Marģers Vestermanis
Marģers Vestermanis (born 18 September 1925 in Riga, Latvia) is a Latvian Holocaust survivor, historian, founder and former director of the museum "Jews in Latvia".
Life
Youth and World War II
Marģers Vestermanis was born into a Jewish, German-speaking family as the youngest of three sons of a merchant and manufacturer.[1] He attended a German school in his hometown and was later a student of the private Jewish Esra school. Furthermore Vestermanis received religious education from a rabbi at the age of 6 until he turned 15.[1] Upon the arrival of the Wehrmacht, he was taken to the Riga Ghetto at the age of 16. Subsequently he was interned in the Kaiserwald concentration camp. He was subjected to forced labor at the SS-Truppenübungsplatz Seelager and the neighboring camps Poperwahlen and Dondangen.[2] On a death march, he was able to escape into the woods, where he later joined the resistance movement.[1] Vestermanis was the only one of his family to survive the Holocaust.
Awards
- In 2006 Marģers Vestermanis received the Herbert-Samuel-Award for tolerance and indulgence in Riga.[3]
- In 2007 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Latvian Academy of Sciences.[4]
- In 2015 he was awarded with the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award by ambassador Arad Benkö.[5]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Margers Vestermanis: Versuch einer Selbstbiographie. In: Shalom. Das europäische jüdische Magazin, Heft Herbst 2000, accessed on May 1, 2014
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- ↑ Latvian Academy of Sciences: Yearbook 2010–2011. Latvijas Zinātņu akadēmija, Riga 2011, S. 98.
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