Ela Weissberger, nee Stein, was born in June 1930 in the Lom by Most, Czechoslovakia. Both her parents were Jewish and very assimilated, according to Weissberger, into a town whose population was half Czech and half German. Her father, who would listen to news on the radio, didn't believe that Hitler could take over, but at the age of eight, Weissberger went through Kristalnacht [Annotator's Note: a pogrom against Jews carried out by German SA paramilitary forces and civilians on 9 and 10 November 1938] and things changed. She remembers having to register as a Jew, and has kept the Jewish star she was ordered to wear. She was also given a number, X896, and not allowed to use her name. Jewish children were expelled from school, and had to be privately tutored. Soon, she was taken to Theresienstadt [Annotator's Note: a concentration camp and ghetto in the town of Terezin, Czech Republic]. While at the camp, she performed in the children's opera "Brundibar", and was allowed to take the Jewish star off during the show. Only then did she feel a little freedom because she was not marked.

Before being taken to Theresienstadt, Ela Weissberger was in quarantine at the Prague-Bubny train station, now the Museum of Quietness, for three days, sleeping on the floor. Weissberger said her family had documents, visas, and affidavits, and she had been packed and prepared to fly to America, but President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] would not allow the Jews to immigrate. Weissberger said when her well known uncle was sent home from the airport, they knew a big part of their family wouldn't survive. Now, when everyone talks about how wonderful President Roosevelt was, she cannot agree. Weissberger thinks The National WWII Museum has a very important duty to show people what really happened. Her uncle did not survive Auschwitz. She feels that her own survival was a miracle.

When Ela Weissberger arrived in Terezin on 12 February 1942, she found it "terrible." She had to walk about four kilometers to the fortress, helping her uncle carry his luggage. The load had been a little lightened because the Nazis had stolen many of their possessions. The family was separated, her uncle put in the Magdeburg Barracks because he was well known. With her mother and sister, Weissberger was relegated to the Hamburg Barracks, and was not allowed to leave the barracks without special permission. She said she learned a lot at a very young age. Her mother and sister were taken to work, leaving Weissberger alone "to take care of their stuff" that was hidden in something called a "strawduk" [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], in a mattress. Once, she heard singing in the courtyard, and saw the rabbi praying over about 30 caskets. Weissberger said the Jews were still trying to let people go to their death "with dignity," in spite of what the Nazis tried to do. It was still the early stages of the Holocaust, and at first there weren't very many children in the camp, but the Nazis took them out to show them nine young people who had been hung. One of them was known to the Weissbergers. They were left hanging there for a week. Weissberger said most of the children could not comprehend the full meaning of the threat. Her art teacher in the camp gave Weissberger hope of her own survival.

Ela Weissberger said a regular day in Terezin was under the leadership of a Berlin Zionist known to the Weissberger family who was probably a homosexual. But, she said, even in Auschwitz he was teaching and taking care of the children. The man committed suicide because he couldn't bear watching his pupils killed in the gas chambers. Weissberger was lucky to have a talented singing voice; she had been part of the children's chorus in Prague. Under the tutelage of a famous Czech dancer, Weissberger was chosen to participate in a children's opera, "Brundibar", and played the role of a cat in all 55 performances of the play. It was a proud occurrence for her mother, and gave the children an activity outside the dreadful circumstances of their incarceration. One child, the star of the opus, was later one of Dr. Mengele's [Annotator's Note: SS-Hauptsturmführer Doctor Josef Mengele] victims at Auschwitz. Weissberger said that even today, the survivors of Terezinstadt remember "Brundibar" and how the children helped each other get through the hard times.

A poem by the Czech-German artist Ilse Weber stands out in Ela Weissberger's mind. The writer had smuggled a guitar into the camp [Annotator's Note: Theresienstadt], and wrote poetry and music, in addition to caring for babies and young children in Terezin. Weissberger said that when she traveled about the country performing the opera "Brundibar", she would always finish with one of Weber's poems, "You and I and We Are Friends". It was later adopted by the Kansas City Kander family of musicians, registering it using new music, but the same lyrics. Weissberger still finishes her talks with the piece.

When asked about what the prisoners in Theresienstadt had to eat, Ela Weissberger described how her mother worked for the agriculture department of the camp. During one tomato season, her mother brought Weissberger to the fields as a substitute for a sick worker, sat her down among the bushes and demanded that she eat her fill. Weissberger had an aversion to tomatoes long after the war ended. She said her mother lost weight, even with access to the food products of the field. Early in their stay in Terezinstadt, her mother tried to help a group of Jews from Denmark who asked her to smuggle radishes with the greens intact for their Passover ritual. On the day her mother attempted to fulfill the request, the workers were ordered to strip naked when they came in from the field. Weissberger said her mother was clever, stood last in line, and ate all the smuggled radishes, complete with the greens, before she could be caught. Close to the end of the war, Weissberger's beautiful sister became pregnant, and was afraid to admit her condition to her mother. The girl had the job of feeding the cats that controlled the rats in the camp's milking shed and got caught supplementing her diet by drinking the cat's milk, an offense that was punishable by transfer to Auschwitz. Once she had the whole story, Weissberger's mother struck a deal with the milk shed's guard wherein he would overlook the offense and the Weissbergers would provide a safe haven for him in Sudetenland when the war was lost and over. Things improved for the Weissbergers after the contract was perfected. The Weissbergers never had to fulfill the promise, however, because the guard was killed by Germans on their way to put down a revolution in Dresden soon afterward.

