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Kormis , Fred , 1897-1986 , sculptor

Fred Kormis was born in 1897 in Frankfurt and apprenticed in a large workshop specialising in the production of decorative sculpture and mouldings at the age of 14. In 1914 he won a scholarship to the Frankfurt Art School which came to a premature end with the outbreak of the First World War. He was conscripted into the Austrian army (his father was Austrian), sent to the Eastern Front, wounded and captured. After a year in European Russia, Kormis found himself in Siberia, north of Vladivostock, where he spent 4 years until he escaped.

Back in Frankfurt he earned a living as a portrait sculptor until, on 1 April 1933, Hitler came to power. Kormis who had been a socialist since the age of 14 and whose sister-in-law, Tony Sender, had been a deputy in the Reichstag, could see only too clearly what was to come. On 7 April he moved to Holland and then in 1934 to London.

There, he and his wife started a new life. Kormis exhibited at the Beaux-Arts Gallery, continued the medallic work, exemplified in his lovely portrait of the sculptor Moissy Kogan and was established in a studio in Sheriff Road when war broke out once more. In 1940 the studio was bombed and he lost all his large scale work. During the war Kormis spent a period working in the Potteries, designing china for export under the lend-lease scheme. In 1941 Philip Guedalla, seeking a cover for his biography, commissioned him to do one of the earliest medallic portraits of Churchill. This, exceptionally for Kormis, was not done entirely from life. Churchill had to cancel his sitting in favour of a meeting with Roosevelt in the Mid-Atlantic and publishers' deadlines left no time for an alternative appointment.

Kormis' medals of Churchill and Herbert Morrison (1941), served as a prelude to his series of portraits of members of the War Cabinet (Eden, Cripps, Bevin and Sinclair) in 1942 and his series of distinguished foreigners in London in 1943 and 1944 (Benes, Haakon VII, Sikorski, Perlot...)

The end of the war saw Kormis settled in the studio to the north of St John's Wood. He produced a steady output of work, culminating in his great 'Prisoner of War Memorial' in Gladstone Park, Willesden, the erection of which, in 1970, represented the conclusion of a fifty year journey towards the final expression of his experiences in the period, 1915-1920. Among his other public commissions have been 'The Shied Bearer' in the Corn Exchange, Stratford upon Avon; 'Angels Wings', Pound Lane, Willesden; 'The Ever-Lamenting harp', Kiryat Gat, Israel (1978).

Medals have, however, continued to be a constant part of Kormis' work; from his post-war portraits of Mountbatten (1947), Alexander Fleming (1947), and Laurence Olivier (1949), to his more recent tributes to Golda Meir (1973), Charlie Chaplin (1975), Michael Tippett (1977), Henry Moore (1978) and JB Priestley (1978), many of which have been shown at his exhibitions at the Fieldbourne Gallery in London. Kormis died in 1986.

Various

Otto Bernstein grew up in late 19th century Elbersfeld and Kassel, Germany, and was an inmate of Theresienstadt concentration camp. Bern Brent, the depositor, provides us with an account of his experiences on the ship, the 'Dunera', bringing refugees from Europe to Australia where he made his home.

Anita Lasker was born into a professional Jewish family, one of three sisters (Marianne and Renate). Her father was a lawyer; her mother a fine violinist. They suffered discrimination from 1933 but as their father had fought at the front in the First World War, gaining an Iron Cross, the family felt some degree of immunity. Marianne, the eldest sister, fled to England in 1941. In April 1942, Anita's parents were taken away and are believed to have died at Isbica, near Lublin, in Poland. Having been initially arrested in Breslau for aiding the escape of French forced labourers, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was later able to survive Auschwitz by playing the cello in the Auschwitz prisoners' orchestra. Towards the end of the war the sisters were transferred to Bergen Belsen where they remained for up to a year after liberation. During this time Anita was a witness at the Lüneburg trial where camp guards and Kapos were tried for their war crimes.

Various

Edgar Dreyfus was a banker, following in the tradition of the Dreyfus family, which had a history of involvement in the banking and shipping industries. The Dreyfus house in Paris was one of the first to be occupied by the Gestapo when the Germans occupied the city in 1940. The family, comprising father and mother, Edgar and Yvonne, and their two daughters, Viviane and Christiane, fled to the south of France, staying in Perpignan, Marseille and Cannes.

