Contemporary Witness Accounts

Max Mannheimer, a Jew, was deported from his home in what is today the Czech Republic to various concentration camps. Today he is one of the most active eyewitnesses of the events of that time. He holds lectures on what happened to him and appeals to his audience to keep the memory alive and defend the principle of democracy.

In 1943 you were deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp and later moved to Auschwitz, Warsaw and Dachau. The vast majority of your relatives were killed. It is hard to imagine how someone is able to bear suffering on that scale. In your book Spätes Tagebuch (Belated diary) your brother Edgar plays a major role in your fight for survival. What helped you survive?

In fact it was my brother who gave me the strength to survive. He was a born optimist, and I felt safe with him by my side. Almost every day I was in the camp hospital he brought me his bread rations so I wouldn’t lose too much weight. Very underweight prisoners were singled out and killed very quickly. Another reason to survive was that I was responsible for my other brother, who was five years younger. I'm sure I would not have survived without him.

For a long time you remained silent on your time in the camps. Today hardly a day goes by without your giving lectures and above all, meeting young people to talk about what happened. What made you decide to break your silence? What is the most important message you want to give to the youth of today?

Auschwitz

I began speaking at events only in April 1986, after my memoirs were published in the Dachauer Hefte series. At the time the then minister of the Versöhnungskirche church in Dachau, Waldemar Pisarski, invited me to read my memoirs publicly. It wasn’t my idea. Following that I received other invitations, mainly to speak in schools. I didn’t want to tell the audience of my suffering. Rather, I wanted to highlight the dangers of a dictatorship and appeal to my listeners to defend the principle of democracy.

When listening to you it becomes obvious how many details you can still remember. Did you ever wish you could forget what happened?

If I had been able to forget, I may not have had mental problems. I was able to get out of Auschwitz, but Auschwitz never got out of me. Survivors are torn between wanting to forget and being compelled to remember. For we owe it to those who were killed to keep the memories alive. Their suffering and their death must be remembered. If they were forgotten, they would die a second time.

What can you personally remember most vividly? Your personal suffering, your emotions at the time, or your memories of other people in the camps, your fellow prisoners, or the Nazis?

My most vivid memory is the process of selection at the ramps at Auschwitz-Birkenau on the night of 1 February 1943. That was the last time I saw my parents, my wife and my sister. I also remember 7 March 1943 when our brother Ernst died of pneumonia, diarrhoea and fever. The fear of becoming unable to work and then to be killed was always with me. Yet while these terrible memories have been with me all my life, I have never forgotten the positive signs of solidarity. I have to mention two of my fellow prisoners, both of whom are no longer alive, by name. First Josef Brammer, whom we met in Uherský Brod in 1939. When Ernst became feverish we had no coats, and Brammer took off his padded jacket, gave it to Ernst and put on his thin jacket instead. An act of kindness which, he maintained after the war, he never hesitated to commit. The other person was Ernst Landau, a journalist from Vienna. In the autumn of 1943 he shared his soup with me in Warsaw. These acts were the foundation of our friendship, which lasted until they died.

After the camps were liberated you returned to Germany, the home of your tormentors, because of your later wife Elfriede, who had been in the Resistance. How did she manage to convince you to live in Germany? How difficult was and is it for you to return so frequently to the places you suffered so much?

My later wife Elfriede, who came from a family of Social Democrats and was in the Resistance during the Nazi era, convinced me that after all that had happened, Germany was certainly predestined to be a democracy. And when you’re in love, you’re more willing to believe what you are told. On 9 November 1946 I re-entered the country that I had wanted to turn my back on for ever. For 15 years I worked for Jewish organisations and a newspaper, and moved exclusively in Jewish circles and the Social Democrat friends of my wife’s, who sat on Munich's city council for the SPD party between 1952 and 1960. Germany was the origin of my suffering, but I tried to see the promising beginnings of a young democracy.

Why are you so committed to working for the Dachau memorial site?

Auschwitz

I see Dachau as a place of learning for post-war generations. I think it is important to be led through the camp by a former prisoner and go to lectures in the seminar room. There are very few prisoners who can still give first-hand historical insights. Places and objects that remind us of what happened should not be perceived as stigmas of the past. It’s not about apportioning blame or raising accusing fingers. These places can help visitors to reflect on what happened, understand the historical background, and recognise the causes and implications.

Germany has become a stable democracy. Still, right-wing groups still exist and have a growing following in certain areas of the country. What are your thoughts when you hear extreme right-wing slogans and see extremists on the street?

I hope the democracy remains stable enough to keep a check on extreme right-wing activities. The fact that the NPD/DVU alliance is now involved in parliament is a great danger. Taxpayers are funding a party that is working to undermine democracy. That is why it should be banned. Witnessing the activities of the Nazis, new and old, is a great concern to me. It is encouraging that NPD rallies, which unfortunately cannot be banned, are to some extent neutralised by the strong presence of anti-Nazi activists. However, I am worried about the fact that the courts are handing down very lenient punishments or even acquittals.

You are not averse to communicating with the right-wing scene. In fact you talk to its members quite frequently. Are these meetings helping at all? Are you even able to get through to these people?

It is difficult to say whether my meetings with young Nazis are accomplishing anything. But it would be a mistake not to do anything at all. I did manage to get one of them to leave the movement (Bela Ewald Althans, ed.). Many years have passed since then, but he seems to be cured of the affliction. I met young Nazis several times at meetings to which I was invited by Church ministers and teachers. I see my contributions as an eyewitness as part of my responsibility for the next generation. I just hope they understand these contributions and take them to heart.

Max Mannheimer was born in 1920 in Nový Jičín in what is today the Czech Republic. After the occupation of the Sudetenland region he relocated to Uherský Brod. In 1943 he was deported to Theresienstadt and later moved to Auschwitz, Warsaw and Dachau. On 30 April 1945 the US Army rescued Mannheimer from a goods train near Tutzing in Bavaria. He and his brother Edgar were the only members of his family to survive persecution. After returning to his home town he met a young German woman in June 1945 and returned to Germany with her in 1946. Today Max Mannheimer lives near Munich and is in receipt of several medals and awards, including an honorary doctorate from Munich University in 2000. Mannheimer is president of the Dachau camp association and still holds frequent lectures, especially at schools. Literature Max Mannheimer: Spätes Tagebuch. Theresienstadt - Auschwitz - Warschau – Dachau, published by Pendo Verlag, Zurich, 2005