Magic at War

Part 2 of a two-part blog about amateur magician and Holocaust survivor Werner Reich. In this remarkable story, we learn how Reich survived the Holocaust and developed a lifelong interest in magic... Read Part 1 of this blog here . Camp D labour camp, Auschwitz I and the death march   From Auschwitz II-Birkenau’s  Camp B, the Nazis moved Reich to Camp D in July 1944. In Camp D, Reich was set to work in the nearby turnip fields until late 1944. From there he was moved to Auschwitz I and employed as a stable boy looking after horses for the German officers. Auschwitz concentration camp entrance (Source: Creative Commons) On 21 January 1945, just six days before the liberation of Auschwitz by the advancing Soviet Red Army, German officials evacuated the camp, ordering some 58,000 prisoners to march west towards Germany. The march, in the middle of winter, was  brutal. After one brief stop, Reich recalls: “Some people couldn ’t  get up and just sat there. Some had died, ...

This two-part blog is published on the first anniversary of Werner Reich’s death (8 Jul 22). An amateur magician, he discovered magic during a chance encounter with a professional magician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. In this remarkable story, we learn how Reich survived the Holocaust and developed a lifelong interest in magic... Werner Reich (c1941) (Source: Werner Reich) Early years and arrest   Werner Reich was a German Jew. Born on 1 October 1927, he grew up in a suburb of Berlin. In 1933, when Werner was six-years-old, Adolf Hitler came to power. Regulations restricting Jewish freedoms followed, including the infamous Nuremberg Laws. Persecution led to Werner’s father losing his job, so the family emigrated to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in southeast Europe. The family settled in Zagreb and Werner spent his early school years there, free from anti-Semitism.  Werner Reich and his sister in Yugoslavia (c1934) (Source: Werner Reich) As World War Two took hold from...