Albrecht Weinberg, a Holocaust survivor who returned to Germany in his 80s, dies at 101
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BERLIN (AP) — Albrecht Weinberg, who survived several Nazi concentration and death camps and lost most of his family in the Holocaust before returning to Germany in his 80s, has died at the age of 101, authorities in his home region said Tuesday.
Weinberg died in Leer, in northwestern Germany, weeks after he marked his birthday and the premiere of a film about his life, “Es ist immer in meinem Kopf” (“It is always in my head”), attended by hundreds of guests, the city said in a statement.
“Since returning from New York to his East Frisian home 14 years ago, Albrecht recounted tirelessly and with incredible energy his terrible experiences during the Nazi era and warned again and again against forgetting,” Mayor Claus-Peter Horst said.
Weinberg, who was born in Rhauderfehn, near Leer, on March 7, 1925, survived incarceration at the Auschwitz, Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen camps as well as three death marches at the end of World War II. He spent years teaching high school students and others about the atrocities he had to live through.
Speaking last year, Weinberg said the memories of his wartime experiences still haunted him. “I sleep with it, I wake up with it, I sweat, I have nightmares; that is my present,” he said.
He said he worried what would happen when he was no longer around to bear witness.
“When my generation is not in this world anymore, when we disappear from the world, then the next generation can only read it out of the book,” he said.
Weinberg was awarded Germany’s Order of Merit in 2017 but handed it back last year in protest at a parliamentary vote in which a motion put forward by Friedrich Merz, now the country’s chancellor, calling for many more migrants to be turned back at Germany’s borders passed with the help of a far-right party.
Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, said in a post on X that he had got to know Weinberg well and paid tribute to him as “a bridge — between past and present, between pain and hope, between the dead he could never forget and the young people whom he encouraged to seek the truth.”