Werner Reich shares a powerfully personal tale about his time in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. He describes how the kindness of one man who dared to do something unexpected - teach him a magic trick - gave him the strength to survive the experience and went on to shape his life later. Reich argues that kindness is a power we all possess and can use to great positive effect. Werner Reich an his family were residents of Berlin when the Nazis came to power in 1933, and later fled to Zagreb. When the Nazis occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, Werner was placed into hiding with a couple that worked for the resistance movement. In 1943, at age 15, Werner was arrested and beaten by the Gestapo, jailed for seven weeks, and eventually sent to the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz II camps.
In a single day, Werner survived three selections by the infamous Dr. Mengele and became one of 89 who were chosen out of 6,000 and sent to work in Auschwitz I. In January 1945, after a seven-day death march, he ended in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. After liberation in May 1945, he returned to Yugoslavia and after two years escaped to England where he worked as a laborer and later became a tool and die maker. He married in 1955 and immigrated to the United States, where he became an engineer.
Werner is a prolific public speaker in the United States and overseas about his life story and the importance of taking care of each other. His work has found application in anti-genocide, anti-extremism, anti-bias, and anti-bullying contexts and beyond. Werner is a founding member of the Long Island Multi-faith Forum and a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Psychic Entertainers Association. He is the co-author of the book “The Death-Camp Magicians,” about how learning magic helped him survive Auschwitz. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx