi death march.
"One evening we were ordered to line up, and after we lined up we were ordered to march," he said. "We didn't know it but this was the beginning of the famous death march. The first day it was cold and snowing and we were barely able to move."
Mr. Weiss demonstrated the maliciousness of the German soldiers by recounting a vivid memory of a cold night.
"The group was divided [to sleep]," he said. "To the left and right. I went to the right. The people who went to the left slept in a barn. In the morning, the barn was on fire. They killed just for the sake of killing human beings. They didn't receive orders to do it."
Mr. Weiss said while on the death march, he and a friend collapsed in a ditch. While he said his memories are vague, he did remember being picked up by an American Soldier and being put in a vehicle. The Soldier took him to the hospital, where he received care. When he was better, the Soldier told him to come visit him if he ever found himself in the United States.
Mr. Weiss ultimately ended up in New York, where he has enjoyed a career as an educator, helping educate college students about the Holocaust.
"I am a very fortunate man," he said, in spite of his horrific experience. "Everything I've wanted to do I've been able to do."
Mr. Weiss said his chosen career came to him naturally.
"I felt I must do something," he said. "The idea of educating college students appealed to me. While education is not the perfect answer, it is the only window for us human beings to become better. It is a long road but one we must take because otherwise there is no hope. There is no future."
When asked by an audience member if he could ever forgive the people who put him through such a horrendous experience, the answer was surprising.
"Can I forgive them?" he asked. "The answer is no. I would be dishonest if I told you that. Those who died are the ones they should ask for forgiveness."