The Jewish Relief Unit was the operational arm of the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad, which was formed in 1943 by the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association and under the auspices and financial responsibility of the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation. This organisation, which was based in Great Britain, provided support and assistance of all kinds to Jewish Displaced Persons in the aftermath of the war in Germany.
Ruth Balint (née Neumann) was born in Berlin in 1926. She was sent to school in Schöneiche, Brandenburg, where she was one of very few Jewish children. In 1938 she was sent to a Jewish school in Berlin. Shortly after her father's return from 3 months in a concentration camp, in the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht, he wrote to a relative in Newcastle, Kurt Banski, a furniture maker, with regard to looking after Ruth. Ruth came to England circa July 1939 on the Kindertransport. She spent the following 5 years with an English Methodist family in Kendall, Lake District. She remained in contact with the family for the rest of their lives. Ruth died in 2000.
During the war years Ruth received the letters in this collection from her parents, who were eventually deported to Warsaw, then Treblinka in 1942 and grandparents to Theresienstadt in the same year. The only indication of concern about their predicament, which Ruth discerned in the letters after a re-reading of them many years later, was the occasional enquiry regarding news of relatives who had managed to flee to South America, and who had promised to help them also to emigrate.
Amon Lepold Goeth (1908-1946), SS officer, born in Vienna; joined the National Socialist Party in 1932; joined the SS, 1940, where he rose to the rank of Hauptsturmführer. Goeth was assigned to the headquarters of the SS Command and to the Lublin police. Subsequently he was transferred to Krakow, where he was in charge of liquidating the ghettos and labour camps at Szebnie, Bochnia, Tarnow, and Krakow, amongst other places. From February 1943 to September 1944 Goeth commanded the concentration camp at Plaszow, near Krakow. After the war he was extradited to Poland at the request of the Polish authorities and tried before the Polish Supreme Court on a charge of committing mass murder during the liquidation of the ghettos at Szebnie camp and Plaszow. He was sentenced to death and executed in Krakow, 1946.
Julius Jung, a German Jewish immigrant to Great Britain, who was an active member of a number of committees and organisations which catered to the needs of the Jewish community. In particular, he was Honorary Secretary of the B'nai B'rith Care Committee for Refugee Children (see 1410/3410, 3509, 3423 for minutes of the hostel committee meetings). As a member of the University of London Jewish Students' Union, he was also involved in assisting German Jewish academics and students who had been excluded from universities on racial grounds in 1931-1932. In addition he was secretary of the Jewish Friends Food Fund.
This collection of correspondence and cuttings documents Reg Freeson's persistent efforts to establish the truth about the fate of Josef Mengele, the notorious SS doctor who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of prisoners at Auschwitz. In particular, Freeson attempts to find out whether a body exhumed from a grave in Brazil in 1985 was in fact that of Mengele, as alleged. The responses he receives from the German, Israeli and American authorities are inconclusive.
Josef Mengele (March 15, 1911- February 7, 1979) was a German SS officer and a physician in the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He gained notoriety chiefly for being one of the SS physicians who supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced labourer, and for performing human experiments on camp inmates, amongst whom Mengele was known as the Angel of Death.
After the war, he first hid in Austria under an assumed name, then escaped and lived in South America, first in Argentina (until 1959) and finally in Brazil, in the cities of Serra Negra, Moji das Cruzes, and then died in Bertioga, where he drowned in the sea after suffering a stroke. His identity was confirmed by forensic experts from UNICAMP (Campinas University) using DNA testing on his remains.
Esterwege prison camp was first established along with two others (Boergemoor and Neusustrum) in the Emsland region of Lower Saxony in June 1933 by the Prussian Interior Ministry. In April 1934, Esterwege became a concentration camp. Heinrich Himmler, as Reichsfuehrer SS and head of the Gestapo, reorganised the Prussian concentration camp sytem and installed a new commandant and guards from the SA and SS. Throughout the 1930s it served as a camp for political prisoners, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews and intellectuals. In 1936 many of the prisoners were transferred to Sachsenhausen and from January 1937 the camp was taken over by the Reichsjustizministerium and became the 7th prison camp in Emsland.
From 1940 it became increasingly used for army deserters and the like. Conditions deteriorated throughout the war, many prisoners dying from illnesses and overwork. From May 1943 it started to take in resistance fighters from foriegn lands. By the end of the war it was first used temporarily by the British occupying forces as a Displaced Persons Camp for Russians and later as an internment camp for war criminals.
Robert Miller (formerly Marx), came to Great Britain in 1937 to attend school. His parents, Ludwig and Regina, left in 1939, the father having been incarcerated at Dachau in November 1938, from where he was released on the understanding that he would leave Germany for the USA, where a distant cousin of the mother had given an affidavit of support. It was on the strength of this that they received British (6 month) transit visas. The war stopped all further migration so their US visas were never acted upon. The whole family became naturalised British citizens in 1947, but in 1952 economic circumstances forced Ludwig and Regina to return to Germany whilst Robert remained in Great Britain.
Little is known about the family save for their birth details and the following information gleaned from Franz Mendelsohn's cv dated c 1934. He was born in Breslau, 7 Jan 1899, the son of the lawyer, notary and Justizrat, Salo Mendelsohn. Franz studied law in Freiburg, taking his final examination on 15 Mar 1924 from which date he worked as a lawyer at the regional court at Breslau in a practice with his father until the latter's death in 1929. Then he carried on the practice on his own until 31 May 1933 on which date his right to practise law was withdrawn on account of his Jewish origins. He then worked voluntarily for half a year in a shipping company to gain experience in business and at the same time at the legal protection department of the Breslau synagogue community. He married Charlotte Fraenkel in 1925.
Schwarzheide concentration camp, 50 km north of Dresden, a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen, was established in July 1944 initially to house 1000 Jewish slave labourers who were to work in the Braunkohlen-Benzinwerkes (Brabag) nearby. Such was the importance of this factory to the German war effort that it had been bombed on several occasions and for the whole of June 1944 was completely put out of action. Once the complex had recovered from this last assault, preparations were made to transfer inmates from Auschwitz, who had all lost their families in the aftermath of the liquidation of the so-called 'Familienlager' in Theresienstadt. Several inmates from Sachsenhausen had been sent over to fill posts of responsibility to administer the camp. It was a brutal regime, in which many inmates were worked to death. In addition many died or were injured as a result of Allied bombing attacks, mainly because they were not evacuated or given protection during air raids.
The Foundation Monumentum Judaicum Lodzense was established in Lodz on 6 November 1995 and registered in 1997. Its founders were the then Municipality of Lodz, Organisation of Former Residents of Lodz in Israel and the World Jews Restitution Organisation. Its main goal is to save the Jewish cemetery at Bracka Street, restoring and preserving the memory of Lodz, the Jewish society and its significant contribution to the city's life and its development. It also encourages the spreading of knowledge about the Holocaust and remembering the fate of its inhabitants.
The donor, A Dunitz, was instrumental in bringing about the creation of a memorial to the Jews who were deported by the Nazis, by persuading the various Greek authoritities to cooperate. He was also responsible for finding all the names of the individuals. The names on this list correspond with those on the memorial. The memorial was erected in 2001.
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.
Isidore Kirchner was Jewish; born in 1856 in Loslau, Upper Silesia; attended school in Pless and became a licensed medical practitioner in Berlin 1883.
Sir Otto Kahn-Freund was Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Oxford.
Born in Frankfurt am Main of Jewish parents, 1900; educated at the Goethe-Gymnasium and Frankfurt University; Judge of the Berlin labour court, 1929; dismissed by the Nazis, fled to London and became a student at the London School of Economics (LSE), 1933; Assistant Lecturer in Law, LSE, 1936; Professor, 1951; called to the bar (Middle Temple), 1936; British citizen, 1940; Professor of Comparative Law, University of Oxford, and fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, 1964; elected FBA, 1965; honorary bencher of the Middle Temple, 1969; QC, 1972; knighted, 1976; played important part in the establishment of labour law as an independent area of legal study, and was a member of the Royal Commission on Reform of Trade Unions and Employers' Associations, 1965; died 1979.
Sir Otto Kahn-Freund was born 17 November 1900 in Frankfurt am Main and was professor of comparative law, University of Oxford. He was born in Frankfurt am Main of Jewish parents and educated at the Goethe-Gymnasium there and Frankfurt University. He became judge of the Berlin labour court, 1929. Dismissed by the Nazis in 1933, he fled to London and became a student at the London School of Economics. He became an assistant lecturer in law there in 1936 and Professor in 1951. He was called to the bar (Middle Temple) in 1936. He became a British citizen in 1940.
He was appointed Professor of Comparative Law, University of Oxford, and fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford in 1964 and elected FBA in 1965. He became an honorary bencher of the Middle Temple in 1969 and a QC in 1972. He was knighted in 1976.
He played an important part in the establishment of labour law as an independent area of legal study, and was a member of the Royal Commission on Reform of Trade Unions and Employers' Associations, 1965. Kahn-Freund died in 1979.
The Trade Union Centre for German Workers in Great Britain (TUCGWGB) was founded just before the outbreak of the Second World War, but did not begin its work in earnest until the release of many of the German exiles, who were interned at the outbreak of war. The chairman of the TUCGWGB, Hans Gottfurcht, had for many years been an active trade unionist in Germany, where he helped establish a number of illegal trade unions under the Nazis. The establishment of the TUCGWGB was regarded as necessary because of the particular situation brought about by the large influx of refugees and exiles. Whereas it would normally have been expected for these new arrivals to join existing British trade unions (which they did as well), there was always a sense that their stay in Great Britain would only ever be temporary, and that they needed a representative organisation that would reflect their particular interests. After the war and the demise of the TUCGWGB, Hans Gottfurcht went on to become a pivotal figure as liaison between the newly formed Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund and the occupying British authorities.
Felix Langer was born in Bruenn, Moravia (Brno, Czec Republic) on 18 June, 1889. He studied law and political science at the university of Vienna; was a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War One; and was a director of relief work for prisoners of war in Siberia at the end of the war. Between 1920 and 1933 he worked as a journalist and writer in Berlin. He was an author of stage and radio plays and film scripts. He was also a contributor to Berliner Tageblatt, among other papers. He emigrated to Bruenn in 1933 where he was a regular contributor to a number of newspapers. In 1939 he emigrated to Great Britain where he became an active member of Club 43, and wrote a number of books, including his best known, Stepping Stones to Peace, (London, 1942). Langer died in London, 1980.
Arthur Gliksman was the chairman of the Aerztlicher Standesverein der Koenigstadt zu Berlin, the Berlin medical unions.
Julius Bloch was born in Bruehl/Baden in June 1877. He became a member of the Jewish Gemeindevorstand in Pforzheim, Baden Wuertemberg, in 1923; member of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, Frankfurt/ Main, where he was also chairman of the Jewish welfare committee and head of the regional office for the Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland. He was responsible for rationalisng the provision of welfare to Jews in Frankfurt by centralising the numerous smaller organisations into one large organisation. By May 1938 he was living in London. In 1946 he was deputy of the New Liberal Congregation, London. He died in London in 1956.
The principal editor (and probable creator) of this collection, Richard Wolff, is thought to have been one time chairman of the Paulus Bund, a representative organisation for Jewish mixed-race Germans (See Werner Cohn, 'Bearers of a Common Fate? The Non-Aryan Christian Fate-Comrades of the Paulus-Bund, 1933-1939' in Leo Baeck Yearbook XXXIII 1988). He was born in 1886, emigrated in 1938 and since 1947 was a naturalised British citizen. He lived in Nairobi during the mid 1950s. He died 9 March 1985.
