A Trip into the Unknown with Cyanide in the Hair Bun

The Bockenheim Network Rescues Tuschi Müller

Tuschi Müller was rescued (photo 1970’s). © Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Tuschi Müller was rescued (photo 1970’s). © Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Tuschi Müller received an order to appear at the Gestapo after her sister Eva had escaped and did not come to work anymore. Desperately she contacted Margarete Kahl who immediately brought her to her own home. She was housed in the laundry room at Blanchardstrasse 22 and the Kahls considered how to proceed further. Tuschi was very scared so that an escape across the Swiss border was not a possibility. As a result she was given a new curriculum vitae and a relevant passport, issued in the name of Ruth Hoefler. Margarete Kahl would wake Tuschi in the middle of the night and ask her details about her new identity in order to prepare her should an emergency occur. At the very start of her escape she found herself sitting in a train compartment with SS men but she did not show her fear. Unfortunately she did not reach her destination Budapest because the border crossing failed. Dr. Kahl had provided her with a cyanide capsule, which she hid in her hair bun. Under no circumstances did she want to get in the Gestapo’s hands during a control search, but luckily she did not need the poison. Tuschi remained stuck in Vienna. She found a job, of all places, in the “Lion’s Den” by which was meant the copying center of Vienna’s Nazi “Gauleiter”.

Her excellently faked documents and disguise made it difficult for her to prove her Jewish heritage after the war. She contacted her rescuer Dr. Kahl who helped her out with a written confirmation. Tuschi used the first opportunity after the war to emigrate to the USA and headed to friends she knew in Los Angeles. She remained in contact with the Kahls’ sons even after their parents’ deaths. When the sons looked for witnesses to participate in the honoring of their parents as “Righteous amongst the nations” at Yad Vashem, they asked Tuschi Müller to contribute a few words. She responded very late and after much hesitation: “The reason for this? Because I don’t like rummaging around in the past …”

Excerpt from Tuschi Müller’s letter (dating from 1996) to Gerhard Kahl.  Description of her escape from Frankfurt am Main to Vienna. © Dr. Eugen Kahl
Excerpt from Tuschi Müller’s letter (dating from 1996) to Gerhard Kahl. Description of her escape from Frankfurt am Main to Vienna. © Dr. Eugen Kahl
See: Petra Bonavita: Mit falschem Pass und 
Zyankali, Stuttgart 2009, pages 24-27.

[german version]

A Witness of the Destruction Reports Abroad

The Bockenheim Network Rescues Robert Eisenstädt

Hans Waider stole a service ID, altered it with a photo of Robert Eisenstädt and re-issued it with the name “Wilhelm Sticheler”. © Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, Bern
Hans Waider stole a service ID, altered it with a photo of Robert Eisenstädt and re-issued it with the name “Wilhelm Sticheler”. © Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, Bern
Dr. Kahl found out from soldiers, who came to his medical practice during their vacation from the front, what the Nazi terminology “evacuate towards the East” in connection with deportation really meant, i.e. it led to people being exterminated. The soldiers’ reports gained added credibility based on Robert Eisenstädt’s descriptions as 23-year-old from Hanau, who had escaped from the Majdanek camp in July 1942 and had sought Dr. Kahl’s medical help. After several months of intensive discussion the escape helpers decided that the world had to be informed of the Nazis’ murderous intentions, based on Eisenstädt’s eyewitness report. His escape to Switzerland would also save his own life.

In autumn 1942 Welke found out from Swiss helpers that refugees who had reached Switzerland were sent back to Nazi Germany and thereby destined to a certain death. The only exceptions were minor age children and social hardship cases, for example pregnant women and their relatives. Robert Eisenstädt did not want to flee by himself but wanted to take his fiancé Eva Müller with him. As she herself was a Hungarian Jew and also endangered detailed escape plans were prepared.

What if Eva Müller was pregnant? When would an escape than have to be suspended? Where should Robert Eisenstädt live in hiding until then? Eisenstädt wrote about these plans in his memoires: “Dr. Kahl found out that Switzerland was not able to take more refugees in, except pregnant women or people with small children. I was not able to sire a child. Dr. Kahl examined my sperms and discovered that a very few were alive. He separated them and performed an artificial insemination. It worked. When Eva’s pregnancy became visible we had to make a move.”

Robert Eisenstädt received a fake service card from his sister’s fiancé Hans Waider at the end of November 1942 in order to tie him over during his illegal stay in Frankfurt and Hanau. Hans Waider and Martha Eisenstädt were not allowed to marry on account of the “Nuremberg Laws”. They had a small son Heinz who was born in 1938. It was discussed that Martha and her child should go into hiding in Waider’s parents’ garden hut. However, these plans were shattered and Waider was very affected when he found out about her deportation. None-the-less, he was prepared to help Martha’s brother. He stole an ID card from a Wehrmacht office and offered groceries as well as the garden hut as a place of refuge. Eisenstädt spent the next few months living in Hanau by Waider’s parents, then by his fiancée Eva in Frankfurt. In the meantime Dr. Kahl and friends obtained the necessary documents, which would be used by Eva Müller during her escape. They snuck into a service leader’s apartment and stole an ID, which would help Eva Müller during her train travel. The criminal investigator Wilhelm Gentemann gave Eisenstädt a pistol in case that the escape failed. Welke traveled to the border area, familiarized himself with the escape path and informed the Swiss helpers of the forthcoming arrival. The escape succeeded on 23 February 1943.

