27/01/2023
Today the world marks holocaust international day of remembrance. As a Berliner, the memory of the Holocaust is found on almost every street corner, every house and wall has a story that we must tell in order to make sure that such atrocities will never return.
As a member of a family of Holocaust survivors, it is my duty and calling to tell the story of the people who were murdered , those who tried to save them and everything that happened here at that time on every tour I do. In the graffiti tours I always tell the story of Otto Weidt and the Berlin Jews that he worked to save. This is his story:
In 1936 Otto Weidt established a workshop to manufacture brooms and brushes in the cellar apartment of Großbeerenstraße 92 in Berlin-Kreuzberg, which was in close proximity to his apartment at Hallesches Ufer 58. In 1940 he moved to the backyard of 39 Rosenthaler Straße in Berlin-Mitte. As one of his customers was the Wehrmacht, Weidt managed to have his business classified as vital to the war effort. Up to 30 blind and deaf Jews were employed at his shop between the years of 1941 and 1943. When the Gestapo began to arrest and deport his Jewish employees, he fought to secure their safety by falsifying documents, bribing officers and hiding them in the back of his shop with the help of others such as Hedwig Porschütz.
Though Weidt, forewarned, kept his shop closed on the day of the Fabrikaktion in February 1943, many of his employees were deported. Among those he was able to save were Inge Deutschkron and Alice Licht, both non-blind young women in their twenties, and Hans Israelowicz. Nevertheless, Alice Licht travelled to Theresienstadt to join her deported parents, where Weidt could support them with food parcels. All of 150 parcels arrived. Eventually Alice was deported to KZ Birkenau herself. She managed to send a postcard to Weidt who promptly traveled to Auschwitz in attempt to help her. Weidt found out that as Auschwitz was emptied, Alice was moved to the labor camp/ammunition plant Christianstadt. He hid clothes and money for her in a nearby pension to aid her return, and traveled back to Berlin. Alice eventually managed to return to Berlin in January 1945, and lived in hiding with the Weidts until the end of the war. She left when she received a visa to enter the USA.
After the war, Otto Weidt established an orphanage for survivors of the concentration camps. He died of heart failure only 2 years later, in 1947, at 64 years of age. On September 7, 1971, Yad Vashem recognized Weidt as a Righteous Man of the World's Nations.
His story reminds me every time that even in terrible times we still have the ability to be brave, do good and fight the darkness in our own way and save souls. I will continue to tell his story and the story of my family and many others, so that they will never be forgotten.
Tourist guide in Berlin since 2018. Storyteller , Admires Frederick the Great, in love with Berlin
