Egon Weiss papers

Egon (later Ed) Weiss was born in 1920 to Emil (b. 1891) and Olga (née Kirschner b. 1897) Weiss in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) where his family owned a store. Egon had a sister Edith (b. 1923) and a brother Tomy (b. 1942 in Theresienstadt). In 1938, Germany annexed the Sudetenland which included Karlovy Vary. Emil applied for visas to the United States hoping to join family already there, but he was unsuccessful and they decided to move to Pilsen. Emil and Olga feared that Egon was at risk of being taken because of his young age and decided to send him to Palestine so he could leave Czechoslovakia as soon as possible. They planned for Egon to join them in America once they received their paperwork. Egon traveled to Prague and then to Vienna where he boarded a river boat down the Danube. In Romania he boarded the SS Milos, one of three ships headed for Palestine. After arriving in 1940, the British did not to allow passengers to land and instead deport them to Mauritius. Egon was then transferred onto the SS Patria for deportation. Haganna operatives (the Jewish underground army) placed explosives on the Patria in an attempt to prevent deportation, but the amount of explosives was too great and the ship began to sink. Many passengers died in the explosion, but Egon managed to swim to shore. The British permitted the surviving passengers to remain in Palestine, but interned them in the Atlit camp. After a year, Egon was release and moved to Jerusalem. Egon’s parents and sister never received their immigration papers and were deported to Theresienstadt in 1942. Edith was deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and Emil and Olga were deported to Auschwitz in 1944 where they were killed. In 1947 Egon immigrated to the United States and married Elizabeth Schnitzler, an Auschwitz survivor from Nagykallo, in 1955.