When the Italians capitulated in 1943 the family went into hiding in Pau and later walked to Spain. They were accompanied by a cousin, Manon Levenvach, who had managed to escape deportation by jumping from a train. She stayed with the Dreyfus family in Spain for the remainder of the war.

Various

The Fernbachs were a Jewish family. Wolfgang Fernbach, trained in medicine and was a fervent Zionist. He became a financial journalist for an English newspaper and was a radical socialist during the First World War. He was a loyal friend of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and an extremely dedicated political activist. He was murdered in January 1919 as one of the seven 'Spartacists', shot in the 'Vorwärts' building in Berlin.

Dienemann , Max , 1875-1939 , Rabbi

Dr Max Dienemann, was born in Posen in 1875; studied at the Jewish theological seminary and the university in Breslau and became Rabbi at Ratibor in Upper Silesia (1903-1919). He then went to Offenbach, where he officiated as Rabbi of the Jewish community from 1920 until shortly before he was compelled to emigrate from Germany in 1939. He is described as being one of the spiritual leaders of the liberal movement in German Judaism and played an active part in uniting the liberal rabbis. Dienemann died in Tel Aviv in 1939.

Various

Dr Robert Michaelis was born in 1903 in Berlin. Michaelis was of Jewish origin and emigrated to Shanghai in 1939, becoming president of the organisation of emigrant lawyers. He worked in a legal capacity; wrote articles on the rights of emigrants in Shanghai and returned to Germany in 1948 where he became Senatpräsident for Mainz.

Michaelis had been interested in the Dreyfus affair for many years and on retirement in 1957, he devoted much of his time to researching the legal aspects of the case against Dreyfus. The Dreyfus affair was an antisemitic scandal which divided France from the 1890s to the early 1900s. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer in the French Army was found guilty of treason for passing military secrets to the German embassy in Paris. Drefus was suspected for many reasons including his Jewish heritage. Michaelis died in Mainz in 1973.

ZDF Television

These papers were created during the course of the making of a film about the Austrian Anschluss (1938), which was shown on the German television station, ZDF, in 1988.

Hoek-Wallach , Annie , c 1943-1987

Annie Hoek-Wallach, a German Jewish immigrant; lived in the Netherlands during the Nazi era. Her mother and husband, a Dutch Jewish teacher, were deported to concentration camps where they perished.

Ann Baer

Bernhard Baer, born in Berlin in 1905, escaped Nazi persecution by travelling to England in 1938; worked as an expert in colour printing and a publisher of artists' graphic work and died 1983.

Kaiser , Erich , 1905-1940 , journalist x Grant , Emil

Erich Kaiser who wrote under the pseudonym Emil Grant, was born in Berlin in 1905 and emigrated to Paris in 1933 where he worked as a journalist for a number of German emigré newspapers including Paris Tageblatt, Paris Tageszeitung, Vorwärts, and Weltbühne. He was brought to Albi, Camp des Prestateurs where he committed suicide, 1 Sep 1940.

Unknown

Gurs was a major internment camp in France, near Oloron-Sainte-Marie, 80 kilometers from the Spanish border. Established in 1939 to absorb Republican refugees from Spain, Gurs later served as a concentration camp for Jews from France and refugees from other countries. While under the administration of Vichy France (1940-1942) most non-Jewish prisoners were released and approximately 2000 Jews were permitted to emigrate. In 1941 Gurs held some 15,000 prisoners. The camp was controlled by the Germans from 1942 to 1944, during which time several thousand inmates were deported to extermination camps in Poland. An unknown number succeeded in escaping and reaching Spain or hiding in Southern France. Gurs was liberated in the summer of 1944.

Masur , Norbert , 1901-1971

Norbert Masur, born in Friedrichstadt, Germany in 1901, later moved to Stockholm as an exiled Jewish German. Masur aided in the rescue of Nazi concentration camp detainees during World War Two. He, in secret, met Heinrich Himmler, April 1945 and negotiated the release of over 1,000 prisoners from Ravensbrück concentration camp to Sweden. Later a further 7,000 prisoners were rescued by Swedish Red Cross. Masur was Sweden's representative to the World Jewish Congress, where he described his meeting with Himmler. Masur died in 1971.

