Holocaust Survivor Recalls Atrocities and Reflects on Current Antisemitism

Ernest Weiss, a Holocaust survivor, recalled his experiences during the Holocaust in a sit-down interview with the Journal.

Weiss, 94, was born in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia. “Under the Czechs, we didn’t feel the antisemitism,” he said. “It’s not that it was not there, but the Czechs did not allow it.” But when Nazi-allied Hungary took control in 1938, “you are beginning to feel the antisemitism.” “Children … got beaten up on the street. Even if you go to school, you get beaten up because you were Jewish.”

Eventually, Nazi soldiers entered the city and began implementing discriminatory measures against the Jews, such as forcing them to wear the yellow Star of David badge. “We felt discriminated, but we had no choice. But we were still doing our things.”

Weiss recalled his oldest brother’s (Weiss had two older brothers) love for the United States and how he dreamed of going there with Weiss and starting their own business. But that dream was never fulfilled, as Weiss’s brother was conscripted into the Hungarian army; Jewish members of the army were put into forced labor. Weiss’s brother was never seen again after he was sent to the army and his body has never been found.

The Nazis later turned Munkacs into a ghetto and forced all the Jews to move into it; groups of Jews were moved to a brick factory on the outskirts of the ghetto, where there were railroad tracks for cattle cars to take them to the Auschwitz death camp. At Auschwitz, when Weiss was 16, he was sent to the workforce with his father and other brother. Weiss was lucky because he looked young. If he had been sent with the children, Weiss would have gone straight to the gas chambers.

Weiss was later sent to the Warsaw Ghetto to clean up what remained in the ghetto after the Nazis “bombed and bombarded the entire ghetto” after the Jews imprisoned in the ghetto launched the uprising against the Nazis. “Nothing was standing,” Weiss said. “Everything was leveled.” He recalled a day where there was “extra-heavy” rain at the ghetto, causing him to break down and cry. The man standing next to Weiss said to him, “Hey kid, now you listen to me and listen to me good. Someday, we’ll be free again, but if you’re gonna cry, you’re not gonna make it. You will die. You gotta be strong, and you will make it.” Weiss stopped crying and never cried again throughout the duration of the Holocaust.

At one point, Weiss was sent to one of the Nazi doctors because he had come down with typhoid fever. “We were afraid to see a doctor because most of the time, you don’t come back.” Weiss has no recollection about what happened while he was with the Nazi doctors or how long he was there––“I was completely out of it,” he said––but was eventually released by the Nazi doctors and sent back to forced labor.

Shortly thereafter, the Nazis announced that they would be leaving Warsaw for a march––“It was a death march,” Weiss said––with transportation provided for those that couldn’t make the march. One of the Nazi officials noticed that Weiss didn’t want the transportation option despite just being released from the Nazi hospital and asked Weiss if he was sure he wanted to do to the march on foot; Weiss answered in the affirmative. “Needless to say, those who stepped out … nobody ever saw them again,” Weiss said. “All those that remain at the hospital are poisoned.”

Weiss marched with the prisoners to the Germany-Poland border, a 1,800 mile walk. “A lot of people died,” he said. Those that survived the march were put on a train to the Dachau death camp in Bavaria in 1944; by this point, Weiss had been separated from his father and brother, as the Nazis didn’t like Jews staying together with people they knew and would assault those that did. From Dachau, Weiss was sent to Muhldorf, one of Dachau’s satellite camps, where the Nazis were building an underground airport. “To build an underground airport takes cement and takes a lot of cement,” Weiss said. “That’s we had to do: carry cement. As weak as we were, we managed to do that … it’s unbelievable, but we did it.”

A new group of Hungarian Jews were taken to Muhldorf and Weiss noticed that they had given up hope. “Once you give up hope, you die. And a lot of them died,” he said. “They got weak, they got sick, and they died.”

“Once you give up hope, you die.”

The Nazis later put those remaining at the satellite camp into cattle cars with the intent of killing them at the mountains, but couldn’t follow through with their plans because the railroad tracks leading to the mountains were occupied by the United States. Consequently, the Nazis changed course and instead stopped at a small village. Those inside the cattle cars were told that the war was over and they were free to leave. But they soon learned that it was a ruse for the Nazis to shoot at them in an open field.

“Oh my God, machine-gun fire,” Weiss said. “We ran back to the train, and so could everybody else who didn’t get killed or wounded.”

The train started up again for another day, and stopped so that the Jewish prisoners on the train could be given a bowl of soup. Overhead, American planes saw the Nazi soldiers and began bombing the train, thinking that it was filled entirely with Nazis. The Jewish prisoners on the train began opening the boxcars so they could run for cover; the Nazis noticed this and began firing on them. “We got it from both sides,” Weiss said. “I saw a couple people going right underneath the train, so I did the same thing.” The American planes eventually saw the prisoner uniforms and ceased the bombing, allowing the Nazis to restart the train.

When the train stopped again, Weiss noticed that the Nazi guards were older; previously he had seen younger Nazi guards, prompting Weiss to surmise that the war must be close to being over and the younger guards had escaped to avoid capture. Weiss also saw a couple of prisoners sneaking away from the Nazis, and he followed them; he eventually ran into a military truck and hid behind a tree, but the soldiers assured him that they were American.

“Oh my God,” Weiss said as his eyes teared up. “I’m free I’m free I’m free!”

Weiss was temporarily housed with other freed prisoners in an abandoned Hitler Youth Camp, where the Americans provided them with food, shelter, medicine and entertainment. Eventually, the Americans gave them the opportunity to return to their hometowns, and Weiss was reunited with his brother.

After the war, Weiss immigrated to America, first residing in Pittsburgh before moving to Los Angeles; today, he lives in West Los Angeles. Weiss’s brother immigrated to Israel, then known as Palestine.

The recent rise in antisemitism “is not good,” Weiss said. “I never thought it would happen this bad over here.”

However, he remains optimistic that the recent antisemitism will eventually be curbed, noting that the various Jewish organizations that exist today weren’t around during the Holocaust. “Between the American government and the Jewish organizations, they’re going to quiet it down. At least I hope so.”