Auschwitz survivor Albrecht Weinberg: ‘Everything can go back to the way it was in the 1930s’
At 99, and after having survived three concentration camps, this citizen decided to return the Order of Merit after the political upheaval caused by the union of the center-right and the far-right against migration
Albrecht Weinberg was 18 years old when the Nazis deported him to Auschwitz in 1943. He survived three concentration camps and was finally liberated at the Bergen-Belsen camp. His parents and almost all of his family were murdered in the Holocaust. In 2012, he returned with his sister from the United States to Leer, a small town in northern Germany, and since then he has dedicated himself to educating German students about what happened in the past, which earned him the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2017. Now, about to turn 100, he admits to being shocked by the decision of the Christian Democrat leader, Friedrich Merz, to accept the support of the extreme right in order to try to push through a package of measures against immigration. In a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS from his home, he warns of the danger of giving space to the far right.
