Albrecht Weinberg, a Holocaust survivor who endured multiple Nazi concentration and death camps and lost most of his family during the genocide, has died at the age of 101 in northwestern Germany, authorities announced on Tuesday.
Weinberg passed away in Leer, a city in the East Frisia region, just weeks after celebrating his birthday and attending the premiere of a documentary about his life titled Es ist immer in meinem Kopf (It is always in my head), which was watched by hundreds of guests, the city said in a statement.
"Since returning from New York to his East Frisian home 14 years ago, Albrecht recounted tirelessly and with incredible energy his terrible experiences during the Nazi era and warned again and again against forgetting," said Mayor Claus-Peter Horst.
Born on March 7, 1925, in Rhauderfehn near Leer, Weinberg was imprisoned at Auschwitz, Mittelbau-Dora, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, and survived three death marches at the end of World War II. For years, he spoke to high school students and other groups about the atrocities he endured.
In an interview last year, Weinberg described how the memories of his wartime suffering continued to haunt him. "I sleep with it, I wake up with it, I sweat, I have nightmares; that is my present," he said. He expressed concern about what would happen when survivors like him were no longer alive to bear witness. "When my generation is not in this world anymore, when we disappear from the world, then the next generation can only read it out of the book," he warned.
Weinberg was awarded Germany's Order of Merit in 2017 but returned it last year in protest after a parliamentary vote that saw a motion by Friedrich Merz, now chancellor, to tighten border controls for migrants passed with support from a far-right party.
Israel's ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, paid tribute on social media, saying he had known Weinberg well and describing him as "a bridge - between past and present, between pain and hope, between the dead he could never forget and the young people whom he encouraged to seek the truth."