Robert (in background) with his mother Henriette and the siblings Rosa and Heini (photo 1936). The Eisenstädt family was deported from Hanau on 1 June 1942. © Gerald von Gostomski
Robert (in background) with his mother Henriette and the siblings Rosa and Heini (photo 1936). The Eisenstädt family was deported from Hanau on 1 June 1942. © Gerald von Gostomski
Eva Müller-Eisenstädt. © Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, Bern
Eva Müller-Eisenstädt. © Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, Bern

 

Hans Waider and his parents Fritz and Lina Waider helped Robert Eisenstädt with food supplies, a hiding place and a falsified service ID card. © Gerald von Gostomski
Hans Waider and his parents Fritz and Lina Waider helped Robert Eisenstädt with food supplies, a hiding place and a falsified service ID card. © Gerald von Gostomski
Fritz and Lina Waider helped with food supplies, a hiding place and contacts.
Fritz and Lina Waider helped with food supplies, a hiding place and contacts.
Wilhelm Gentemann ensured the escape and gave Robert a pistol. © Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main
Wilhelm Gentemann ensured the escape and gave Robert a pistol. © Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main
 Excerpt from Robert Eisenstädt’s memories regarding his escape to Switzerland. © Gerald von Gostomski
Excerpt from Robert Eisenstädt’s memories regarding his escape to Switzerland. © Gerald von Gostomski
See: Memorial “Stille Helden” in Berlin, especially 
the biographies of Dr. Fritz Kahl, Robert Eisenstädt 
and Hans Waider; Shoah Foundation interview 
with Robert Eisenstädt in: USHMM Washington D.C.; 
Petra Bonavita: Mit falschem Pass und Zyankali, 
Stuttgart 2009, pages 17-23.

[german version]

Resistance as RescueResistance: The Bockenheim Network

Dr. Fritz and Margarete Kahl with their son Gerhard (1934). © Dr. Eugen Kahl
Dr. Fritz and Margarete Kahl with their son Gerhard (1934). © Dr. Eugen Kahl
What could a reverend and a doctor and his wife do to oppose the Nazis? To storm the Gestapo headquarters with a gun? To call for resistance by distributing fliers?

For several years that it is exactly what they did: hide the fliers of the opponent “Bekennende Kirche” (part of the protestant church against Hitler) under carpets and thereafter drive to the countryside. However, informing people about the Nazis’ true intentions was insufficient in 1942 and it became necessary to protect the persecuted from being deported, i.e. to provide RescueResistance.

When the reverend Heinz Welke and Dr. Fritz and Margarete Kahl got to know each other in 1941 each had already gathered their own experience as a Nazi opponent. As a theological student Welke had refused to take the oath to support Hitler in February 1935. Kahl traveled to Berlin in 1934 to support a Jewish colleague whose medical practice had been shut down. Welke preached against the Nazis in Oppenheim/Rheinhessen and was sought by the Gestapo in Darmstadt in December 1938. Kahl rescued a Jewish factory owner from being arrested during the November pogroms in 1938. Reverend Welke was arrested by the Gestapo during an illegal stay in Frankfurt in 1939. He was tortured and severely ill and was only released from prison due to his friends’ efforts. The aid department of the “Bekennende Kirche” in Switzerland financed a cure for him in Davos. He returned in 1940 and found like minded friends in Dr. and Mrs. Kahl, who felt similarly obligated to offer help and rescue.

Dr. Fritz Kahl continued to treat Jewish patients in 1941, although this had been prohibited for a long time. Margarete Kahl sent her son Eugen to deliver bags full of groceries to Jewish patients – a means of combating the hunger politics of Jakob Sprenger, the Hessian “Gauleiter”. Although the Kahls had four children themselves they did not allow themselves to be intimidated. They looked for others who thought like they did and built up a small resistance network: members and reverends of the “Bekennende Kirche”, patients from the medical practice, people from within the neighborhood of Bockenheim, people from outside the neighborhood, amongst whom was Kurt Müller, a reverend from Stuttgart and Dorle Pfeiffer, an escape helper and Luise Wetter who lived in Switzerland. In 1939, the Kahls gave their household helper Paula Meisenzahl jewelry, which had been collected from Jewish patients, which she in turn brought to London. Trude Lengler and the attorney Johannes Becker also belonged to the list of helpers from Bockenheim. Cavit Fitaman, who worked in the Turkish consulate, obtained fruits and vegetables, and the grocer Albert Pallentin cashed in ration cards. Karoline Weber, a hospital welfare worker helped reverend Welke so that he could organize his reconnaissance trips and conspiratorial meetings. Wilhelm Gentemann, a civil servant criminal investigator, also Karl Münch, a metal worker, and many other nameless helpers — they all helped with the rescue efforts of the small Bockenheim network.