Hamburg-Amerika linie

The Hamburg Amerikanische Packetfahrt Actien Gesellschaft (HAPAG) known as Hamburg-Amerika Linie, was an enterprise established in Hamburg, Germany in 1847 for shipping across the Atlantic Ocean. It was the largest shipping company in German, and at times the world's largest shipping company, serving the market created by the German immigration to the United States.

Morris family

The collection consists of letters between Frieda Morris' grandmother and father in Poland and her brother and uncle in London. 'M Shire' was Frieda Morris' father's uncle, a staunch Zionist, who attended the first ever Zionist Congress and named his first son Theodor Herzl. Frieda's father came to Great Britain in 1902, and eventually with the help of his uncle Mendel Myer, brought over the rest of the family.

Headquarters 21 Army Group

During World War II the fort at Breendonk, Belgium was briefly used as the General Headquarters of King Leopold III, leading the Belgian armed forces. After his surrender to the Germans it was transformed into a concentration camp by the Nazis (primarily as a transit camp for transport to Auschwitz). It gained a grim reputation as a place of torture and interrogation of a wide variety of prisoners.

Unknown

The Youth Aliyah, a branch of the Zionist Movement, was founded with the intention of rescuing Jewish children and young people from hardship. It started its activities in Germany on the eve of the Nazis' rise to power and saved many children who had to leave their families or were orphaned by the Holocaust. It extended its work to include other countries when the need arose, and particularly after the establishment of the State of Israel, looked after many young people entrusted to its care by new immigrant parents already in the country.

Meurin , fl 1941 , Captain of German Security Police

On 10 November 1941, Jews began to be transported from Düsseldorf to Minsk -altogether 5,895 Jews being deported, most of them between Autumn 1941 and Summer 1942. The other destinations for Jews were Theresienstadt, Riga, Litzmannstadt and Izbica. All Jews males under the age of 65 years of age and women under 60 came into consideration and individuals concerned received an 'evacuation order' from the Gestapo, by registered mail, informing them to report one day before 'evacuation'.

Those transported would be subject to special regulations for the duration of transport. Assets were confiscated, though each individual could take a suitcase of belongings with them. In addition they had to fill out an inventory of assets. This 'declaration of assets' ('Vermögenserklärung') consisted of 8 pages and had to be filled out separately for each person. These forms required information concerning bank accounts details, cash and securities, insurances, properties, other receivables, business shares, and total assets.

Himmler , Heinrich Luitpold , 1900-1945 , politican

Reichsführer SS was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, became the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel (SS). Reichsführer SS was both a title and a rank. The title of Reichsführer was first created in 1926 by Joseph Berchtold. Berchtold's predecessor, Julius Schreck, never referred to himself as Reichsführer but the title was retroactively applied to him in later years.

In 1929, Heinrich Himmler became Reichsführer-SS and referred to himself by his title instead of his regular SS rank. This set the precedent for the Commanding General of the SS to be called Reichsführer-SS. In 1934, Himmler's title became an actual rank after the Night of the Long Knives and from that point on, Reichsführer-SS became the highest rank of the SS and was considered the equivalent of a Generalfeldmarschall in the German Army.

Unknown

There is no indication as to which office this document emanated from or who was responsible for its creation.

Hirsch family

Jonni Hirsch was a Jewish 'Mischling', a term used during the Third Reich for a person deemed to have partial Jewish ancestry. He and certain members on the Jewish side family were from Kiel. These papers are evidence of the way in which the lives of Jews in a German city became ever more difficult as a consequence of growing antisemitism. The Hirsch family was an old established Jewish family emanating from Denmark. Jonni Hirsch's grandfather, Wolf Hirsch, was president of the local Jewish community and instrumental in the building of a Kiel synagogue. Jonni Hirsch was imprisoned on 12 November 1938, 2 days after Kristallnacht, and described as a Jew. Little is know about the family after 1938, however in 1957 Jonni Hirsch lived in Kiel and it is believed that his earlier home in Fischerstr was bombed during the war.

Unknown

Little information exists regarding the administrative history of this collection, although there is a note at the beginning of the list which states that it is by no means comprehensive and that it was created from names discovered in an unidentified card index, the facts of whose deaths were corroborated. The note also states that it was far more difficult to find the names of those doctors who committed suicide or were murdered in the early years of the Nazi era.

