What happened to Olga and Egon Weiss?

Jewish Latter-day Saints and the Holocaust

** Please note that this article contains disturbing detailed information about the Holocaust and mass murders perpetrated by Nazis and their accomplices. There is material here in text, photograph, and video form that is likely to upset. Please only read on if you are comfortable with this. **

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has proselyted in many different cultures and communities since its formation in April 1830. Continental Europe first received Latter-day Saint missionaries in the mid-nineteenth century and before long they could be found in many countries. Success varied enormously.

My PhD and much of my scholarly writing relate to immigrant communities in the British Isles. It was through my research that I discovered just how diverse different cities, towns, and villages were in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Vienna is a prime example of such a place. The city boasts a rich history stretching back to its origins during the rule of the Roman Empire.

Many cities in Central Europe had immigrant and minority communities that had made their homes, sometimes for many generations and Vienna, Austria, was one such example.

My undergraduate dissertation was on a grim subject – the Holocaust. I have long been fascinated with humanity’s ability to perform truly wicked and evil acts. I suppose this came from my interest in history from a young age which was partly brought about by reading my father’s Commando magazines about the Second World War. The topic of the dissertation was deception – and I set about exploring how the Nazis deceived people (fellow Germans, victims, and the world).

During my dissertation research, I became familiar with sources related to the Holocaust as I spent hours researching what happened at different Nazi mass murder sites. This experience and knowledge became incredibly useful more recently as my former and current research interests combined as I will now outline.

Olga and Egon Weiss

Olga Wahle was born on November 25, 1869, in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of Ignatz and Wilhelmine Wahle. She appears to have followed the cultural and religious traditions of the Jewish faith. She married her husband, Arnold, in 1900, in a Bohemian synagogue. They had at least two children together. One of those children was Egon who was born June 4, 1901, in Bodenbach, Austria-Hungary.  

Olga and her adult son, Egon, were both baptised into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 16 June 1937 by Latter-day Saint missionary Andrew L. Larson in the city of Vienna.

A request for help

On November 23, 1938, Egon wrote to the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seeking assistance for himself, his mother, his brother and his family, and a cousin to emigrate to the United States to avoid the awful conditions in Vienna.

The address on the letter was listed as Burggrasse, a street close to the city centre. By 1941 they had moved or been moved to Marc-Aurel Strasse in the city centre and in the heart of Jewish Vienna. The Gestapo also established their headquarters in Vienna just two or three minutes from the Weiss’ apartment.

Church leaders were unable to sponsor the Weiss’ emigration from Austria. At this point, it should be noted that the Church had long been refusing requests to sponsor individuals looking to emigrate from different areas of the world. The ‘gathering’ had long been over. Those who wanted to emigrate had to do it through their own efforts. On some occasions, a Church leader might write a letter to a government official but the Church as an organisation was unable to directly sponsor a person. We don't know what The First Presidency might have said in reply, but they might have directed them to a Jewish organisation to gain the documents to leave the country.¹

There are lots of things we don’t know about the Weiss’ and what happened to them. Why did they not leave? Did the Church respond? What did members do to help them? What could the Church have done? And so on. The Nazis were masters at subterfuge and deception. Conditions were becoming increasingly difficult for Jewish persons and others determined to be “undesirable” but we have decades of research that enable us to understand the horrors that took place. During the war, the industrial mass murder machine was hidden and obfuscated. The Nazis used various methods to hide their nefarious activities.

A prime example of Nazi deception is found in the case of Theresienstadt in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which was a ghetto and way station to Nazi killing facilities. Interned people were encouraged to write postcards to Jewish friends and family to encourage them to come to the camp, which was portrayed in various ways as a recreation facility. To state or assume the Church was knowingly serving the Weiss’ up to death is incorrect. Rumours, false and delayed information, and conflicting reports would have complicated the situation and in any case, the Church was legally unable to support the Weiss’ emigration.

Sadly, it wasn’t long until their situation turned for the worse.

Deportation

Olga and Egon would have had to wear yellow Stars of David on their clothing as per Nazi regulations to publicly identify Jewish persons. Aloise Cziep, the president of the Vienna branch, had to request that the Weiss’ no longer attended meetings after the Gestapo threatened the congregation with eviction if they would continue to permit Jewish persons to attend. Alois did not want to comply with the request, but he saw no alternative. Although they could not attend in person, he and other members continued to visit the Weiss’ while they were excluded from attending meetings and they are noted as still being in the city in September 1941.

