 "Photo: Jeff Brien")
Holocaust survivor Sonia Weitz spoke at Boston College for the seventh time last Tuesday to share stories of her childhood under Nazi occupation and through five concentration camps. Weitz is currently a poet and director of the North Shore Holocaust Center in Peabody, Massachusetts.
Mer Zovko, Director of the Emerging Leader Program, stated that Weitz has been described as “a survivor with a poet’s eye,” who is “dedicated to preserving the uniqueness of the Holocaust.” Zovko added that “It is through people like Sonia that the lessons of history are engraved on our souls.”
Weitz began by stating that “as a Holocaust survivor, I come from another world.” She stated that only she and her older sister Blanca were the only two of 84 family members who survived the genocide. “Not all victims were Jews,” Weitz said, “but all of the Jews were victims.”
Weitz described the Holocaust as “a crime without a language,” and stated that while writing poetry, she often struggles to find the right words to depict the unspeakable.
“I speak because I really think we need to learn from this, because if we don’t, we are in trouble,” Weitz said. “My generation did a bad job of it. But there will be times when you’ll need to speak up — don’t be a bystander. Everybody has a chance to make a difference,” she added.
Weitz recalled her early childhood in Poland, with memories of summers spent on her grandmother’s farm. She stated that as the Nazis presented an increasing threat, the climate of her childhood changed. Weitz stated that she can still vaguely remember her parents discussing plans to leave Europe, because “we knew that our lives were in danger. However, at that time there was no place for us to go.”
After the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Weitz and her family were forced into the Krakow ghetto along with the other Jews of the city. She stated that two or three families were crowded into one room, food was rationed and Jews were given strict curfews. Weitz added that her sister secretly married her childhood sweetheart in the ghetto.
Eventually, Weitz stated, the old, the sick and those under the age of 14 were taken away to the concentration camps. Weitz, who was only nine at the time, was saved because her parents were able to forge documents that stated she was 14.
Weitz paused to address the efforts of Holocaust revisionists. “There are people out there who say this never happened. It is almost obscene to actually have to go out and prove that something of this magnitude did happen,” Weitz said. She added that all footage that exists of concentration camps “was filmed by the killers,” and thus proves their authenticity. Holding up her book of poems, I Promised I Would Tell, she stated “I wish that this little book was fiction. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?”
She also told of efforts to smuggle Jewish children out of the ghetto and into the woods to fight with the Polish underground. Since Jews were not allowed to participate in the underground, her mother dyed Weitz’s hair blond in order to make her look more Aryan. Weitz was still rejected, but she added that Jews often planned their own operations against the Nazis. “I get very upset when people say the Jews went like sheep to the slaughter,” Weitz said. She explained that every ghetto and almost every concentration camp — including Auschwitz — had a resistance movement.
Weitz also praised the bravery of Gentiles who hid a Jewish child or even an entire family from the Nazi persecution. If a Gentile was caught taking such action, according to Weitz, his or her entire family would have been executed.
According to Weitz, Jews never had any idea that they were being taken to their death. “We were lied to all the way to the gas chambers,” Weitz said. The Nazis, she stated, used euphemisms like “deportation camps” and instructed prisoners to fold their clothes carefully before being taken to gas chambers disguised as a shower.
Weitz described the night her mother was taken, stating that her mother’s last words to her were,- “Promise me you will tell.” Soon after, Weitz, Blanca and her father were also sent to concentration camps.
Weitz stated that she was immediately separated from her father, but one night made her way into the men’s barracks at Plaszow to see him. She remembered that her father said to her, “You and I never had a chance to dance together,” and so the two danced to the music of a Gypsy boy’s harmonica—an extremely illegal item. This was the last time Weitz ever saw her father, for soon after she and Blanca were shipped to Auschwitz
Weitz and Blanca managed to stay together through all the concentration camps, including a “death march” to evacuate Auschwitz after the Russians began closing in. During the death march, she survived on a diet of snow and spent 16 days in a sealed cattle car. “My sister Blanca was always looking after me,” Weitz said. “She would never let me fall asleep, because she discovered that it was very easy to die in the snow.”
At Bergen-Belsen, the camp at which Anne Frank died, Weitz suffered from severe typhus and was near death. “One or two more days, and I wouldn’t be here talking to you,” Weitz said. She described how Blanca struggled to make Weitz cheerful during endless daily roll-call, sometimes up to 14 hours long. The sisters continued to be switched in and out of different labor camps. “It is mind-boggling that [the Germans] were losing on every front, and yet the orders to kill every possible Jew never ceased,” Weitz said.
When the Allies liberated Bergen-Belsen, Weitz stated the she awoke one morning to see an African-American soldier. Weitz remembers that she had never seen an African-American before, and thought that this soldier must be the Messiah. She read a poem written in tribute to her liberator, entitled “My Black Messiah.”
She also recalled the happy reunion between Blanca and her husband, Norbert. She stated that war-hardened American soldiers who watched the scene were moved to tears, and one of the soldiers removed his own wedding ring and gave it to the couple.
Weitz stated that she, Blanca and Norbert spent three years in a displaced persons camp, before locating thier Uncle Harry living in Peabody, MA. They relocated to the United States, where they live to this day.
Weitz then answered questions from the audience, stating that she has not lost her faith as a result of her experiences.
“For me, blaming God didn’t work,” Weitz said. “Instead of asking ‘Where was God?’, I prefer to ask, ‘Where was man?’”
The lecture was sponsored by the Emerging Leader Program and the Shaw Leadership Program.
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