Hebrew Committee of National Liberation

The Hebrew Committee of National Liberation was launched in May 1944. Its origins were in the Emergency Committee to save the Jewish People of Europe, which itself had been formed at an Emergency Conference in July 1943. The founder was Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson). The new committee's aims were to continue to agitate for the rescue of Jews in Europe and to struggle against the British in Palestine. It aspired to be something of an alternative to the Jewish Agency.

Ohly family

Little is known about the family beyond the following details:

Sophie Scharvogel, grandmother of E Ohly, was born on 24 Dec 1859 in Mainz; was transported to Terezin on 1942 and died there, 16 Nov 1942. She was the widow of Professor J J Scharvogel.

Karl Traumann writes from Gurs concentration camp in the French Pyrenees, Feb 1941. He was a patent lawyer from Karlsruhe, first cousin of Gertrud Ohly and nephew of Sophie Scharvogel, born Mannheim c1880, died at Gurs in 1942. He had a brother, Ernst, living in the US at the time.

Lotte Pariser, writes from Terezin in May and June 1944, born on 7 Sep 1885, transported to Terezin on 6 Jun 1942, evacuated to Auschwitz to 28 Oct 1944.

Anna Ansbacher, a friend of Sophie Scharvogel, was one of the lucky few to have been sent to Switzerland in exchange for lorries.

E E Ohly came to Great Britain in 1945 to join his father, who had returned to Britain in 1934. Since he was half Jewish he could no longer work in his profession as a sculptor in Germany. As he was born in Great Britain he was able to escape. E Ohly left Germany in 1934 for school in Switzerland and lived there until 1945. His mother, Gertrud, being half Jewish, survived World War Two and died in Munich on 20 March 1951.

Reichsführer SS

Reichsführer SS was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, became the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel (SS). Reichsführer SS was both a title and a rank. The title of Reichsführer was first created in 1926 by Joseph Berchtold. Berchtold's predecessor, Julius Schreck, never referred to himself as Reichsführer but the title was retroactively applied to him in later years. In 1929, Heinrich Himmler became Reichsführer-SS and referred to himself by his title instead of his regular SS rank. This set the precedent for the Commanding General of the SS to be called Reichsführer-SS. In 1934, Himmler's title became an actual rank after the Night of the Long Knives and from that point on, Reichsführer-SS became the highest rank of the SS and was considered the equivalent of a Generalfeldmarschall in the German Army.

Steiner , Elise , c1921-

The Vienna born Austrian Jewess, Elise Steiner emigrated to Great Britain on 26 November 1938, where she attended school in Southampton. Her parents and her younger brother Leo, were transported to Kovno on 23 November 1941, where they died 6 days later, probably part of the action which took place in the ghetto on that date in which 10,000 inhabitants were murdered.

Priestley , A May , fl 1940

Frederick Sittner came to Great Britain in the mid 1930s and became engaged in trying to persuade the US Food and Drug Administration to allow the marketing by his father of a rejuvenation potion. [His father was a pharmacist. It is thought that none of Sittner's family survived the war.] Frederick also taught German and studied English. He was swept up in the first wave of internments in 1939. The addressee, May Priestley, had become deeply involved in the activities of a local committee for the relief of refugees, during the course of which a close friendship had emerged between her and Frederick. The death of Frederick on the Arandora Star, mentioned in the last letter from Mrs Vina Schwab, profoundly affected Mrs Priestley.

Grossbard , Siegfried , fl 1922-1963

Siegfried Grossbard was a Jewish refugee from Vienna who eventually became resident in Great Britain, after having spent time as an inmate of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps.

United States Legation in Stockholm

This collection contains mostly copy documents from the US legation in Stockholm to the US Department of State and concerns the possibility of saving Hungarian Jews during the Nazi era. The depositor was co-chairman of Brookline, the Holocaust Memorial Committee, based in Massachusetts, USA, and former inmate of Drancy concentration camp.

Dokumentationszentrum oesterreichischen Widerstandes

Operation Bernhard was the name of a secret German plan devised during the Second World War to destabilise the British economy by flooding the country with forged Bank of England £5, £10, £20, and £50 notes.

