 | In 1944 the Nazis invaded Hungary. Of the ten children of Israel and Judy Weisz, only three survived the war’s devastation. Shimon Weisz was one of them. Graduate student recipients of the Shimon Weisz Fellowship in Latin American and Caribbean History will never meet the namesake of their award but they can be inspired by his values of social action, intelligence and solidarity. If the recipients are lucky, his nephew, Steve Stern and his wife, Florencia Mallon, both professors of history in the College of Letters and Science will share the story of Shimon’s love and resolve during the darkest of times. If they are wise, they will honor Shimon’s memory by going on to study and teach the meaningful and important lessons of history.
The story begins with the youthful bravado and naiveté. Three of the Weisz brothers, Nosenlipe, Shimon and Joseph, all in their 20s and early 30s, vowed to join the resistance movement and stop the Nazi takeover of their country. Their plans were overheard by Nazi sympathizers and shortly afterward, Joseph was abducted and murdered. Shaken but committed to taking action against injustice, Nosenlipe and Shimon joined the Underground.
Shimon was captured but his intelligence and quick wit saved his life. In the camp where he was being held, his skill in handling horses proved useful. The Nazi commander expressed some doubt that Shimon, a Jew, should be responsible for the horses, but Shimon assured him that it was all right. He had, he said, been talking to the horses for hours and they hadn’t figured out he was Jewish. At that the two sworn enemies shared a hearty laugh. The next morning Shimon took a horse out for exercise and was gone for good. |
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| The danger of the Underground forged bonds of loyalty and solidarity among comrades. During one clash with Nazis, Nosenlipe was fatally wounded. Shimon and his fellow fighters took Nosenlipe’s body with them in retreat. For two exhausting days, Shimon carried his brother’s lifeless body across his shoulders—tens of thousands of footsteps—until he could find a safe place to bury him honorably and recite Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer of affirmation.
At war’s end, Shimon remained in Hungary. His father had been a farmer and cantor. Now Shimon became a cantor in the remnants of the Jewish community. Five of his siblings had died in concentration camps, and two others (Nosenlipe and Joseph) outside the camps. His sister, Adel, survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald and emigrated to the United States where her son, Steve Stern, heard about his uncle Shimon.
“I imagine,” said professor Stern, “that he would have had a complicated reaction to learning of a fellowship in his name. On the one hand, he would not have considered himself worthy of such an honor compared to others. But he also might have been pleased to know that his sister’s children wished to remember him.”
Shimon Weisz died in the spring of 1996 in the homeland he fought for. Today, a long way from a small village in Hungary, graduate student dissertators in Latin American and Caribbean History will have some of their financial responsibility lifted thanks to the Weisz Fellowship. “As someone of Chilean descent who has strong feelings about human rights and social justice,” said professor Mallon, “Shimon’s story had always been a deep inspiration.” |
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| | | Steve J. Stern and his wife, Florencia Mallon, both professors in the College of Letters and Science, have established a fellowship to honor Steve's uncle, Shimon Weisz, who was a quiet hero in the fight against Nazi tyranny. |
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