There is good evidence to show that Alois continued to visit the Weiss’. On November 1, 1941, an annotation was made on Egon and Olga’s membership records which noted that they were “Lost” and as such their names were removed from the records of the Vienna District until they could be found again.² Holocaust records indicate that the mother and son were transported on October 23, 1941. So, in the period between October 23 and November 1, 1941, Alois must have visited their apartment to find it empty and updated the records accordingly.³

It is likely that Olga and Egon were violently compelled to leave their home and board a train that carried them from Vienna to Łódź, Poland, to the Litzmannstadt ghetto. This was the third of five forced deportations that left Vienna for Łódź. This transport consisted of 1,000 people of whom more than 400 were older than sixty. Of the 1,000 people sixty-seven of them were described as “not counted members of the Jewish faith.” Despite their non-observance or connection to the Jewish faith, they were either gentile relatives in mixed marriages or were Christian converts. Third-class carriages were used to transfer the people which contained uniformed policemen who guarded the deportees.

In keeping with practices at other concentration camps and mass murder facilities, on arrival in Łódź the Jewish deportees had their money and documents confiscated by the uniformed police which was handed over to the Gestapo. They were then taken to the ghetto. Olga and Egon were numbered among the deportees.

When transported from Vienna to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Łódź, Poland, Egon listed his occupation as “Pfarrer” – a pastor. Soon after arriving, he began listing his occupation as “Musiker” or musician. Olga, meanwhile, was recorded as being a “Klavierpedagog” – or in English – a piano teacher. On arrival in Łódź the Weiss’ were assigned to live in an apartment. 1a, 18 Goldschmieder Street.

Olga’s death

Olga turned seventy-two on November 25, 1941, but she would not have had anything cheerful about the situation or likely celebrated her birthday. Conditions in the ghetto were shocking. The ghetto had been formed around one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city. The lack of historical records makes it unclear whether Olga was ill prior to their arrival in Łódź, but if not, she must have contracted tuberculosis soon after arriving in the ghetto as she passed away a few months later on February 14, 1942.

Egon’s death

We can only imagine what it must have been like for Egon to have his mother pass away in the ghetto, far from their home and the life they knew. Egon remained in the ghetto for a further three months until May 8, 1942, when many Austrian Jews, including Egon, were ordered to the nearby Radogoszcz train station. They were there for deportation to Chelmno, an extermination camp approximately thirty miles north of the Ghetto. The entire process sought to deceive the prisoners and they were fed false information about where they were going and what they would be doing.⁴

In January 1942, Nazi authorities had begun to deport Jews from Łódź to the Chelmno killing centre. By the end of September 1942, they had deported approximately 70,000 Jews and about 4,300 Roma to Chelmno. At Chelmno, a special Nazi detachment killed the Jewish deportees in mobile gas vans. These were trucks that had a compartment that had been hermetically sealed to serve as a gas chamber. The Nazis required the Jewish council to prepare lists of deportees. When this method failed to fill the required quotas, the Nazis resorted to violent roundups. Hundreds of children, the elderly, and the sick were unceremoniously shot during the deportations.

Egon probably died the same day he was transported, or soon after. However, the Nazi obfuscation of their crimes did not stop at the murder. Young Jewish prisoners were forced to help at a forest burial camp to dispose of the bodies. Initially, they removed the bodies from the vans and placed them in trenches, but the smell proved too overwhelming, and it began to be reported in nearby villages. Around the time of Egon’s murder, the Nazis began burning the bodies in the forest. Bodies were placed on grids of concrete slabs and railway tracks and burned. Any other remains were then disposed of in the forest. These forced workers were also made to sort the clothing of victims and clean the vans before they were used again. Periodically these forced labourers were murdered and replaced with new workers.

A truly disturbing video of the vans can be found below. This video is disturbing.

The Holocaust is one of the largest acts of genocide in human history. It was literally perpetrated on an industrial scale and no matter how painful the episode it should not be forgotten. When I came across Olga and Egon Weiss’ story it ended with Alois Cziep’s memory of them disappearing one day. Through the digitisation of historical documents and the time I spent on the subject for my dissertation, I was able to determine what happened to Olga and Egon. They too were victims of a totalitarian state that sought to eradicate entire groups of people in society, and like many others, their story was lost. At last, despite the horrific manner in which they died, we know what happened to them and can preserve their story.⁵

1. David Conley Nelson, ‘The Mormons In Nazi Germany: History And Memory,’ PhD Dissertation, Texas A&M University, 2012, pp. 429-430.

2. Record of Members and Children of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of the Vienna District, CR 375 8, bx. 297, fd. 1, CHL.

3. Saints, Volume 3: Boldly, Nobly, and Independent 1893–1955 (Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2022), pp. 409-410.

4. See James Perry, ‘An Investigation Into Deception Within Nazi Mass Murder Institutions,’ undergraduate dissertation, Lancaster University, 2013. https://issuu.com/pagexion/docs/undergraduate_dissertation

5. Saints, Volume 3: Boldly, Nobly, and Independent 1893–1955 (Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2022), p. 513.