‘A solemn, moving experience’
Holocaust survivor George Stein, who passed away last year, was represented by his son Michael at the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp.
Queensland Holocaust survivor George Stein, who passed away last year, was represented by his son Michael at the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp near Nordhausen in Germany last month.
“It was a solemn, moving experience with three survivors and 35 relatives attending,” Michael told The AJN.
“The most moving experience was when a survivor with 12 relatives conducted a memorial service in the crematorium for his father. Kaddish was recited and a memorial plaque was affixed.”
On the anniversary of George’s passing, April 18, a lunch was held in his honour.
Michael presented an Australian flag from Parliament House in Canberra, given to him by speaker Milton Dick, to the Dora memorial museum.
He gave a speech to the hundred people in attendance, including dignitaries, among them Nazi-era historian Jens-Christian Wagner, to whom his father had become a best friend and mentor.
“My father stated that Dora was a beautiful name, a lady’s name, with beautiful countryside.
“How could a place like this be a scene of such atrocities with over 2000 people perishing?
“[He said] that good will always overcome tragedy.”
George was sent to Auschwitz from Oradea on the Hungarian-Romanian border with his father, a shoemaker and president of the local synagogue, his mother and elder sister. He was 16 at the time and lied about his age, saying he was 18. He never saw his family again.
Someone told him to tell the guards that he was willing to work and he was sent to the north of France to be trained to construct V2 rockets, under the guidance of Volkswagen Works.
The site was destroyed by the British and transferred to Dora. Dora was liberated by US forces in April 1945.
George met his wife after the war in a displaced persons camp at Admont in the Austrian Alps. They migrated to Israel and then to Australia in 1956.
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