Moses Mendelssohn was born in 1729 and was a creative and eclectic thinker whose writings on metaphysics and aesthetics, political theory and theology, together with his Jewish heritage, placed him at the focal point of the German Enlightenment for over three decades. While Mendelssohn found himself at home with a metaphysics derived from writings of Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten, he was also one of his age's most accomplished literary critics. His highly regarded pieces on works of Homer and Aesop, Pope and Burke, Maupertuis and Rousseau, to cite only a fraction of his numerous critical essays, appeared in a series of journals that he co-edited with G F Lessing and Friedrich Nicolai. Dubbed The Jewish Luther Mendelssohn also contributed significantly to the life of the Jewish community and letters in Germany, campaigning for Jews' civil rights and translating the Pentateuch and the Psalms into German. Mendelsohn died in 1786.
The Gottstein family were a Jewish family from Rothenburg, Germany
The Centro di Documentazione sui Bibelforscher, Centre for the Documentaion of Jehovah's Witnesses, is based in Italy and has no affiliation to any religious denomination.
Otto F Hutter was a former refugee from Vienna who came to Great Britain as a child on one of the Kindertransporte in 1939.
Nazi antisemitisc propaganda drawing on theJudensau tradition of caricature that sought to dehumanise Jewish people. The tradition dates back to the Middle Ages when images were displayed in churches, public buildings, town gates and town walls. It was later revived by the Nazis.
Sophie Cahn was a German Jewish refugee whose father and mother, died at Minsk, Belarus and Theresienstadt, respectively, having failed to escape the Nazis.
This letter of the school inspector (Bezirksschulrat) of Munich concerning the school-building of the Jewish community (Juedische Kultusgemeinde), written on the 12th of November 1938, to the government of Bavaria/Munich reports the destruction of the school-building caused by a fire in the attached Synagogue.
Considering the date of the letter it can be assumed that the fire was a result of the pogroms on the 9th November 1939. Moreover, the school inspector reports that of six male teachers three are in prison, one is ill and that the whereabouts of the fifth teacher is unclear. Therefore he orders the closure of the school.
A handwritten comment on the third page indicates that the leaflet was dropped by the RAF in 1943 or 1944.
The Rhoden family were a Jewish family from Vienna who came to Great Britain in 1939. The father, Dr Edgar Rhoden was arrested by the State Police (Stapo), Vienna, May 31, 1938 and imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp from where he wrote to his daughter, Eva. There are passport visa stamps for the UK (15 August 1939) and the USA (5 November 1940). Nothing further is known about the family.
The Central Council for Jewish Refugees was originally called the Council for German Jewry. This was a British Jewish organisation established in 1936 with the goal of aiding German Jews to leave Germany in co-ordinated emigration. Organisationally, the CFGJ succeeded and absorbed the Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF), established in May 1933. In reaction to the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, British Jewish leaders, in consultation with German Jewish leaders, formulated an emigration plan for 100,000 German Jews aged 17-35. Half of the immigrants would settle in Palestine, and half in other countries. It was hoped another 100,000 would emigrate without assistance. The council's founders sought to forge a partnership in this endeavour with American Jewry. Personal and organisational differences nearly prevented the formation of the council. Its first meeting was held in London on March 15, 1936, but the two major American groups, the Joint Distribution Committee and the United Palestine Appeal, joined formally only in August. The council never assumed the stature its founders had hoped it would. It was hampered by British immigration policies in Palestine, emigration obstacles in Germany, the growing impoverishment of German Jewry, and the exacerbation of the situation following the Anschluss. Yet, the council did manage to help nearly 100,000 Jews emigrate by the outbreak of World War Two, and it also funded numerous vocational training programs in Germany and elsewhere.