Bad Aussee was the location of a salt mine where the Germans had stored a huge number of European art treasures which they had pillaged. After being dropped into the local area, Albrecht Gaiswinkler raised a force of around 300 men and armed them with captured German weapons. He spent the last weeks and months of the war harassing local German forces. When the Americans arrived, his information helped them capture several eminent Nazis. He and his colleagues had captured the salt mine, prevented the destruction of the artworks held there and were able to hand over 'a number of Nazi treasure hoards', including the Mona Lisa (probably a copy) and the Austrian Imperial Crown Jewels.

Weisbord , H , fl 1940s

This collection of papers documents the experiences of German and Austrian Jewish servicemen in the British Army during the Second World War.

Wolfgang Josephs, a German Jew from Berlin, came to Great Britain sometime in the mid 1930s. He was interned as an enemy alien at the outbreak of war and later transported on the 'Dunera' to Hay Internment Camp, Australia. On his return to Great Britain in 1941 he enlisted in the Pioneer Corps, later changing his name to Peter Johnson. He was a military interpreter for the British occupying forces in Germany at Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, May 1945-Oct 1946 where he was involved with the denazification process. Whilst there he also took an interest in the returnees from concentration camps, arranging correspondence between them and their families all over the world. The Wiener Library has a copy of a tape recorded interview with him, the original being produced for the Imperial War Museum, which details his life as an internee in Great Britain and Australia.

'The Hyphen' was founded in 1948 by a group of younger continental Jewish refugees (between the ages of 20 and 35), many of whom were the children of members of the Association of Jewish Refugees, who having settled in Great Britain, found that owing to their similar background and experiences they had interests and problems in common. The group was to have no particular religious or political bias. The intention was to provide cultural, social and welfare activities in a way that would enable them to feel at home in their newly adopted country. The name 'The Hyphen' was chosen because it symbolized the gap between the older generation of refugees who had no intention or desire to integrate into British society, and the ideal of seamless integration which the younger generation aspired to but could not immediately realise.

One of the group's first activities was the setting up of a study and discussion group, which covered topics such as immigration in general, as well as German-Jewish immigration into Britain; German-Jewish history, and British cultural and political topics. Its most popular functions became the social gatherings, dances, and rambles in the Home Counties. 'The Hyphen' never had more than 100 members at any one time but there were between 400 and 500 names on its mailing lists. The activities eventually petered out and the group was wound up in 1968. Compared with other German-Jewish institutions it was rather marginal, but for the members it fulfilled a very important function by giving them a sense of belonging during a difficult period of settling in to a new society.

Loewy , Wolfgang , fl 1939-1950

Wolfgang Loewy, who described himself as a Jew by religion and by origin half-Jewish and half-Christian, left Berlin with his first wife and ended up in an internment camp in Bombay. His brother, Werner, wife and parents went to Shanghai, where they stayed until after the war, after which they went to live in Los Angeles. Wolfgang came to Great Britain after the war.

Mannheim special court , Hesse , Germany

The Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement is a division from the Seventh-day Adventist Church created by disagreement over proper Sabbath observance and military service during World War One.

A case took place at a special court in Mannheim, Hesse, Germany in 1937 against Seventh Day Adventists Reformists, who took part in activities contrary to the provision set out in an act to ban the organisation on 30 May 1936.

Peres , Alfred Pavel , fl 1939-1948 , lawyer

Little is known about Alfred Pavel Peres save for the fact that he was an international lawyer and that he helped Eduard Benes get visas for political liberals. He was a member of the Deutsch-demokratischen Freiheitspartei.

Fink , Alice , b 1920 , nurse

Alice Fink (née Redlich), was born in Berlin in 1920. She came to England in November 1938 where she did her nurse's training at a hospital in Greenwich. She joined the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad and went to Bergen Belsen with the Jewish Relief Unit in September 1946. She married Hans Finke in June 1948 and moved to Chicago in 1949.

Her family, with whom she communicated via the Red Cross, remained in Berlin until they were deported and ultimately perished in the Holocaust. They were transported at different times. The only reference to the deportations in the correspondence is a Red Cross Telegram reply dated 9 December 1942, signed by her mother and Heinz (brother?), in which they ask Alice whether she informed 'Tante Hedwig' [herself already deported by this time] that her father had gone to Adi's. He had in fact already been deported to the East by this time.

