Josef Schneeweiss, Austria, biography

Summary

Josef Schneeweiss was born in 1913 in Vienna. He was politically engaged from an early age; he became a member of the Union of Socialist High School Pupils and went as a volunteer to Spain to fight against fascism. Afterwards he was interned in France; this was followed by terms in prison, a trial before the People's Court in Vienna, and finally in 1942, now a medical student, Schneeweiss was taken to Dachau concentration camp, where he had to work for two years in the death chamber. During this time he met both the Belgian deportee Arthur Haulot (p. 149) and the young Russian doctor Yosef Massetkin (biography, p. 159), with whom he formed a close friendship. In his autobiography Keine Führer, keine Götter (No Führer, No Gods, 1986), Schneeweiss recalls an incident that happened shortly before the liberation of Dachau on April 29, 1945, and which shows how far friendship can go under such circumstances:

On the 25th or 26th of April 1945 we heard that the camp was going to be evacuated … the new Luxembourgish Kapo of the hospital barrack … arranged for me to be a first-aid attendant in the last marching block. I was indignant, because I would have much preferred to stay in the camp, which was supposed to be liberated in the next one or two days…. The Russian physician Dr. Massetkin was to go with block 8. He wept and was utterly despondent: “I don't have a chance; they're going to kill me for sure.” I jumped in for him … it turned out that we were in the last marching block to leave Dachau….

This march became the so-called “death march” of the Dachau prisoners— when two days before the liberation, the exhausted inmates were to be evacuated toward the mountains so as not to fall into the hands of the Allies. Josef Schneeweiss, unlike many others who died of exhaustion or were shot in the last few seconds, succeeded in escaping from the march and finally returned to his homeland.

After his return to Vienna, he finished his studies in medicine and rebuilt the Union of Socialist University Students. During his later career as a physician he dedicated himself to reforming health care. He lived in Vienna until his death in 1995.