After the final large deportation on 14 February 1945, when approximately 200 Frankfurter were transported to Theresienstadt, the remaining people being taken care by reverend Welke and Dr. and Mrs. Kahl went into hiding in Königstein near Frankfurt. Welke had arranged for the hiding place. Margarete Kahl went to her neighbor Margarete Wiehl and offered to hide her as well. Mrs. Wiehl declined the offer and was deported shortly thereafter to Theresienstadt. She knew what to expect because her sister had already been deported there in 1942. There was no subsequent sign of life from the sister.

.

Blanchardstrasse 22 (left entrance) where Robert Eisenstädt and Tuschi Müller were hidden for a while. © Dr. Eugen Kahl
Blanchardstrasse 22 (left entrance) where Robert Eisenstädt and Tuschi Müller were hidden for a while. © Dr. Eugen Kahl
Reverend Heinz Welke in front of the Trinity Community’s Church for the Needy (photo from 1936) © Dieter Welke
Reverend Heinz Welke in front of the Trinity Community’s Church for the Needy (photo from 1936) © Dieter Welke
Luise Wetter, a rescuer in Switzerland. © Dieter Welke
Luise Wetter, a rescuer in Switzerland. © Dieter Welke
List of Frankfurt rescuers compiled by the American political scientist Dr. Manfred Wolfson in 1964. © Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand Berlin
List of Frankfurt rescuers compiled by the American political scientist Dr. Manfred Wolfson in 1964. © Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand Berlin
A housing area in the Frankfurt neighborhood of Bockenheim has been named after Margarete and Fritz Kahl in order to recognize their commitment to rescuing the persecuted. © Photo Petra Bonavita
A housing area in the Frankfurt neighborhood of Bockenheim has been named after Margarete and Fritz Kahl in order to recognize their commitment to rescuing the persecuted. © Photo Petra Bonavita
See: Petra Bonavita: Mit falschem Pass 
und Zyankali, Stuttgart 2009, pages 11-51; 
also: Zivilcourage und Widerstand – Zum 
100. Geburtstag von Heinz Welke, 
Catalogue, Frankfurt/Main 2011.

[german version]

Escape from Berlin and Refuge in Frankfurt and Hessen

The sculptress Hedwig Wittekind in her studio (no date). © Collection Petra Bonavita
The sculptress Hedwig Wittekind in her studio (no date). © Collection Petra Bonavita

The majority of the Frankfurt Jews who went into hiding escaped from the city. The air raids on the city offered many people the opportunity to apply for substitute documents as air raid victims and thereby hide their true heritage. Only when they had obtained such an ID card were they able to apply for the important ration card. However, to report being bombed out in Frankfurt seemed too risky.

The situation was different for the Berlin Jews. The city was immense and the anonymity of the big city offered possibilities to disappear from the old-established neighborhood. The Berlin Gestapo was aware of this weakness and recruited “snitchers” who reported fellow Jews in order to save their own lives. That is why persecuted people from Berlin sought alternate accommodations illegally in Frankfurt.

Toni Schneider escaped from Berlin. She was Dr. Günther Schneider’s mother who ran the x-ray department at Frankfurt’s Gagern Hospital. She was hidden in the Schäfer family’s house and provided with the cover name Margarete Maurer. This was a successful disguise because two sisters, whose last name was also Maurer, lived as sub-tenants in the house. Toni Schneider survived.

See: Petra Bonavita: Mit falschem Pass 
und Zyankali, Stuttgart 2009, page 138.

 

Adelheid and Werner Müller lived in Berlin and were amongst those Jews who were forced to work in industrial companies deemed to be important for the war. During the so called “factory action” at the end of February 1943 they were supposed to be deported and went into hiding with their three year old daughter. A small circle of friends had discussed for a long time how they could help the family if they were to be deported. Franz Streit offered to help. He worked in Anton Saefkow’s resistance group. Hedwig Wittekind, a sculptress, was also a friend of the musician couple. Therefore Werner Müller went into hiding by Franz Streit, while at the same time Adelheid Müller and her three-year-old Tanja “went on a trip”. Adelheid was unable to handle this over a long period of time; in May she returned to Berlin and went into hiding at Hedwig Wittekind’s studio. However, the situation was also dangerous for Wittekind. She lived on money provided by her father who lived in Büdingen, because she was unable to survive as a sculptress during the war. The group decided that Wittekind should return to her parents’ house and take three year old Tanja with her. A subsequent entry in the residents’ registration records in Büdingen in October 1943 proves that Hedwig Wittekind lived again in her parents’ house. There is however no entry for Tanja Müller.

It is not known how Hedwig explained the child’s existence to her parents. She was 47 years old and had been unable to support even herself from her sculpture work. It is known however that she did not get along with her father’s second wife, who considered Hedwig’s bohemian lifestyle unacceptable. That could possibly be the reason that Tanja Müller was housed in the Nazi children’s home “Am Wildenstein”, which was located only 100 meters behind the Wittekind’s house in Büdingen.

In the meantime Franz Streit lived with Adelheid and Werner Müller in Wittekind’s studio in Berlin-Friedenau. All three of them were arrested there on 20 July 1944. Franz Streit was executed six months later for having belonged to Saefkow’s resistance group. Werner Müller died in a concentration camp; his wife survived. She was able to bring her daughter Tanja back to Berlin from Büdingen.

