Stefan Jerzy Zweig

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Stefan Jerzy Zweig (2007)

Stefan Jerzy Zweig (born January 28, 1941 in Krakow ) was known as "the Buchenwald child" from Bruno Apitz 'novel Naked among wolves .

Life

Stefan Jerzy Zweig spent the first years of his life with his parents, Zacharias Zweig and Helena Zweig, and his sister Sylwia Zweig in the Krakow ghetto . The family was separated in August 1944. His mother and sister were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp .

At the beginning of August 1944, at the age of three, Stefan Jerzy Zweig was taken with his father to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he arrived on August 5, 1944 and was recorded with the note "Polit Pole Jude" and prisoner number 67509.

The inmates Willi Bleicher and Robert Siewert took care of him. When he was to be brought to the Auschwitz concentration camp a few weeks after his arrival , he was initially hidden among prisoners suffering from typhoid fever . Later his name and that of eleven other children were removed from the list of 200 children and young people who were to be brought to Auschwitz on September 26, 1944. The twelve deleted names were replaced by twelve others, including Willy Blum , a 16-year-old Sinto boy, last on the list . Stefan Jerzy Zweig was then smuggled into the "Small Camp" and hidden there by his father until Buchenwald was liberated in April 1945. The presence of the father and his commitment to the son are not mentioned in the novel Nackt unter Wölfen by Bruno Apitz and in the two films of the same name made after the novel from 1963 and 2015 respectively .

Because of a tuberculosis branch was treated to 1949 in Poland, Switzerland and France. He then went to Israel with his father . He got a job as a clerk in the Ministry of Finance, which he held until his retirement. Stefan Jerzy Zweig graduated from high school and did his military service in the Israeli army . He then began studying mathematics in Tel Aviv , but broke it off.

The publication of the novel Naked Among Wolves in 1958 was not noticed by either. It was not until Frank Beyer's 1963 film adaptation with Armin Mueller-Stahl in a leading role prompted journalists from the GDR to look for Zweig. He had just started studying mathematics in Lyon when the media caught interest in him. During a stay in the GDR, Zweig also met Bruno Apitz.

After Zweig broke off his studies again, he got an apprenticeship as a cameraman in the Babelsberg film studio in 1964 - also because of his popularity . He married a GDR citizen and moved to Vienna in 1972 with her and their son. There he got a job as a cameraman at ORF . His father died that same year.

The commemorative plaque installed in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial in the early 1950s

“This building housed the effects room, the prisoners' clothing room and the equipment room. In the effects room, prisoners took care of 3-year-old Stefan Zweig who was hidden between sacks. At the risk of their lives they saved the child from annihilation "

was replaced at the beginning of 2000 by the management of the memorial with a more detailed information board about the function of the building, which, without naming a branch, emphasizes that thousands of young people and children passed it on their way to the small camp and to the various armaments commandos. Zweig protested against this with the 2005 book . Tears alone are not enough . In writing, he also protested against defaming his saviors as "Stalinists". Later he sued the director of the memorial, Volkhard Knigge , among other things, for not using the term “exchange of sacrifices” in statements about his rescue, and for compensation. After the Berlin Regional Court had dismissed the complaint in the first instance, Knigge undertook on February 23, 2012 in the appeal proceedings before the Court of Appeal as part of a settlement not to use the term in question in interviews.

The reference to "Naked Among Wolves"

Bruno Apitz did not know the boy Stefan Jerzy Zweig. The novel is based on Apitz's own experiences and on hearsay about the boy. Some statements and parts of the novel therefore do not match the original story of Zweig. For example, Apitz writes that a prisoner-of-war Polish officer who is not the father first smuggles the child into the camp in a suitcase and shortly afterwards takes a transport to an extermination camp, where he is presumably killed.

In his novel Anders (Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 2003) Hans Joachim Schädlich also addresses Bruno Apitz's novel. The "Buchenwald child" Zweig is attested to still clinging to the legend that the inmates liberated the camp themselves. At the same time, Schädlich hinted at a certain tragedy in Zweig's life story when he had one of his - fictional - characters say: “Jerzy Zweig probably cannot accept his true story: that he is alive because the gypsy boy Willy Blum was put on the gas instead ". In a settlement before the Court of Justice , Schadenlich and the publisher declared that they would not maintain this statement and that they would only sell the novel in its previous version until September 30, 2010.

The story Stefan Jerzy Zweig wrote his father for the Holocaust -Gedenkstätte Yad Vashem down in a report. It was published in 1987 under the title My father, what are you doing here ...? Published between Buchenwald and Auschwitz and republished by his son in 2005 with personal comments and an afterword by Elfriede Jelinek .

literature

  • Sonia Combe: One life against another. The "exchange of sacrifices" in the Buchenwald concentration camp and its aftermath. Translated by Marcel Streng. Neofelis Verlag 2017, ISBN 9783958081482
  • Une vie contre une autre: Échange de victime et modalités de survie dans le camp de Buchenwald. Fayard 2014, books.google

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ulrich Weinzierl: The child from Buchenwald. Article in Die Welt of April 9, 2005, accessed August 4, 2009.
  2. ↑ Bill Niven : The beech forest child. Translated from the English by Florian Bergmeier. Halle 2008, Bonn 2009. p. 247.
  3. ↑ Constanze von Bullion : Concentration camp survivor defends himself against the term "victim exchange". Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 27, 2012.
  4. ↑ Harmful: Anders , p. 81.
  5. ↑ Harmful: Anders , p. 92.
  6. ^ Dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. ISBN 3763804714
  7. ↑ Zacharias Zweig, Stefan Jerzy Zweig: Tears alone are not enough. With epilogue, contemporary illustrations, pictures, texts and satires. Self-published, Vienna 2005 ISBN 978-3-200-00264-7 .- 2nd edition 2007
personal data
SURNAME Zweig, Stefan Jerzy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish author and cameraman
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Krakow