Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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deportees to Theresienstadt, eighteen Jews survived. 269 Two of these survivors,
seventy-year-old Heinrich Berg and seventy-two-year-old Josef Sondheimer, 270
returned to Magdeburg in 1945 after their liberation from the camp. 271 Of the 217
who perished, 172 died in Theresienstadt and the remaining forty-five were
deported at various intervals on to Auschwitz-Birkenau and perished there. 272 The
only other documented survivor to return to Magdeburg after liberation was the
thirty-two-year-old civil engineer, Gabriel Weinberger, 273 who was deported to
Auschwitz-Birkenau on 26 February 1943. 274 Gravely ill, he was hospitalised in a
sanatorium in Thuringia in 1945, following his liberation and return to
Magdeburg. 275
The small number of Jews who witnessed liberation in Magdeburg were
simultaneously confronted with the reality of the annihilation and dispersion of
their loved ones and friends, coupled with the absence of the community they had
known and loved. In their daily lives they often faced their former persecutors.
They suffered from their own ill-health and much uncertainty with the arrival of
the Soviet forces. All wished to re-establish ‘normal’ lives, but generally found it
too painful to do so in a land which now symbolised unimaginable suffering. Few
wished to remain in the city they had once proudly called home. The
269 Institut Theresienstädter Initiative, ed., op. cit., p. 766. The statistics for those
survivors are as follows. The number of survivors is listed against the date of
deportation from Magdeburg: 18.11.1942 – 04; 25.11.1942 – 03; 02.12.1942 – 01;
and 11.01.1944 – 10.
270 Ibid.
271 M. F., op. cit., 27 June 1999.
272 Institut Theresienstädter Initiative, ed., op. cit., pp. 762-766. The statistics for those
deported on to Auschwitz-Birkenau are as follows: 29.01.1943 – 04; 18.12.1943 – 08;
16.05.1944 – 27; 29.09.1944 – 01; 09.10.1944 – 03; 19.10.1944 – 01; and 28.10.1944
– 01.
273 Correspondence from M. F. to the author, op. cit., 12 July 1999.
274 Zentralinstitut für sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung, Freie Universität Berlin, ed.,
op. cit., p. 1325.
275 Correspondence from M. F. to the author, op. cit., 12 July 1999.