COLUMN: Carillon Flashback November 8, 1999 – Holocaust survivor shares memories

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Holocaust survivor Philip Weiss believes remembrance comes with responsibility and feels it is his duty to humanity to share his experiences of the Second World War with succeeding generations.

Weiss, a successful Winnipeg furniture manufacturer, will speak to a Remembrance Day audience at Niverville Elementary School during Nov. 11 services there.

As a young man experiencing certain historical happenings, Weiss says you are left with reasons to try to change the world as you go through it.

CARILLON ARCHIVES 

Mayor Clare Braun admires a distinguished service medal and humanitarian award presented to Holocaust survivor Philip Weiss, who was a special guest at Remembrance Day services in Niverville in 1999.
CARILLON ARCHIVES Mayor Clare Braun admires a distinguished service medal and humanitarian award presented to Holocaust survivor Philip Weiss, who was a special guest at Remembrance Day services in Niverville in 1999.

Survivors of Nazi death camps and slave labour camps can react in three different ways, Weiss says.

Some just don’t want to hear about it anymore and say, “Forget it.” Others remain completely neutral and will say nothing about their experiences at all. Weiss finds himself a member of a third group, feeling a need to work towards bettering conditions, while they are still on this earth.

He speaks on the issue more than on any other, for as he puts it, “We don’t have to read books.”

Weiss says as a survivor he can face any person who questions the Holocaust. They cannot come to him and say it did not happen, because he is a witness. And being a witness is where his responsibility lies, he says.

Well into his 70s, Weiss is still active in his company, which supplies quality upholstered furniture to a commercial market which includes a couple of major hotel chains.

He remains the eternal optimist, which is in sharp contrast to what could be expected from the hardships he has suffered.

While Weiss remains hesitant to go into details of his treatment during the Second World War, he remembers well each of the half a dozen labor camps and the concentration camp his family members were in.

In the fall of 1941 Weiss, his parents, a brother and a sister were taken from their home to the Ghetto of Drohobycz, in Poland.

In 1944 he was moved to the concentration camp of Mauthausen in Austria. It was from there he was liberated May 5, 1945.

Miraculously, Weiss was reunited with his parents and siblings who had been hidden by Christian families while Jews in the camps they had been in were being systematically liquidated. The British Broadcasting Corporation beamed names of the liberated back to Poland in hopes of reuniting families, Weiss said. His family were the lucky ones.

Weiss feels strongly that he and other Holocaust survivors owe a debt to those who perished.

Ironically, it was Hollywood’s version as much as real life experience, which has inspired Weiss to speak out.

Weiss saw the movie Schindler’s List during a visit to the United States in the early 1990’s and made up his mind to have it shown to as many people as possible, when it came to Winnipeg.

The story of enigmatic Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party, a womanizer and war profiteer, who saved the lives of more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust, struck a chord with Weiss.

He was inspired by the story of one man who made a difference with the backdrop of those who survived one of the darkest chapters in human history.

Before Weiss was finished with his project, he had shown Schindler’s List to 7,000 in Winnipeg. He spoke to students before and after each screening of the three-hour movie, he said.

There were several special screenings at Grant Park Theatre, but a contact he had enabled him to accommodate many more at the Canadian Air Force Base in St James.

The Winnipeg audiences, guests of Weiss, were mostly Christian students, although there were Jewish students as well. But those in the Jewish school system naturally are more aware of the Holocaust, Weiss explains.

Weiss said that was his goal…to make people aware what the years 1941 to 1945 were all about.

His efforts have been recognized with distinguished service awards from the City of Winnipeg, and the province of Manitoba, as well as accolades from Jewish groups, both in Canada and abroad.

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