With the outbreak of the war, the council was forced to limit its activities to refugees in Britain, and its name was changed to the Central Council for Jewish Refugees. Following the war, the needs of displaced persons and refugees brought another reorganisation and name change, to the Central British Fund for Relief and Rehabilitation. This organisation still exists in the CBF's original offices in Woburn House, London.
Helmut Strauss was born in Othfresen, Lower Saxony, Germany in 1919.
The Dokumentationszentrum des Bundes Juedischer Verfolgter des Naziregimes (Documentation Centre for the League of Jews Persecuted by the Nazis) was founded in October 1961 by Simon Wiesenthal with a staff initially of 2 people. Its aims were to identify and evaluate the vast and growing corpus of material on the subject of the Holocaust; to locate witnesses for war crimes trials; to support the judiciary and police authorities through contact with other documentation centres throughout the world in the prosecution of war criminals; and to observe and collect material on neo-Nazi organisations.
World Media Forum is a platform for the discussion of a variety of international news topics attended by members of the world's media and held (annually ?) in different parts of the world. This particular event was held in Zurich in 1999.
Little is known about the subjects of these two facsimile identity card applications, other than the information contained within the documents themselves, namely that Ewa and Henryk Fischler were Polish-Jewish residents of Krakau, and that they had 2 children, Janina and Stanislaw, born in 1930 and 1933 respectively.
These statements of Deputy Secretary Stuart Eizenstadt and Ambassador Ernst Sucharipa were delivered on the occasion of the conclusion of negotiations about a comprehensive compensation package for property aryanised during the Nazi era in Austria.
The Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, later the Reichsverband der Juedischen Kulturbuende in Deutschland was an organisation engaged in promoting culture and the arts among the Jews of Germany between 1933 and 1941. Its purposes were to enable the Jewish population to maintain the cultural life to which they were accustomed, and to alleviate the distress of the thousands of Jewish theatrical artists and musicians who had been thrown out of their jobs when the Nazis came to power.
The protest meeting to which this flyer refers took place some time in 1938 after Reichskristallnacht, at The Hippodrome, Golders Green. Among those attending were representatives from the Federation of Peace Councils, the Jewish People's Council and the Society of Friends.
The papers in this collection pertain to a competition organised by W Marmorek to create the best English translation of a poem originally written in German concerning life in Buchenwald concentration camp.
Marmorek was originally asked to help out with the translation by a friend and former inmate of Buchenwald. He placed an advertisement in the AJR Newsletter offering a prize for the best translation.
Buchenwald concentration camp, one of the largest in Germany with its 130 satellite camps and units, was situated 5 miles north of Weimar in Thüringen. It was established in July 1937 when the first group of 149 mostly political prisoners and criminals was received. Some 238,980 prisoners passed through Buchenwald from 30 countries. 43,005 were killed or perished there.
This release permit belonged to Erich Marmorek, born Vienna, 1907, architect.
Unknown
Wilfrid Israel, born in London in 1899 to an English Jewess and a German Jew, enjoyed a very privileged existence growing up in Berlin, where he inherited the family business, the famous N Israel department store, with its 2000 employees. Whilst conforming to family expectations, he entertained interests in socialist Zionism, pacifism and internationalism.
During the war years he became a secret intermediary, the confidant of such major figures as Chaim Weizmann and Albert Einstein, as well as hundreds of others, for whom he was able to arrange escapes, on account of his dual nationality and familiarity with Gestapo extortion techniques.
On a return flight from Portugal in 1943, where he was effecting the rescue of more Jewish refugees, he died when his plane was shot down by German fighters.
Juedische Winterhilfe (Jewish winter aid) was a Jewish organisation activated in the autumn of 1935 by the National Representation (Reichsvertretung) and the Central Committee of German Jews for Relief and Reconstruction to help needy Jews get through the winter, by providing food, medicines, and heating assistance. Winter Aid had been a general German enterprise during the winter of 1931/32, but Jews were excluded after the Nuremberg Laws, prompting Jewish organisations to establish the Jewish equivalent. Juedische Winterhilfe funded its activities by means of donations from Jews in Germany and elsewhere.
