Oldest Holocaust survivor tells a story of faith and courage that's out of the ordinary
Leopold Engleitner endured the Holocaust. His long life since has inspired others.
from the December 1, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
Engleitner's principles set him apart from others beginning early in his life. As the son of a sawmill worker growing up in Bad Ischl, the "emperor's village," in the early 1900s, he and his schoolmates would often encounter Franz Joseph, the emperor, who vacationed there. The gap between the royal wealth and his own family's poverty angered the young Engleitner.
After the effects of World War I had decimated his village he vowed never to fight in a war. To overcome hunger, he left school at 13, built a small house for himself, and eked out a living crafting skis, among other things. Later, his mistrust of established authority led him to abandon Catholicism and join the Jehovah's Witnesses. "People spat at me," Engleitner says of the reaction to his adopted faith.
Soon after Germany annexed Austria in April 1938, the Gestapo tracked Engleitner down at a secret Bible-reading meeting. The SS men brandished a piece of paper in his face. It was a declaration that he agreed to renounce his faith and was willing to enlist in Hitler's Army. Along with the document came a verbal threat.
" 'If you sign this paper, you can go home,' " Engleitner recounts. " 'If not, you're under arrest, and you know what will happen to you.' "
Engleitner refused to sign.
"I wouldn't take the easy way out," Engleitner told the audience at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. His faith, he said, is what helped him not yield to pressure – and what kept him alive.
His sense of humor was also on display in Frankfurt when he recounted his dealings with Gestapo officials at the Buchenwald camp.
" 'Engleitner, Engleitner! I'm warning you for the last time!' " he said, mimicking the SS official. " 'If you continue to object to military service, then you already have both feet in the grave.' " Engleitner's reply elicited laughter from a rapt audience. "If I've already got both feet in the grave just standing here," he said, "what on earth will it be like on the front line? Or do they shoot with candy out there?"
The "Little Austrian," as the Nazis called him, did walk out of the camps four years later – but for a different reason: The Nazis had come to value the Jehovah's Witnesses' work ethics.
"If appropriate tasks are chosen, no supervision will be necessary, since they will not try to run away," Heinrich Himmler wrote in 1943 about the Jehovah's Witnesses, according to official documents cited in Engleitner's biography. "They can be left to work on their own and will prove themselves the most efficient administrators and workers."
A 65-lb. Engleitner was set free in exchange for promising to work in agriculture only. It wasn't until the American forces intervened that Engleitner was able to get another job, in the roads department of St. Wolfgang, near Salzburg, where he continued working until he retired in 1969.
Life after the war wasn't easy. "We [Jehovah's Witnesses] were always treated as second-class citizens and lumped together with the work-shy and criminal elements," Engleitner says.
His parents, he says, never accepted his religion. Few seemed to care about his triumph.
"He tried to talk about his story, but no one listened," says Rammerstorfer.
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