Jewish Management Committee, Theresienstadt

On June 10, 1940, the Gestapo took control of Terezín (Theresienstadt), a fortress, built in 1780-1790 in what is now the Czech Republic, and set up prison in the Small Fortress (Kleine Festung). By 24 November 1941, the Main Fortress (grosse Festung, ie the town Theresienstadt) was turned into a walled ghetto. The function of Theresienstadt was to provide a front for the extermination operation of Jews. To the outside it was presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement, but in reality it was a concentration camp. Theresienstadt was also used as a transit camp for European Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

International Auschwitz Committee

The Internationale Auschwitz Komitee was founded in 1952 by former inmates of the death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, with the following aims: to bear witness to the crimes of the Nazis in the camp; to fight for compensation for former inmates and their families; to work with the Auschwitz Museum to preserve the site of the camp as a permanent memorial. It became involved in the gathering of statements and testimony against former camp guards and other Nazi personnel. Many of the witnesses who provided testimony later took part in the 'Frankfurt Trial' of perpetrators at Auschwitz.

Various

The Dunera, a military transport ship, transported over 2000 internees from the UK to Australia in 1940 and was used to transport German and Austrian immigrants to Australia during this period.

Theresienstadt post-war camp management

On June 10, 1940, the Gestapo took control of Terezín (Theresienstadt), a fortress, built in 1780-1790 in what is now the Czech Republic, and set up prison in the Small Fortress (Kleine Festung). By 24 November 1941, the Main Fortress (grosse Festung, ie the town Theresienstadt) was turned into a walled ghetto. The function of Theresienstadt was to provide a front for the extermination operation of Jews. To the outside it was presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement, but in reality it was a concentration camp. Theresienstadt was also used as a transit camp for European Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

After the German surrender the small fortress was used as an internment camp for ethnic Germans. The first prisoners arrived on the May 10, 1945. On February 29, 1948 the last German prisoners were released and the camp was officially closed. In the first phase of the camp lasting until July 1945 mortality was high due to diseases, malnutrition and incidents of simple outright murder. Commander of the camp in that period was Stanislav Franc, who had been a prisoner of the camp under the Nazis since 1944. He was guided by a spirit of revenge and tolerated any mistreatment of the prisonsers by the guards.

In July 1945 the camp shifted under the control of the Czech ministry for domestic affairs. The new commander appointed was Otakar Kálal. From 1946 on the inmates were gradually transferred to Germany and Terezín more and more turned into a hub for the forced migration of Germans from the Czech lands into Germany proper.

Führer des SS Oberabschnittes Österreich , Vienna

The Austrian branch of the SS developed in 1934 as a covert force to influence the Anschluss with Germany which would occur in 1938. The early Austrian SS was led by Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Arthur Seyss-Inquart. The Austrian SS was technically under the command of the German SS and Heinrich Himmler but acted independently concerning Austrian affairs.

Austrian SS men served under the same manner as the Allgemeine-SS but operated as an underground organisation, in particular after 1936 when the Austrian government declared the SS an illegal organisation. The Austrian SS used the same rank system as the regular SS, but rarely used uniforms or identifying insignia. Photographic evidence indicates that Austrian SS men typically would wear a swastika armband on civilian clothes, and then only at secret SS meetings.

After 1938, when Austria was annexed by Germany, the Austrian SS was completely incorporated into the regular SS. Most of the Austrian SS was folded into Oberabschnitt Donau with a new concentration camp at Mauthausen opened under the authority of the SS Death's Head units.

Gross family

Wilhelm and Getrud Gross were typical middle class Germans living in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). Wilhelm was a Professor of Engineering and Gertrud was the daughter of wealthy industrialists. Her uncle, Karl Gross, had a substantial collection of art works and antiquities, which were confiscated and many of which are probably currently in museums in Eastern Europe. They were of Jewish ethnic origin, but were not religious and they integrated their children totally into German culture.

They had 3 children: Dorothea; an elder brother, Karl; and a younger brother Klaus. Wilhelm was one of 6 siblings. His sister, Emilie, married into the Kuppenheim family.

