Zoni Weisz

Who is Zoni Weisz?

Zoni Weisz is a Sinto Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands working in the Dutch floral industry.

Weisz was the oldest of four children of Jacoba and John Weisz from Zutphen, Netherlands. In May 1944, the family was ordered by the Nazis to be deported to the Westerbork transit camp with other Sinti and Roma during the Porajmos. Zoni made a brief escape with his aunt, but they were quickly found and arrested. They were then deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The rest of his family were sent on a deportation train to Auschwitz, but a Dutch police officer and member of the Dutch resistance put Weisz on a separate train that allowed him to eventually escape to his grandparent's home for the remainder of the war. His mother and siblings were all killed at Auschwitz, while his father was killed at the Mittelbau-Dora camp.

After the war, Weisz returned to school and began to study horticulture during an internship at Het Loo Palace. After this training, he performed two years of military service in Suriname. Afterwards, he worked at a flower merchant in Amsterdam and studied landscape architecture and art history. In 1958, he took over this business and became a well-known florist, and was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having created the world's largest flower arrangement. He has created works for the Dutch royal family, including arrangements for the inauguration of Queen Beatrix and the wedding of Prince Willem-Alexander.