Ernst Blajs: Last survivor of the Moringen youth KZ died

Ernst Blajs: Last survivor of the Moringen youth KZ died

A dark chapter of history has lost one last witness: Ernst Blajs, the last survivor of the youth concentration camp Moringen, died at the age of 96. The Moringen concentration camp memorial announced the sad news and recalled the moving life of the man who survived the horrors of National Socialism.

Ernst Blajs was born on January 7, 1928 in Lepena, Carinthia. As part of the Slovenian minority, he experienced the brutal repression to the German Reich after Austria's connecting. The deportation of the Slovenian population began in 1942, and partisan resistance formed. Blajs and his brother Franz were arrested in November 1943 and brought to the youth KZ Moringen, where they were exposed to the terrorism of the SS and had to do forced labor. The prisoners were forced to put grenades together in a army ammunition, while hunger and cold determined their everyday life.

a life after the horror

After the end of the war, the arduous path began for Blajs and the other prisoners started their homeland, where they were received relieved by their families. Ernst Blajs built up a new life, worked on the parents' farm and found a family. In the early 2000s, he returned to Germany for the first time to visit the place of his youth and to refresh his memories. He took part in numerous prisoner meetings and shared his story with subsequent generations.

With the death of Ernst Blajs, an era of contemporary witnesses for the youth KZ Moringen ends. Dietmar Sedlaczek, the former head of the memorial, emphasizes to keep responsibility, the history of Blajs and all the other victims of National Socialism. "Now it is the task of all those who are connected in the awareness of the inviolability of man, his history and all the other people, which are due to and all the other people who are battered and murdered in National Socialism," explains Sedlaczek. A call that is more important than ever today.