Relative Yehuda Sternberg visited the Mauthausen Memorial

Following in the footsteps of his father Efraim, Yehuda Sternberg recently visited the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial.

In August 1944, a large evacuation transport took place from the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp to Mauthausen. The Jewish Ghetto Police bribed the German authorities and received permission to spray the train with water, which gave the deportees temporary relief on their departure. The transport took six days and around 30 to 40 per cent of the people died of thirst and lack of oxygen. The transport arrived in Mauthausen on 10 August 1944. According to Hans Maršálek's records, 4,589 Jewish prisoners were registered on arrival.

One of them was Efraim Sternberg, 25 years old. At the beginning, Efraim was used as a stone carrier on the stairs of death. Every day, people around him died of exhaustion and beatings, and it was obvious to him that he would not survive either. Three weeks later, he was sent to the Linz III subcamp for forced labour in the Hermann Göring steelworks. After the camp was liberated, he spent several months recovering in a hospital and then more than a year in the Bindermichl displaced persons camp in Linz. He later lived in France for a while and finally emigrated to Israel before dying in 2015 at the age of 96.

After visiting the Memorial, Yehuda Sternberg travelled on to Linz, where he followed the traces of the Linz III satellite camp and the displaced persons camp.