Ela Weissberger said epidemics were rampant. The Red Cross was very strict, and didn't allow the Russian army to liberate the camp completely on 5 May 1945. An uncle, who wasn't Jewish, had been sending them "little packages," and came to get the Weissbergers after they had been in Theresienstadt three and a half years. By then the camp was a ghost town. Weissberger and her sister were taken to Kolin, where there were family members living; her mother was held in quarantine for another three month. In Kolin, the Russian military would use her family's bakery, and Weissberger's aunt was very afraid something would happen to the girls. Weissberger tested and was allowed to go to school, and lived in the hope of finding some of her friends who survived there. In the Jewish orphanage in Prague, the Russian Communists confiscated her Czech citizenship, and Weissberger and her family debated whether they should go to Israel during the very short window of time such an emigration was allowed. Traveling through Italy, they lived in tents for eight months. Weissberger got work in a ceramic factory, and arrived in Israel with three English pounds. She wanted to give something back to Israel for taking her in, and with a friend, she joined the Israeli Army.

At that time, Ela Weissberger said, all except the very religious Jewish women were joining the Israeli Army. She was sent to the Syrian border in 1950, working in the daytime and patrolling the boarder at night because the Syrians were cutting off their electricity and slaughtering their animals. She requested an assignment closer to where her mother was living in Haifa. Weissberger was transferred to the Israeli Navy's secret service, one of the first nine girls to be accepted into that branch, and was allowed to live in her mother's apartment. Israel was at war with Egypt, and as a member of the secret service, Weissberger's duties included reporting on the munitions on the enemy's ships. Among her privileges were meals on the navy boats, which improved her nutrition greatly; and free access to the gardens of Stella Maris, an Italian monastery across from her office. Yitzhak Shamir worked in the same building. Weissberger said it was a really good life. When an American entertainment outfit featuring Arthur Rubenstein showed up in Haifa, Weissberger got tickets to the show, and on the way there met the man she later married. She was a sergeant when she wed in 1952, and her military career ended when she got pregnant.

Ela Weissberger said she was saddened by the assassination of King Hussein [Annotator's Note: King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan], because he was such a good friend to Israel. She stayed in Israel ten years, coming to America in 1958 "because of wars." Her husband had escaped from the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, and was a high officer in the elite Golani section of the Israeli Army, always the first to fight, and Weissberger was often left alone. During the big war of the Sinai, Weissberger decided to take advantage of her 1939 registration with the United States, which was still valid, and she and her husband joined his brother in America. Weissberger said that from the first, she was happy in America. She became a well-known public speaker, but never reads from a prepared script; she will only talk about what she wants to say. Recalling her time in Terezin, Weissberger mentions that while living in Room 28 of the Hamburg Barracks, where all the girls were of a similar age, they were singing Hebrew songs written by Gideon Klein. Only since she has mastered the Hebrew language does she understand the lyrics. The diary of one of her barracks-mates, Helga Kinsky-Pollack, is now in book form.

In Room 28 of the Hamburg Barracks at Terezin, Ela Weissberger had three friends of the same last name, Hannah, Helga, and Ella Pollack, who were sent to Auschwitz. One of them forgot her diary, and Weissberger has kept it until this day. The people in Terezin learned by word of mouth of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Rather than being sent to Auschwitz, Weissberger was moved to be with her mother in Terezin's agriculture department, where the administrators were interested in keeping the income stream that the camp was earning from the sale of produce, and therefore saved the prisoners that tended the fields. The Jews who had fought in the German army during World War 1 or World War 2 were not sent to Auschwitz, according to Weissberger, and her uncle had some kind of written proof of his service that kept him from being sent to the death camp. At around the same time, the Nazis brought to Terezin refugees from Lidice where they had killed all the men, burned the town, sent most of the women to Ravensbruk, and were putting the children up for adoption by Nazi parents.

The Czech survivors of Terezin, according to Ela Weissberger, have much in common and enjoy each other's company. Weissberger discredits a "not-to-be-named" German woman who said the children of Terezin had a privileged existence during the war years. Even now, Weissberger suffers when she learns of the passing of another of her former friends from Room 28. She feels it important for the survivors to speak up and tell the world of their experiences. When she arrived in Israel, she didn't feel that she was warmly welcomed. She feels that the later political upheavals of Israel were justified at the time, but she does not feel the fighting led to any better understanding. She lost interest in politics after the birth of her first child, but feels the better life that was the cause of all the fighting has only been realized in more recent years.