Apr 2, 2006 By Angie Oravec 9 min read

Holocaust survivor Sam Weinreb said it is impossible to tell someone how horrid the conditions were as a prisoner in a Nazi death camp in Germany during the Holocaust. Weinreb, 13 years old at the time, lived in a camp in Auschwitz, Germany, for 11 months, endured torture and witnessed atrocities committed in the name of war.

Weinreb, now 76 and living in White Oak near Pittsburgh with his family, retold the events of his time in a German camp, where he lived for 11 months, and his escape during the “March of Death” during a recent Diversity Task Force-sponsored event at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus.

Born in Czechoslovakia, which the German troops occupied in March 1939, Weinreb recalled returning home from his bar mitzvah lesson at 13 years old to find a home locked and no one there. A neighbor told him his parents, two brothers and sister were taken away. To where, the neighbor didn’t know.

“That afternoon was the last time I ever saw or spoke to a member of my family,” said Weinreb, standing behind the podium, speaking into a plain, black microphone without emotion.

The neighbor told Weinreb it was not safe to stay in that country. He knew someone in Hungary who was helping Holocaust victims cross the border.

Needing to cross immediately, not even having time to ask for money, Weinreb and his neighbor started walking toward the border. An hour later, the man told him that was as far as he can go.

Equipped with only instructions on how to proceed pass the guards, barely a teenage boy, Weinreb walked on, sometimes crawling in mud so as to not to be seen by the guards.

He located the person he was meant to see. The person seemed to know about him already. He said he would help him, he knew he was going to be there that morning.

Weinreb told the man he had grandparents who lived in a small town in the country and an uncle who resided in Budapest, the capital city. The man told him that going to his grandparents’ town was too risky, for they too would be arrested for hiding a fugitive in their home.

Weinreb went to Budapest. He said he’ll never forget the look on his uncle’s face when he saw his young nephew.

“He knew something bad had happened,” Weinreb said.

Not long after the start of his stay with his uncle, someone was waiting for him on his trip back from the city to tell him he couldn’t come back to his uncle’s place, that the neighbors reported him to the police. Even as a boy, Weinreb understood. He knew his uncle would get in trouble if he returned.

Weinreb spent the night in the park and then went into the city to look for work. He asked for no pay, only food. But few provided that.

For the next five or six months, he slept on the streets of Budapest, most of the time behind factories. He had to look for food, a task he said was not easy. He checked garbage cans and behind houses.

“Could you imagine what it would be like only being 13 with no place to call home, in constant fear, not understanding the language?” Weinreb asked those in attendance. “After a while, I could not go on living, if you could call that living.”

Weinreb decided to go to the police, thinking, “What is the worst thing they could do to a 13-year-old kid who did nothing wrong, but was born Jewish?” He told the police his story. He brought up the possibility of staying with his grandparents.

“I don’t think I finished that last sentence before I was slapped in the face by one of the officers who said, ‘You’re not going nowhere but put in prison,'” said Weinreb.

He stayed there for the next two years, doing what was asked of him until he was told he would be released to his grandparents, but would have to report to police twice a week.

The first time he reported to the police department, he was beaten, called names, including, “You stinkin’ Jew. We don’t need none of you in our country” and that “if I told anything, I would be taken back to prison.”

Not long after, Weinreb was picked up by police and taken to a nearby city where people were taken by cattle car on a two-and-a-half day trip to Auschwitz concentration camps.

Weinreb recalled that train trip with clarity. He said 60 to 65 people were stuffed into each car. He said they were given no food or water, no bathroom or toilet facilities. Children and babies were crying. Some people never stopped crying. Others were praying constantly, and still others were quiet, possibly in a state of shock, wondering what would await them when they reached the camp. Soldiers guarded the cars, making sure no one escaped.

At the camp, some people were sent to the left, later being sent to work. Others were directed to the right. Those to the right, mostly elderly people and women with young children, were given a bar of soap and told to clean up. In the showers, they were gassed.

