Walter Heiss

Walter Heiss was born on 28 August 1919 in Vienna. He arrived in the Workers’ Village in April 1939. He trained as a blacksmith. After the Werkdorp was evacuated on 20 March 1941, he found shelter with the Soep foster family on J.J. Viottastraat in Amsterdam. On 14 May 1941, a bomb attack took place on a villa on the Bernard Zweerskade, which was inhabited by German officers. There were no casualties. A few weeks later, the telephone exchange of the Luftwaffe at Schiphol was blown up, seriously injuring a member of the Wehrmacht. The Germans attributed these attacks to Jews. All in all, reason enough for the Germans to hold a second razzia in Amsterdam and to arrest more than 300 young Jewish men. The group was taken to the Durchgangslager Schoorl.

Among them were 61 workforces. They were selected on the basis of age (18-35), health and having four Jewish grandparents.  After two weeks Kurt and 56 other workforces in a group of 300 Jews were taken to Mauthausen. There they are put to death by forced labour in stone quarries and/or medical experiments. Walter was killed on 10 September 1941.

On 20 August 1942 his mother is put on a transport to Theresienstadt. After eighteen months she is transported to Auschwitz. She stayed there a month and then went on to camp Stutthof where she was killed in 1944. The fate of his father is unknown.