Holocaust concentration camp survivor dies at 107

[pampango]

Leopold Engleitner hid out in the German countryside
to avoid having to serve in Hitler's army.

An Austrian organization that tracks the fate of Nazi concentration camp inmates says one of the oldest known survivors has died at the age of 107.

The Mauthausen Committee said Thursday that Leopold Engleitner died April 21.

After refusing to renounce his faith as a Jehovah's Witness, he survived three concentration camps and forced labour between 1939 and 1945. He weighed just 28 kilograms — about 60 pounds — on release from the Ravensbrueck camp in 1943 after he agreed to work as farm slave labourer. Later ordered to report to Hitler's army, Engleitner hid in the Tyrolean countryside until after the war ended.

The oldest known survivor of the camps is Alice Herz-Sommer, 109, who lives in London. She was confined in the camp in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, in Germany.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/02/obit-nazi-camp-survivor.html

Interesting that he was a Jehovah's Witness. It is amazing that any survivors of the Nazi concentration camps are still alive 68 years after they were liberated.

[marybourg]

1. Many who were children at the time are still alive!

[madaboutharry]

2. There are many survivors now in their 80's

They were young teens and pre-teens at the time. Many twelve, thirteen, fourteen year olds survived.

[Aristus]

3. I'm happy he had a long, long life of freedom after surviving that nightmare.

Jews weren't the only ones persecuted by the Nazis for their religion, just the most numerous, and who received the most savage treatment. Jehovah's Witnesses were interned in camps, as well. Also gypsies, gays, the mentally ill, physically disabled people the Nazis called "useless eaters" (sounds like something the republicans would do...), etc.

[get the red out]

5. I have seen a republican use the term "useless eater"

He was on a blog years ago, he used it to describe women who did not have children. Now where would Republicans get that term, hmmmmm.....

[Taverner]

4. Take THAT, Adolf!!!!

They outlived you, bastard

[Aristus]

6. If he had lived another five years,

he would have been twice as old as Hitler at death. As it is, he really stuck it to the filthy monster...

[CountAllVotes]

7. My god what a face

You can see the awful hatred in his face, the hatred he had towards what happened to him and likely the rest of his family and Hitler, bastard that he was.

I had a professor in school and yes, he was a Holocaust survivor. He was quite old at the time some 20 years ago and he wrote a book about genocide.

What a horror it was to live through this horrid event!

May Leopold Engleitner RIP!!!

& recommend.

[Nye Bevan]

8. Wow. What a life. RIP. (nt)

[CountAllVotes]

9. Ravensbrück Concentration Camp

Everywhere I've looked it says it was a women's concentration camp.

>>The Ravensbrück Concentration Camp was the largest female camp in the Nazi prison system. Many women in the camp were Jewish, others were political prisoners, asocials, Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, and criminals. Men oversaw the leadership in the camp, but the female inmates were looked after by women guards of the “female civilian employees of the SS.” Ravensbrück became the largest training facility for these female guards of the SS during the camp's active period. The women of Ravensbrück worked during their incarceration mostly in agricultural and industrial fields. However, prisoners also faced being selected for euthanasia programs, horrifying medical experiments, and even work in brothels. The women of Ravensbrück suffered greatly during their incarceration, and the lack of food and sanitary conditions only aggravated the problems these women faced. When Soviet forces liberated the camp on April 29, 1945, they found thousands of women ready to regain their life and freedom.

http://www.fold3.com/page/94110523_ravensbrck_concentration_camp/