Weinreb was sent to the left.

He was told he no longer needed to remember his name. He would be called by his number, he was told.

He had to stand at attention, while one officer began the welcome by saying, “I want all of you to remember what I am saying. Auschwitz is a concentration camp where people will work or be sent to the gas chambers.”

The officer, with a sarcastic look on his face, continued by saying, “If you are strong, you will work. If you cannot work, you will be sent to the gas chambers.”

It was their choice. Weinreb chose work. He worked construction, carrying brick to sites. At times it was so cold that the skin would peel from his fingers when he touched the bricks. He also worked in a coal mine, unable to shovel heavy loads.

There was a hospital in the camp and prisoners were told if anyone gets sick or hurt on the job, they could report there and they would take care of them.

“It didn’t take long to realize that whoever went into the hospital never came out alive,” noted Weinreb.

For breakfast, Weinreb and his fellow prisoners were given a cup of black coffee and a slice of dry bread. Lunch consisted of a bowl of soup, sometimes with cabbage and potato peels in it. At dinner, prisoners were again given a slice of dry bread and a cup of coffee. That was their meal every day, seven days a week, recalled Weinreb.

Escaping was impossible. Barbed-wire fences surrounded the compound. Soldiers atop towers armed with guns watched the prisoners below. Many committed suicide by touching those same barbed-wire fences, Weinreb said.

One morning, 5,000 to 6,000 people in his group were told to prepare to march. That number was narrowed to less than 20 by the time the march, later known as “The Death March,” ended. Among those who lived and died there, Weinreb was not one of them.

He was an escapee. He ran away one night at dark.

“To this day, I have no idea how how far or how long I ran,” said Weinreb. “I woke up in a Russian military hospital” where a Russian officer told him he was discovered unconscious.

Three or four weeks later, he was released from the hospital and helped back to Czechoslovakia. He was devastated to learn no one in his family was alive.

Throughout all the horrid sights and hard times, Weinreb held the hope that if he survived, he would reunite with his family.

“Unfortunately, that did not happen,” he solemnly said. “I am certain I would not have survived without that hope.”

Just when he thought nothing good could have happened, it did. Weinreb met the girl he would later marry. He played with her as a child. She also lost her entire family, parents and siblings, all victims of the Holocaust.

His wife, Goldie, talked her husband into going to a U.S-controlled location to gain access into America. Soon after, he was put on a ship that took him to New York. He was placed in an orphanage where he met a man who found Weinreb’s cousin, who lived in McKeesport. The cousin visited him, but Weinreb was hesitant to go. He was shy and didn’t speak English, but he gave it a chance.

At 19, he married his wife, the same girl from his homeland who shared similar, awful experiences as a teenager growing up during Adolf Hitler’s dictatorial rule of Germany, which led to the deaths of millions in World War II.

To this day, Weinreb doesn’t understand how one person could brainwash so many millions of people into committing such heinous crimes.

“It has been many, many years since this happened, but it never really leaves you,” Weinreb said. “It’s almost impossible to describe to you what went on at those camps.”

Despite the loss of his family who he never saw or heard from nor whom he has no memories of – not even pictures – Weinreb said he still cannot hate those who murdered his parents and his siblings.

“I could not understand hatred,” he said. “I cannot hate the people who killed my family.”

Weinreb said it took him a long time to begin talking about his experiences, something that was very difficult at first. The Holocaust Center in Pittsburgh called to ask him to do so, but he would not agree until other survivors began dying. The first time he spoke was at the David L. Lawrence Hall in Oakland.

Since then, he has spoken to numerous church and school groups. He has even caught the attention of Steven Spielberg, who came to his home and recorded his story. His wife, who came to America shortly after he arrived, does not often share her story. Weinreb and his wife have children and now have their first grandchild.

For more on Weinreb’s story and those of other Holocaust survivors, refer to the book, “Flares of Memory.” It can be purchased online.