Hedwig Wittekind is remembered as a courageous and just person. According to the text of her death notice, which appeared after she died on 31 October 1949: “Externally she was poor, but internally she was rich.”

The house „Am Wildenstein“ in Büdingen was a NS Children’s Home during the 1940‘s. Hedwig Wittekind found here a place for Tanja. (photo post-1945) © Stadtarchiv Büdingen
The house „Am Wildenstein“ in Büdingen was a NS Children’s Home during the 1940‘s. Hedwig Wittekind found here a place for Tanja. (photo post-1945) © Stadtarchiv Büdingen

See: Link to Franz Streit / Anton Saefkow; 
Comment about Adelheid Müller, in: 
Informationen Nr. 82 from November 2015 
of the Studienkreis Deutscher Widerstand 
1933-1945, Frankfurt am Main, page 25 f.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The escape from Berlin via Frankfurt and ultimately to Straßburg ended tragically for two women and their three children. The two sisters Gerda and Eva Rothschild were born in Straßburg and lived in Frankfurt since at least 1939. A non-Jewish relative with the same name lived with them in the ghetto house located at Hans-Handwerk-Strasse 63 (today: Langestrasse). Two months after the birth of Judis Rothschild the two women escaped the deportation proceedings and fled to Straßburg. They managed to survive with the baby and two ten year old children until the end of 1943 when their names appeared on a prison list. They were transferred from the Straßburg prison to Berlin on 12 January 1944, and shortly thereafter, on 20 January 1944, were deported to the concentration camp Auschwitz where they were murdered.

The couple Max and Rosa Sachs along with their twenty-year-old twin daughters went into hiding in Berlin. After one month they decided to escape to the Ruhr area. They were convinced that they have a greater chance of getting by there as air raid victims because this area had been heavily bombed. Max Sachs based his decision on the fact that there was so called free food after each bombing. “Their luck” was tied to many air raids. They went from Bochum to Kassel and back to Dortmund again, which was a fateful location for them. Their twin daughters were arrested on 29 June 1943 while the parents were away and were deported to the concentration camp Auschwitz via Berlin in August 1943. Max and Rosa Sachs wandered here and there and finally lived in Frankfurt as of 30 August 1943: first as sub-tenants on Seehofstrasse, then on Moselstrasse in the “Hamburger Hof” Hotel and then as sub-tenants on Weserstrasse. They survived. They never saw their daughters again.

[german version]

Rescued by the French Resistance

„Kurt had an instinct to always do the right thing“

Genia Kurz. (photo from 1930/31) © Collection Petra Bonavita
Genia Kurz. (photo from 1930/31) © Collection Petra Bonavita

After her first visit to the theater as a child Genia Kurz knew what she wanted to be: an actress. Her enthusiasm for acting was like an enlightenment said the 90 year old woman decades later. She started her apprenticeship at the Frankfurt Theater when she was 15 years old. Her career led through many small theaters until she arrived in Berlin.

The director Heinz Hilpert brought her to the Volksbühne in 1932. She appeared in Gerhart Hauptmann’s tragic-comedy “Die Ratten” (1932) along with Brigitte Horney and Paul Verhoeven; she played together with Attila Hörbiger and Camilla Spira in Carl Zuckmayer’s “Schinderhannes”. Hilpert wanted to hire her for additional performances, but the Nazis ended her career in July 1934 when they refused to sign the Jewish actress’ contract extension. Not only did she not have a professional future within the Third Reich but the Nazis also blocked her marriage to her fellow actor Kurt Glass. A marriage between Jews and “Aryans” was prohibited since the “Nuremberg Laws”. Kurt Glass was determined not to give up his fiancé. His non-conformity to Nazi behavior had been apparent for quite some time, and in the summer of 1936 Kurt Glass was the first of the fiancés who emigrated to Paris. Genia crossed illegally into Switzerland on 30 December 1936, disguised as a ski tourist, on her way to him. The Swiss authorities fined her 100 marks and let her go a couple of days later. Kurt and Genia stayed in a villa in Paris, which Marie-Anne von Goldschmidt-Rothschild made available for poor immigrants as “asylum seekers” for six months. Kurt Glass re-trained as a gardener and accepted a position in the agricultural school in Contamine sur Avre, located in southeastern France. They married in July 1937 shortly after their arrival. Their son Michel was born in the following year.

Genia worked in the agricultural school kitchen. She peeled potatoes and washed dishes. Kurt supervised the students while they completed their agricultural training. After France in 1940 was occupied by the german “Wehrmacht” and he was forced to work (“prestataire”) in a camp in Chambaraud Genia took over his duties at the school. She was able to have Kurt released from the camp because in the meantime she had received emigration papers from her brother in Paraguay. They returned for a short while to Contamine sur Avre but were not allowed to stay longer and escaped to Marseille in 1941. Kurt made himself available to work in the garden of an old age home for the homeless. The two of them hardly earned any money that year. They accepted every type of work in exchange for food and lodging.

