A French Holocaust survivor whose name was found in a bottled message on the grounds of Auschwitz this week said on Tuesday the discovery was a “mystery” to him.
Museum officials said on Monday that workers demolishing a wall that was once part of the Nazi death camp in Poland had found a handwritten message apparently signed by seven prisoners, only two of whom survived.
“I am a little shaken up by this bottle business — it’s a mystery,” Albert Veissid, now a healthy 84-year-old, said at his home in Allauch in southeastern France.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“It’s incredible. I remember everything from the camp, from A to Z. As I speak to you now, I can see the images before my eyes,” he said.
“But this bottle business is an enigma. The biggest surprise of my life,” said the former fairground worker, who was arrested by collaborationist French authorities in 1943 and deported to Poland.
Dated Sept. 20, 1944, the message listed the names and camp ID numbers of seven Auschwitz prisoners aged 18 to 20, all Polish nationals except for Veissid, who worked together on the construction of an air shelter.
Workers found it packed inside the mortar of a wall of a building in the town of Oswiecim that served as a warehouse for the camp’s Nazi guards during World War II, now part of a high school.
Veissid said he recalled meeting the six Poles in question while working as a builder at the camp.
“It’s true I did them some favors. There was food supplied upstairs and they used to steal tubs of marmalade, which I would hide downstairs,” he said. “Maybe they wrote my name in the bottle as a way of thanking me.”
Further details about the message are expected to be made public in the coming days.
Veissid managed to survive Auschwitz until it was evacuated in January 1945, when he walked across Germany to France, arriving in a state so emaciated that his family struggled to recognize him.
“I was a walking skeleton. One more week and I wouldn’t have made it back,” Veissid said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of