Max Mannheimer

After that, he began to speak about his experiences at the hand of the Nazis, giving talks to young people and adults, at school and universities.

[1] His mother, Margarethe (Markéta), née Gelb, was born 4 April 1893 in Uherský Brod, near the Hungarian border.

[2] Within months, Nazi troops and military units were being seen in their new city and the square near their home was renamed after Adolf Hitler.

Their freedoms were increasingly restricted by the laws against Jews, but Mannheimer nonetheless was married and began to make a life for himself.

On 2 February 1943, four days before Mannheimer's 23rd birthday, he, his mother, father, brothers Ernst (Arnošt) and Edgar, his 15-year-old sister, Katharina (called Käthe), and his 22-year-old wife, Eva (née Bock), were arrested and deported to Auschwitz after a brief stop at Theresienstadt.

[1][3] In October 1943, Mannheimer and his younger brother, Edgar, were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto to clear rubble.

[1][3] After his release from a lazaret, and weighing a scant 75 pounds (34 kilograms), he swore he would never again set foot on German soil.

[1] Since the mid-1980s, he has been giving lectures to young people and adults in schools, universities and elsewhere as an eyewitness to the horrors of Third Reich and the Nazi era.

Mannheimer was an honorary member of Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie ("Against Forgetting - For Democracy"), the chairman of which was Joachim Gauck.

The prize is awarded every two years to outstanding individuals who advance the cause of labour and democratic socialism.