Life story of Holocaust survivor Albrecht (99) from Ostfriesland published in book. ‘In fact, everyone should read it’

It has been put on paper and published in book form. “And that book is selling very well,” says Gerda Dänekas on behalf of Weinberg.

Synagogue in Groningen

She has been caring for him for many years and shares a home with him in the East Frisian city of Leer. In the city that made him an honorary citizen last year and from which he regularly travels to tell his story. To children, to adults, to Groningen residents. Because yes, Weinberg also regularly crosses the border and spoke, among other things, in the synagogue in Folkingestraat in Stad.

He is the only Jewish survivor of the Holocaust in Leer, even in the whole of Ostfriesland, and wants to warn people of all ages against anti-Semitism with his story. He has been working on this for many years, with all the energy he still has in him.

Last trip to Israel

That energy also made him travel to Israel for the last time two years ago. The German journalist/writer Nicolas Büchse accompanied him. “A friendship arose between the two, Albrecht told him his life story, Nicolaus wrote it down and that is how the book was born,” says Gerda Dänekas.

That’s called Damit die Erinnerung nicht blast wie die Nummer auf meinem Arm (So ​​that the memory does not fade like the number on my arm) and appears on the other side of the border on bestseller lists. Many want to read what one of the few living witnesses of the Holocaust made.

That number from the title of the book is 116927. It was tattooed in his arm when he was in the Auschwitz extermination camp and is still legible, although slightly more difficult. The inky black time in Auschwitz of course plays a central role in the book, but that too what came before, what followed. His happy childhood in the village of Westrhauderfehn, near Leer. Being excluded under the Nazis, the deportation in 1943, first to Berlin, then to Auschwitz.

To America with my sister

He survived that camp, then the death marches and then the horrors of Bergen-Belsen. After the liberation he left for America, with his sister, who had also survived. He wanted nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Leer, with the whole of Germany.

In 1985 he received a letter from the city council of Leer, which invited former Jewish residents. He decided to go, found a very different, much friendlier city than expected. “In 2012 he came to live permanently in Leer, with his sister who died a short time later,” says Dänekas. “I was working at the home where he was staying at the time, which is how the contact between us started. I have always continued to take care of him.”

‘In fact, everyone should read it’

Once back in Leer, he also started telling his story at schools and other places. Always with that gloomy knowledge that his memories would disappear when he is gone. “But that is no longer the case with the publication of the book,” says Dänekas. “Now we know that the memories remain. We are very happy that it is selling so well. Actually, everyone should read it.”

Weinberg celebrated his 99th birthday earlier this month, is in reasonable health, has a great interest in other people and everything that happens in the world. But he now also has the comforting certainty that, when he is no longer there, that book can still be read. That book is read from in the former Jewish school in Leer immediately after Easter and which means that he will visit many other places in the coming weeks to talk about it.