Gunter Wittenberg was a former German Jewish refugee from Berlin.
The Dresner family were a Jewish family resident in Leipzig during the Nazi era, some of whose members perished in the Holocaust, others escaping to Great Britain.
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, commonly known as Albert Speer, was born 19 March 1905, was an architect, author and high-ranking Nazi German government official, sometimes called the first architect of the Third Reich.
Speer was Hitler's chief architect before becoming his Minister for Armaments during the war. He reformed Germany's war production to the extent that it continued to increase for over a year despite increasingly intensive Allied bombing. After the war, he was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for his role in the Third Reich. He was the only senior Nazi figure to admit guilt and express remorse. Following his release in 1966, he became an author, writing two bestselling autobiographical works, and a third about the Third Reich. His two autobiographical works, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: the Secret Diaries detailed his often close personal relationship with German dictator Adolf Hitler, and have provided readers and historians with an unequalled personal view inside the workings of the Third Reich. Speer died of natural causes in 1981, in London, England.
Selig Hecht, American biophysicist, was born in Glogow, Austria (now Poland) in 1892. He moved to the United States in 1898 and graduated from the College of the City of New York (BS, 1913) and from Harvard (PhD, 1917). After organising the laboratory of biophysics at Columbia University, he was Professor of Biophysics there from 1926. He pioneered the application of physiochemical principles to sensory physiology and is known for his determination of minimal quantal requirements at the threshold of vision and for his successful laboratory regeneration of visual purple. An advocate of popular scientific education, he wrote Explaining the Atom, 1947 and died in the same year.
The Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief was founded in the early months of 1933 by a group of Anglo-Jewish community leaders, in response to the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on a political platform of anti-Semitism. Among the founders were Anthony de Rothschild, Leonard G. Montefiore and Otto Schiff.
The fund has been through many name changes in its lifetime. It started out as the Central British Fund for German Jewry, then became part of the new Council for German Jewry in 1936 along with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the American United Palestine Appeal. On the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 the fund changed its name to the Central Council for Jewish Refugees, and in 1944 changed again to the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation. After many years as the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief, the organisation is now known as World Jewish Relief.
The Fund's mission, according to its Memorandum of Association, was 'to relieve or assist Jewish Refugees in any part of the world in such manner and on such terms and conditions (if any) as may be thought fit'. In this work the fund was aided by various organisations, including the Jewish Refugees Committee (JRC) which was founded by Otto Schiff in 1933, the Children's Refugee Movement (established by the JRC and the Inter-Aid Committee), and the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad, which was established in 1943 and financed by the Central Council for Jewish Refugees (as the Central British Fund (CBF) was then known).
Adolf Frankl was born in 1903, the son of a Jewish businessman in Bratislava. Having shown an aptitude for art at an early age, he was discouraged from making a career out of his talent and went to work in his father's business from 1920. He married Renee Nachmias in 1933 and founded his own interior decoration business in 1937. The advent of the Nazis and, in particular, the establishment of the puppet Tiso-regime in Slovakia, resulted in pogroms against the country's Jewish population. Frankl's business was aryanised in 1941 and he was forced to live in a ghetto with his family.
Frankl was sent to Auschwitz in 1944, where he survived. It was only after the war that the full horror began to trouble him in the form of recurrent nightmares. It was suggested that he paint as a way of working through his horrific experiences. The paintings which were used in the exhibition entitled Visionen aus dem Inferno were the result. Material relating to this exhibition is described below.
After the war Frankl lived in Vienna and New York then, from the 1960s, in Germany. He died in 1983.
Eva Manes was the daughter of Philip Manes, a German Jewish fur-trader, who was transported to Theresienstadt, then Auschwitz where he perished with his wife. See GB 1556 WL 1346 for more background information on the family.