LEER — Albrecht Weinberg, a Holocaust survivor who spent his later years teaching about Nazi atrocities, died at the age of 101 in Leer, north-western Germany. Born in Rhauderfehn, near Leer, on 7 March 1925, he survived incarceration at the Auschwitz, Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, as well as three death marches at the end of the second world war.

Weinberg lost most of his family in the Holocaust. He returned from New York to his east Frisian home 14 years ago, moving back to Germany in his 80s, and spent years teaching high school students and others about the Nazi era. A film about his life is titled Es Ist Immer in Meinem Kopf (It Is Always in My Head).

Claus-Peter Horst, the mayor of Leer, said: "Since returning from New York to his east Frisian home 14 years ago, Albrecht recounted tirelessly and with incredible energy his terrible experiences during the Nazi era and warned again and again against forgetting." Weinberg said of his memories: "I sleep with it, I wake up with it, I sweat, I have nightmares, that is my present."

Speaking of the responsibility he felt to bear witness, Weinberg said: "When my generation is not in this world any more, when we disappear from the world, then the next generation can only read it out of the book."

Weinberg was awarded Germany's order of merit in 2017. He returned the honor in 2022 in protest over a parliamentary vote calling for many more migrants to be turned back at Germany's borders, which passed with the help of a far-right party. The motion had been put forward by Friedrich Merz, who is now Germany's chancellor.

Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to Germany, described Weinberg as a bridge between past and present, between pain and hope, between the dead he could never forget and the young people whom he encouraged to seek the truth.