When it became apparent that they would be unable to emigrate and life in Marseille became ever more dangerous with an increasing number of police raids Kurt contacted the help organization “Ouevre du Bon Samaritain”. The organisation arranged for him to stay in the small town of Valleraugue (Gard), which had a few run-down houses as a place of refuge. Only two French families and a Russian immigrant lived in the village of Fenouillet. Kurt and Genia, along with their son Michel joined them. Genia’s sister Lydia Fürst and her husband followed them in May 1942.

A little bit of land, productive but very stony, which could only be cultivated by hand, a borrowed donkey in exchange for two days work as day laborers, edible chestnuts, a goat and a pig had to suffice in order to survive far away from civilization. They stayed there in relative safety until January 1944. The Russian immigrant, of all people, turned out to be Hitler sympathizer and betrayed their whereabouts to the Germans. The secretary of the mayor of Valleraugue warned them on the evening of 7 January 1944 and they escaped across the mountains that same night. The mayor, the secretary and their friends in the Maquis (the French resistance movement) took care of the refugees. With packed backpacks, five-year-old Michel and nine months old Gisèle, they hiked for ten hours until they reached Mandagout. Georges Gillier, reverend and founder of “Maquis des CORSAIRES” issued them fake passports. He took out a blank-form, which was hidden in a shrine of Jesus, and from Kurt and Genia Glass he created Henri and Eugenie Gautier. The Fürsts received papers with the name Forestier. They hid frightened in their new hideout for eight months until the day of liberation by the Allies and went back to Fenouillet in August 1944.

After the Nazis surrendered in May 1945 Kurt Glass wanted to go back to Germany as quickly as possible. He had not been able to contact his parents for years. He traveled to Frankfurt after being located in Fenouillet by his brother-in-law Moritz Kurz, who meanwhile was an American soldier. While in Bad Nauheim he told the Americans his story and they offered him a job on the radio (at that time “Radio Frankfurt”), which he immediately accepted. Genia and children followed him to Frankfurt in June 1946. He was subsequently offered a position as a radio announcer with the newly established “Hessischer Rundfunk”. The couple found an apartment at Liebigstrasse 22. Genia Glass never appeared again on stage after her rescue. However, when her granddaughter received the national prize as best actress in 1992 for her film role in “Leise Schatten” she traveled to Munich for the awarding of the prize. Genia died in 2007 and is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt. Her husband Kurt had died in 1988 during a vacation in Valleraugue.

The young actress, Genia Kurz in the Gerhart Hauptmann play “Und Pippa tanzt”. (photo 1929) © Collection Petra Bonavita
The young actress, Genia Kurz in the Gerhart Hauptmann play “Und Pippa tanzt”. (photo 1929) © Collection Petra Bonavita
In the ensemble of Heinz Hilpert at the Berliner Volksbühne. (1932) © Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
In the ensemble of Heinz Hilpert at the Berliner Volksbühne. (1932) © Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Refuge in the hamlet Fenouillet in Cevennes. © Collection Petra Bonavita
Refuge in the hamlet Fenouillet in Cevennes. © Collection Petra Bonavita
Kurt and Genia Glass. (photo 1937) © Dr. Michel Glass
Kurt and Genia Glass. (photo 1937) © Dr. Michel Glass
Kurt Glass in a French uniform as part of an immigrant unit (late 1939). © Dr. Michel Glass
Kurt Glass in a French uniform as part of an immigrant unit (late 1939). © Dr. Michel Glass
Genia Glass‘ ID as Eugenie Gautier during the time of hiding in Mandagout (1944). © Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Genia Glass‘ ID as Eugenie Gautier during the time of hiding in Mandagout (1944). © Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Reverend Georges Gillier confirms her stay (1944). © Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Reverend Georges Gillier confirms her stay (1944). © Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Sources: Recorded conversation between the author and Genia Glass in 2003.

See also the history of Steven Simon’s family 
and his parents Arthur and Irma Simon, maiden
name Sostmann in France, in: US Holocaust 
Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.

[german version]

A Resistance Group within the Police Headquarters

Christian Fries (photo from 1940’s). © Claudia Schmiderer
Christian Fries (photo from 1940’s). © Claudia Schmiderer

Christian Fries was a civil servant criminal investigator. He led a resistance group within the Frankfurt police headquarters and prepared the escape of the highly regarded Frankfurt professor Karl Herxheimer and his housekeeper Henriette Rosenthal to Switzerland. The impulse came from Gustav Weigel, who also belonged to Herxheimer’s circle of friends and supporters. The third helper was Gotthold Fengler, a Gestapo civil servant. The three helpers knew each other very well: they were friendly and familiar with one another as colleagues and were prepared to resist the Nazis.

Many friends had pleaded with Herxheimer for years to move to Switzerland as he owned a vacation house in Gunten am See. But why should he emigrate when even the tram conductor greeted him with the following words: “Nothing will happen to you, every child knows you and you’ve done a lot of good things for our city. You can’t go.” This confirmed the sense of home and his ties to the city. Soon however, Herxheimer was not allowed to enter “his” dermatology institute, and the generous benefactor who had helped found the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University was officially cut off. His large circle of acquaintances was all that remained. Former students, assistants and patients visited him secretly and brought him groceries. One of Herxheimer’s former assistants remembered after 1945 that there were enough courageous people who took care of him.