It appears from the correspondence that Wilhelm was incarcerated in Buchenwald shortly after Kristallnacht and released 5 weeks later on the proviso that he and his family leave Germany immediately. The grandparents fled to Holland in 1939 whence they were later deported and perished in the Holocaust. The three children came to Great Britain.

Papers relating to a number of separate war crimes trials deposited at different times from different sources. There follow the names of defendants in the said trials followed by short biographical histories, where known:

Erich Koch Trial, People's Court, Warsaw, 1958- Erich Koch, former Gauleiter of the Ukraine, and Reich Defence Commissioner in East Prussia was convicted of the murder of 72,000 Poles, and of sending 200,000 others to forced labour camps. He was accused by prosecutors of bearing directly responsibility for the deaths of several million Poles and Russians.

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court conducted 6 trials of 102 Swiss citizens between 1946 and 1948, of whom 99 would be given various sentences for political treason, political or military intelligence activities, violation of military secrets, and military service abroad. Notable names among them were P Benz, G Oltramare, P Bonny, R Fonjallaz, J Barwirsch, H Frei, F Riedweg, T Stadler, F Burri and M L Keller.

Horst Wagner Trial, Hamm, North Rhine Westphalia, District Court, 1959- This former legation counsellor in the Nazi foreign ministry was accused of being accessory to the murder of several hundred thousand Jews. He was head of Gruppe Inland II, which worked with Adolf Eichmann, on the deportation of Jews from a number of European countries. He managed to evade justice for 30 years. Born in Posen in 1906, trained as a journalist in Berlin where he joined the SA in 1933, in May 1938 he joined the foreign ministry. In January 1944 he became liaison officer between the foreign office and the SS, during which period he became involved in the deportation of Jews. He was in custody during the Nuremberg trials where he was a witness, and after which, in 1948, he was released.

Fischer-Schweder et al Higher District Court Stuttgart, 1959. The defendants Bernhard Fischer-Schweder; Werner Schmidt-Hammer; Hans-Joachim Böhme; Werner Hersmann; Edwin Sakuth; Werner Kreuzmann; Harm Willms Harms; Gerhard Carsten; Franz Behrendt; Pranas Lukys alias Jakys were accused of the mass murder of of Jews and Communists in and around the Tilsit region of Lithuania as part of the orders carried out by Einsatzgruppe A.

Heilmann, Kierspel and Mirbeth, Jury Court, Bremen, 1953- Helmrich Hermann Philipp Heilmann, Josef Kierspel and Johann Mirbeth were found guilty of murder, attempted murder and manslaughter in their respective capacities as concentration camp guards in Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, Auschwitz and others.

Udo von Woyrsch and Ernst Müller Trial, Jury Court Osnabrueck and Federal Appeal Court, 1957-1958- charged with accessory to manslaughter and manslaughter of a number of SA men on 30 June 1934.

Dr Emanuel Schaefer and others, Jury Court, Köln - charged, in his capacity as commander of the Sicherheitspolizei und SD in Serbia, for affording assistance to others in their perpetration of the murder of over 6000 Jewish women and children in a camp in Belgrade between end February and end May 1942 also Emanuel Schaefer, Franz Sprinz and Kurt Matschke charged for having knowingly afforded assistance to those who effected the deportation of Jews from Köln to the east. Schaefer, a career police officer with a law degree, held a number of senior positions in various forces including leader of the Stapo in Oppel; a short stint as head of an Einsatzgruppe of the Sicherheitspolizei und SD in Poland; head of the Stapo at Kattowitz; head of the Stapo at Köln until 6 January 1942 when he was made commander of the Sicherheitspolizei und SD in Serbia.

Franz Rademacher and Dr Klingfuss, District Court Nuremberg-Fürth, 1952- Franz Rademacher was the head of D III the so-called Jewish desk of the Nazi Foreign Office from May 1940 to April 1943. He became involved in the plan to re-settle Jews in Madagascar and after it was decided that this plan could no longer be realized, he was sent to Serbia to help the authorities to find a 'local solution' to their 'Jewish problem' (firing squads). In Autumn 1941 he was directly involved in the mass murder of Jews. In the Spring of 1943 he was released for military service in the navy. After the war he was tried and convicted at Nuremberg-Fürth (see below), but jumped bail while the case was being appealed and fled to Syria in 1953. Penniless and in ill health he returned to Germany in 1966 and faced a further trial, conviction, and appeal before his death in 1973. Dr Klingenfuss had spent many years in the foreign office and from July to December 1942 he worked with the co-defendant in department D III of the Foreign Office.

