| Born: | 09-25-1905 |
| Faculty: | Philosophical School |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Dr. med. Berthold WEISSBERG, born on September 25th, 1905 in Drohobycz, Galicia/Austro-Hungarian Empire [later: Poland, today: Drohobytsch|Дрогобич/Ukraine] (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, citizenship 1938: Austria), son of Ignaz Weissberg (white-collar employee in Poland), lived in Vienna's 6th district, Koestlergasse 1/26. He had studied medicine at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate on July 7th, 1930, was married to Bertha Kuner since December 29th, 1935, worked as a doctor and began to study physics in 1936. He was enrolled finally in the fall term 1937/38 at the Philosophical School in the 2nd year of his studies and took courses in Physics.
In times of National-Socialism he was forced to leave the university and quit his studies in 1938 for racist reason.
He escaped from Vienna with his wife and was able to emigrate to Belgium in September 1938, where they lived in Antwerp, thanks to the support of his uncle, Dr. Otto Maria Karpfen (Carpeaux). During the invasion of Belgium by the German Wehrmacht in May 1940, he was deported to the South of France to the internment camp Saint-Cyprien (Pyrénées-Orientales, near Perpignan) and in October 1940 to the internment camp Gurs (Basses-Pyrénées, now Pyrénées-Atlantiques, near Pau). In February 1941 he obtained permission to live outside the camp and settled in a small village near Pau, taking care of other refugees from Gurs. In April 1942, he voluntarily returned to Gurs to help as a doctor in the camp hospital.
He was not deported in the convoys of August and September 1942 to Drancy and Auschwitz concentration camp [Oświęcim/Poland], but he knew that he was threatened with deportation. In January 1943, he escaped from the camp and crossed the Spanish border. He was arrested in Spain and interned in camp Miranda de Ebro, then managed to cross the Mediterranean to the French protectorate of Morocco [المملكة المغربية|al-Mamlaka al-Maġribiyya], where he enlisted in the French Free Forces (Forces françaises libres|FFL) as an auxiliary doctor.
His brother, who in 1938 was also already a doctor and had to flee from National Socialism, had emigrated to Palestine [Israel|ישראל] and returned to Vienna after the war.
Berthold Weissberg and his wife remained in France, receiving French citizenship in June 1947. After several commitments in Africa, he was called by Dr. Albert Schweitzer to Lambaréné (in the then French colony of Gabon, which became independent in 1960), where he served as chief physician of the administrative hospital from 1954 to 1963.
Back in France, he lived in Paris, later moving to Nice on the Côte d'Azur, where he died in 1978.
Lit.: Archives of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") PHIL 1937-1939, graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") Medical School 1929-1941, No 356; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 498; information from Dr.in Barbara Sauer, Vienna 2018 (Project "Medical Doctors in Austria 1938-1945. Deprivation of Rights, Expulsion, Murder") and from Dominique Piollet 08/2022; www.genteam.at; www.ancestry.de.
Herbert Posch