It was no longer a matter of care when one deportation followed another in spring 1942. Herxheimer’s friends were afraid for his safety. That is why Gustav Weigel together with the professor and the civil servant criminal investigator Christian Fries organized a secret meeting at “Oberschweinstiege” (in the Frankfurt “Stadtwald”). Weigel was a very good friend of the Gestapo civil servant Gotthold Fengler, who in turn was one of Christian Fries’ former colleagues. The most suitable location for these secret meetings during the summer was Weigel’s garden allotment on “Sachsenhäuser Berg”. Weigel was later counted as one of the members of Fries’ resistance group.

The organizational details of the escape were quickly discussed. Fengler obtained the fake passports for Professor Herxheimer and his housekeeper Henriette Rosenthal. Fries removed their “identity cards” including the passport lock in the police headquarters. Fengler wanted to borrow a car in order to bring the two elderly people to the border. Professor Ferdinand Blum, one of Herxheimer’s former university colleagues who had already emigrated waited for them on the Swiss side. His daughter Gertrud Roesler-Ehrhardt who lived in Frankfurt, was also informed of the plan. Unfortunately, the plan failed as a result of one small, unforeseen incident. Henriette Rosenthal was on her way to the post office because she wanted to send a small package to her “half Aryan” grandson. This was observed and reported by a member of the Nazi party. Rosenthal was arrested and only released shortly before being deported, so that she could pack her suitcase before being sent to Theresienstadt. As a result, the escape attempt failed.

The civil servant criminal investigator Christian Fries wrote about this failed rescue after 1945 in a long justification-paper of his own anti-Nazi behavior and his illegal resistance activities as a leader of a resistance group within the Frankfurt police headquarters. This group was part of the Wilhelm-Leuschner circle. However, all references to Fries and Fengler, which provided confirmation of the civilian resistance-circle were deleted from the tribunal files in 1947/48. At the same time Emil Henk’s publication of “The Tragedy of 20 July 1944” in 1946 lists case after case in which Christian Fries is mentioned in his capacity as “Stützpunktleiter” (leader of a resistance group). Christian Fries’ justification-paper, which he sent to his “dear friend Jakob Steffan” (a fellow conspirator within the Wilhelm-Leuschner circle), gives an insight into his resistance activities. He had checked forty people on account of their anti-Nazi attitude and their readiness to become actively involved in the event that the Hitler regime was successfully toppled. Gustav Weigel belonged to this group. In 1958 Christian Fries wrote that the Gestapo civil servant Gotthold Fengler had “rendered the resistance group valuable services when he, amongst other things, informed them in a timely manner about planned transfers of Jews, so that we could warn a number of those endangered”.

Prof. Dr. Karl Herxheimer (photo 1941). © Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main
Prof. Dr. Karl Herxheimer (photo 1941). © Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main
The Gestapo criminal civil servant: Gotthold Fengler (photo ca. 1940). © Irene Thiel
The Gestapo criminal civil servant: Gotthold Fengler (photo ca. 1940). © Irene Thiel
See: Petra Bonavita: Nie aufgeflogen, Gotthold Fengler: 
Ein Gestapo-Beamter als Informant einer Widerstandszelle 
im Frankfurter Polizeipräsidium, Berlin 2013; see also: 
Rechtfertigungsschrift Christian Fries in the Wiesbaden 
Stadtarchiv NL 75, Br. 1555; „Die Untoten“ about networks 
of civil resistance in: Der Spiegel Nr. 30/2015, pages 117-121

[german version]

Mistrust led to Discovery

Von Dina Sonn konnte keine Fotografie gefunden werden.
Von Dina Sonn konnte keine Fotografie gefunden werden.
Dina Sonn worked in the Gause family household for decades and after the death of the old gentleman his son Friedrich Gause continued to employ her as a household help. Gause did not register her when ration cards were introduced in 1939 and provided her with food through his own ration coupons. Nothing was mentioned to strangers about her Jewish heritage. In October 1941 however, another resident in the house, Konrad Kübler, who was also a “Zellenleiter” (a neighborhood leadership position within the Nazi hierarchy) reported her presence within the Gause household to the police. The 62-year-old Dina Sonn was released from jail after four weeks and was forced to move to a house located within the ghetto in Frankfurt’s Ostend neighborhood. She went into hiding again with Friedrich Gause’s help on the day she was scheduled to be deported. He hid her in his office, which was located at the “Russische Hof” on Kronprinzenstrasse (today: Münchener Strasse). He brought her to Usingen on 27 March 1944 after an air raid and registered her as victim of bomb damage. Her true identity was discovered when she was falsely accused by her landlady of stealing the latter’s cooking oil ration coupons. Dina Sonn was arrested and transferred to the Frankfurt jail on Klapperfeldgasse on 12 May 1944. According to Gause’s research she was murdered in the concentration camp Auschwitz in autumn 1944.

[german version]

Within Sight of the Swiss Border: the Escape Goal

Gertrud Hengstenberg-Tichauer. © Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv Bern
Gertrud Hengstenberg-Tichauer. © Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv Bern

For the last major deportation on 24 September 1942, the employees of the Jewish hospital in Gagernstrasse were on the list of those to be deported.

Dr. Günther Schneider und the x-ray assistant Gertrud Tichauer (divorced name Hengstenberg) decided to go into hiding. Schneider, who was originally from Berlin and Tichauer, who was originally from Würzburg, had worked together in Frankfurt for almost three years. Gertrud Tichauer managed to escape illegally across the Swiss border by Moulin-Neuf on 23 November 1942 with the help of her old acquaintance Ilse Totzke, who was also from Würzburg. Dr. Günther Schneider’s escape across the Swiss border failed. He was murdered in the concentration camp Auschwitz on 15 February 1943. His mother collapsed upon learning about his capture. She was hidden in the Frankfurt neighborhood of Goldstein and survived..

See more about Gertrud Hengstenberg-Tichauer’s rescue:
http://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/ilse-totzke/
Zerstörter Traum von Freiheit

 

 

Elisabeth Neumann was a nurse and member of the protestant-reformed community in Frankfurt’s Westend. She was unable to prevent the deportation of her mother Helene and her brother Richard and she also did not think of saving herself. Community members pressured her to escape. The first step in connection with her rescue was taken in Switzerland. Alfred and Anna de Quervain, a reverend and his wife, issued a guarantee on behalf. Elisabeth Neumann decided to act only after she found out that her name was on the list of those scheduled for the next deportations.

Her friend Lilli Simon took the initiative and traveled to Lörrach in the area of the Swiss border, where she met a friend who described a secure footpath across the border. She memorized the path, which a village teacher named Eugen diagrammed for her on the blackboard. Lilli returned to her friend Elisabeth Neumann, who memorized “her escape path” and the illegal crossing. She left Frankfurt on 22 May 1942, spent the night with friends in Freiburg and then went via Lörrach, Waldshut and Grießen across the Swiss border at Rafz. She was stopped at 8:45 p.m. in her nurse’s uniform. However, with the entry permit in her handbag she reached Alfred and Anna de Quervain’s parish house in Laufen three days later. In August 1945 Elisabeth Neumann returned again to Frankfurt “illegally” as there did not exist any official permit. She worked again as a nurse within the protestant-reformed community in Frankfurt..

Community-nurse Elisabeth Neumann shortly after her successful escape to the rectory of Anna de Quervain in Laufen, Switzerland. © Dorothée de Quervain
Community-nurse Elisabeth Neumann shortly after her successful escape to the rectory of Anna de Quervain in Laufen, Switzerland. © Dorothée de Quervain
Lilli Simon delivers the escape route for Elisabeth Neumann. © Collection Petra Bonavita
Lilli Simon delivers the escape route for Elisabeth Neumann. © Collection Petra Bonavita

[german version]

Saved by a Jump Across the Street

Dr. Antonie Sandels in her medical practice in Heidelberg. (1950’s) © Dr. Dieter Herberg
Dr. Antonie Sandels in her medical practice in Heidelberg. (1950’s) © Dr. Dieter Herberg
When the pediatrician Dr. Sandels lost her right to practice in 1933 she began to develop a survival strategy. She opened a bed-and-breakfast for elderly Jewish women, who were unable to finance their own households anymore or had been forced out of their own apartments. Her friend Margarete Herberg, who had come to her as a patient in 1931 with her newborn son and who had to structure a new life for herself after her own divorce joined her.

In contrast to her brother, who had emigrated to the USA, Sandels felt responsible for her elderly mother and stayed in Frankfurt. In order to facilitate the later emigration, she married Dr. Walter Oppenheimer, who had added his wife’s name on his own visa application.

However, it was much too late for Dr. Antonie Sandels-Oppenheimer to emigrate after her mother’s death. The financial independence and the established communal living arrangement of the two women Sandels and Herberg came to an end in the late 1930’s. According to the Gestapo instruction Dr. Sandels had to move to the children’s home at Hans-Thoma-Strasse 24. Sandels was ordered to appear for the large deportation on 24 september 1942 at the “Großmarkthalle” (the wholesale market was the meeting place for the jews to be deportated). She talked about suicide with her colleagues at the children’s home. But she escaped during an unguarded moment to her friend Margarete who lived opposite of the childrens home in Gartenstrasse 51.

Margarete spread pepper in order to cover her tracks in case she was pursued by tracking dogs. After the Gestapo rang the doorbell twice Antonie Sandels crept into a small room under the roof. Margarete Herberg looked for an alternate accommodation for Sandels, because she was afraid of further Gestapo searches. Her hairdresser recommended her to contact Adam Imhof, whom she referred to as being very trustworthy. Imhof had worked for years as a chauffeur for the Jewish owner of the Adler-Werke, and Sandels was housed for the next few months in an apartment at the back of his courtyard. Herberg brought groceries every few days.

Margarete Herberg (left) and Antonie Sandels during a hike in Odenwald. (1950’s) © Dr. Dieter Herberg
Margarete Herberg (left) and Antonie Sandels during a hike in Odenwald. (1950’s) © Dr. Dieter Herberg
Dr. Elisabeth Steiner (right), a survivor of Theresienstadt, during a visit with Herberg (left) and Sandels (middle) in Heidelberg (1950’s). © Dr. Dieter Herberg
Dr. Elisabeth Steiner (right), a survivor of Theresienstadt, during a visit with Herberg (left) and Sandels (middle) in Heidelberg (1950’s). © Dr. Dieter Herberg

She was able to siphon off additional groceries as she worked for Kurt Thomas, the director of the “Musisches Gymnasium” and was also friendly with the cook. Sandels returned to Margarete Herberg’s apartment at Gartenstrasse 51 at the end of 1943.

Sandels was not allowed to enter the bomb shelter in the house, although there were ever more frequent air raids. That was the reason that Herberg completed an apprenticeship as bomb warden. This position allowed her to decide who could enter the bomb shelter and the end of the shelter stay. So Sandels was the last one to come down into the shelter and hid behind the door. The house was severely damaged during one of these air raids and Sandels and Margarete Herberg’s son used this convenient opportunity to escape to Heidelberg. They found a place to stay in a small house owned by the cook of the “Musisches Gymnasium” in the tiny village Korb am Neckar. Antonie Sandels applied for an air raid victim ID under the name of Eva Imhof and subsequently received a ration card. After several more moves Margarete Herberg, her son and Dr. Antonie Sandels experienced freedom in Korb.

See: Petra Bonavita: Mit falschem Pass und Zyankali, 
Stuttgart 2009, page 64. Frank Moraw: Illegal von 
Frankfurt nach Heidelberg – Jahrbuch 
zur Geschichte der Stadt 2011, 
Heidelberg 2010, pages 231-239.

[german version]

Escaped to Switzerland with the French Resistance

Hanna and Sally Goldschmidt. © Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, Bern
Hanna and Sally Goldschmidt. © Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, Bern

On 20 May 1942 Sally and Hanna Goldschmidt received the order to proceed to the Wholesale Market for departure. They had just gotten married in December 1941 and had been living at Röderbergweg 38 for six months when the deportation order threatened their lives. Both decided to go into hiding. Sally had already approached his non-Jewish friend Josef Balthasar, who had hidden several men in his tailor shop at Kronprinzenstrasse 19 (today: Münchener Strasse) in November 1938. They went into hiding at Balthasar’s shop together with their friend Bruno. The three lived in a small room under the roof for thirteen weeks. They could not stay there forever and after staying an additional week by another woman, whose name was Mrs. Prösser, they made their first attempt to cross over into Switzerland. While in Frankfurt they had obtained the name of a man, who guided people across the border in exchange for money. They traveled to Bregenz via Heidelberg, Friedrichshafen and Lindau. As they did not have any papers they decided to travel via milk trains, which were less controlled. They waited in the forest close to the border for a favorable time to cross, but their attempt to escape was blocked by numerous flares and controls. They traveled from Bregenz via Ulm, back to Frankfurt and went into hiding again at their friend Balthasar’s shop. Their friend Bruno had been arrested at the Ulm railway station when he was stopped by the Gestapo who was checking his documents. As the Gestapo was occupied with Bruno’s paperwork Sally and Hanna managed to escape to the railway station toilets without being noticed until it was safe for them to come out again. They were taken care of by Josef Balthasar and good friends upon their return to Frankfurt and were able find a night’s refuge with many different room landlords. They presented themselves most often as air raid victims who had lost their apartment and needed a place to stay. Hanna was recognized at least twice in their neighborhood Rödelheim while looking for food and by a railway controller at the railway station. They were no longer safe in Frankfurt.

Their next attempt to escape to Switzerland would take them via Straßburg. Sally remembered a friend and hoped to find him in Straßburg. They reached their goal by again traveling on milk trains and hoped to have luck finding a privately rented room. They found a room in the “Rue Kuhn”, not far from the Straßburg Railway Station by a family whose name was Fiegenwald. As their hosts did not make any secret of their anti-Nazi feelings they told them the true reason for their trip — escape to Switzerland. The Fiegenwalds promised to inquire about their friend, whom they were actually able to find. A lot of time went by until their friend made contact with the resistance movement, who had smuggled the French General Giraud across the border six months earlier after he had escaped from imprisonment in a fortress. They were told that if they managed to get to Mulhouse a man would contact them there. In Mulhouse it was suggested to them to jump on a train. Sally immediately said: Yes! They waited two weeks in the “Hotel du Parc” for the right moment. They went to the railway station St. Louis very early and jumped on a freight train. However, only Sally managed the high jump onto the Swiss platform on 21 January 1943 at 6:00 a.m. Hanna was unsuccessful at her first attempt to jump and remained behind. Ten days later, on 2 February at 4:00 a.m. she too reached safe Swiss territory with the help of the same young man. At the first opportunity after the war in 1946 Hanna and Sally Goldschmidt along with their one-year-old son, emigrated to relatives in the USA..

See: Interview with Hannah Goldsmith by the Shoah Foundation 
in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 
Collection 38581; 
Petra Bonavita: Mit falschem Pass und Zyankali, 
Stuttgart 2009, pages 58-59.

[german version]