Friedrich Georg Hermann Hildebrand, District Court, Bremen, 1953- Hildebrand was was part of the staff of the Lemberg office of the Galicia district of the SS und Polizeiführer, from July 1942, as commandant of the slave labour camp of Drohobycz and Boryslaw until his deployment as inspector of the Jewish slave camps throughout Galicia in summer 1943.

Johann Paul Kremer, Highest People's Court, Krakau, Poland, 1947- Kremer, a former doctor at Auschwitz was condemned to death by the Polish Supreme National Tribunal on 22 December 1947 for his involvement in the murder of Auschwitz prisoners. He received a presidential reprieve and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. On 11 January 1958 he was let out on probation and handed over to West Germany where he was tried at the Landgericht, Münster, Westphalia, and sentenced to a total of 10 years for 2 counts of accessory to murder, on 29 November 1960. Since he had spent more than 10 years in a Polish prison he was allowed to go free.

Philipp Mensinger, District Court, Bremen, 1967- Mensinger was accused of 8 counts of murder at the site of the business Karpathen Öl AG, Galicia which employed slave labour.

Dr Carl Clauberg Trial, District Court, Kiel, 1956- Carl Clauberg, an eminent professor of medicine at Kiel University, is indicted here on numerous counts of grievous bodily harm; intent to injure; manslaughter as a result, principally, of his experiments on sterilisation of women patients at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück.

Indictment 1964- Karl Wolff, one of Himmler's most trusted colleagues. In 1931 Wolff joined the Nazi party and the SS, and in July 1933 he was appointed Himmler's adjutant. In 1936 he was elected to the Reichstag as a member from Hesse. Wolff advanced rapidly up the SS ladder, being appointed Standartenführer in January 1934, Gruppenführer in the Waffen- SS in May 1940, and SS- Obergruppenführer and Generaloberst (senior general) in 1942. He was awarded the Nazi party gold medal on January 30 1939. It was Wolff, who, with Himmler's help, obtained the necessary deportation trains from the German railways administration for transporting innumerable thousands of Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp. In September 1943 Wolff became military governor of northern Italy and plenipotentiary of the Reich to Mussolini's Fascist government. In February 1945 Wolff contacted US intelligence agent Allen Dulles in Zurich and arranged for the surrender of the German forces in northern Italy.

Lehmann , Julian , 1886-1943 , journalist

Julian Lehmann, son of the author Oskar Lehmann, and grandson of the Rabbi Dr Markus Lehmann was born on 3 October 1886 in Mainz, lived in Hamburg and was editor of the Israelitisches Familienblatt. After studying modern languages and literature, he did a short course in journalism and became an editor on the Frankfurter Nachrichten (1912-1927), later he founded the periodical Der neue Tag. In 1928 he took over the editorial leadership of the Israelitisches Familienblatt. He was probably most well known for his appearances on radio where he introduced the genre of 'Reportage'. He concerned himself with cultural history and the history of Jews in Frankfurt and Mainz. He emigrated to Great Britain in 1938 where he helped with the kosher canteen at Stamford Hill and providing kosher food for internees and died in London in 1943.

Pottlitzer family

The Pottlitzers were a German Jewish family which settled in Great Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Komitee Aide Israelite aux Victimes de la Guerre, Brussels

Mr and Mrs Elsztajn were Polish Jews living in Belgium. They were arrested in 1943 and transported to Malines. Mrs Elsztajn describes how people feared Commandant Schmidt of Malines and Breendonck. They were taken to Auschwitz where she was experimented on by Dr Carl Clauberg and with him were doctors Goebbels, Weber, Wirtz and Samuel, a German Jew, who tried his best for them, but was killed before Auschwitz was evacuated because he knew the secrets of Block 10 which housed women used in experiments. On 18 January 1945 they were evacuated from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück on foot in the extreme cold, then to Malchow towards Leipzig-Taucha on trains under continuous bombardment. On 25 April 1945 they were liberated by the Americans and Mrs Elsztajn was repatriated by plane to Belgium where she was reunited with her daughter.