Watch video of concentration camp survivor Martin Weiss speaking during the 2009 Holocaust Lecture Series at Vanderbilt University, which is built around the theme “Barriers & Boundaries” for its 32nd year.
Weiss, who was liberated by U.S. troops at the Gunskirchen camp in May 1945, spoke Nov. 1.
Martin Weiss was one of nine children born to Orthodox Jewish parents in Polana, a rural village in the Carpathian Mountains. His father owned a farm and a meat business, and his mother attended to the children and the home. Everyone in the family helped take care of the horses and cows. In March 1939, his life was changed dramatically when Nazi Germany and its allies dismembered Czechoslovakia. Hungarian troops occupied Polana, and Jews were subjected to discriminatory legislation. In April 1944, Hungarian gendarmes transported the village’s Jews, including the Weiss family, to the Munkacs ghetto. In May, they were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Weiss, his father, brother, and two uncles were selected for forced labor; the other family members were sent to the gas chambers. Weiss and his father were sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, and then to the subcamp of Melk, where they were forced to build tunnels into the side of the mountains. His father perished there. Weiss was liberated at the Gunskirchen camp by U.S. troops in May 1945.
The Holocaust Lecture Series at Vanderbilt University is the longest continuous Holocaust lecture series at an American university.
Media Contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu