Ilse Weberaus modern

Ilse Weber (* 11 January 1903 in Witkowitz, Austria-Hungary; † 6 October 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp)

Life

From the age of 14, Ilse Herlinger wrote Jewish and other children’s fairy tales, short plays for children and poems, which she also set to music. They were published in German, Czech, Austrian and Swiss newspapers and magazines, in books and also on the radio. In 1930 Ilse married Willi Weber and they lived in Witkowitz/Ostrava. New Year’s Day 1931 Hanuš was born and his brother Tomáš in March 1934. When life there became increasingly difficult for Jews, the family moved to Prague in 1939. In May 1939, Hanuš Weber was sent on one of the Kindertransports organised by the British Nicholas Winton in Prague to England and from there on to Sweden, where he was raised as a foster child by friends of Ilse Weber, and thus escaped extermination. On 6 February 1942, the rest of the Weber family was deported from Prague to the Theresienstadt ghetto. There Ilse worked as a nurse in the children’s infirmary.

More poems were written in the camp. Famous through numerous interpretations were the lullaby Wiegala, which she composed. Ilse Weber wrote this poem for her son Hanuš, “whom she had put on a train in Prague before the outbreak of the war, hoping to see him again one day”.

When the children’s infirmary was designated for deportation to Auschwitz, Ilse Weber volunteered to accompany the sick children. She, her son Tomáš (“Tommy”) and the other children were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp immediately after their arrival on 6 October 1944. A prisoner from the corpse-bearer detachment, who knew Ilse Weber from Theresienstadt, went to the people waiting. Quote: “‘Is it true that we are allowed to shower after the journey?’ she asked. I didn’t want to lie, so I answered: ‘No, this is not a shower room, it’s a gas chamber, and I’ll give you some advice now. I have often heard you singing in the infirmary. Go into the chamber as quickly as possible. Sit down on the floor with the children and start singing. Sing what you used to sing with them. That way you will inhale the gas faster. Otherwise you’ll be kicked to death by the others when panic breaks out.’ Ilse’s reaction was strange. She sort of laughed absently, hugged one of the children and said, ‘So we’re not going to shower -‘.”

Ilse Weber’s husband Willi had already volunteered to be deported to Auschwitz in September 1944 because the transport participants had been promised that family members would be allowed to stay in Theresienstadt and keep in contact by letter. Since he was transferred to the Gleiwitz concentration camp as a forced labourer a few days later, he survived the Holocaust. He returned to Theresienstadt to recover Ilse Weber’s poetry manuscripts, which the couple had walled up before the deportation. In this way they were preserved and could be published posthumously. Willi Weber lived in the ČSSR after the war and died in 1974 during a trip to Copenhagen.

Hanuš Weber lived with his father in Prague after the war and later worked for Czech Radio. After the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1969, he returned to Sweden, where he became a television journalist.

Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilse_Weber