Irene Block worked as a tax and currency advisor because as a “mixed race second class” she was not allowed to take the second state legal exam in 1938. She advised hundreds of customers in the following years, for the most part Jews in Frankfurt, who needed various tax confirmations as they planned their emigration. Maria Fulda also sought her advice.
When Fulda was informed that she was to be deported in October 1941 she was shocked, remained lying as if she was paralyzed and was declared unfit for transport. Irene Block got involved for the first time on her client’s behalf when the next deportation order was issued. She found Dr. Stilgebauer, a physician who with great difficulty got Maria Fulda admitted to the Jewish Gagern Hospital. Dr. Fritz Kahl issued a medical attest when the third deportation order was issued. The numerous extensions caught the Gestapo’s attention and they had their own doctor, Dr. Philippi, review this latest attest. Once again however Irene Block got involved on Fulda’s behalf by personally speaking with the physician. She was left behind once more after being declared unable to walk. This tactic succeeded a fourth time and when the final deportation order was issued at the end of September 1942 Irene Block stood in Maria Fulda’s room shortly before the scheduled departure. A friend, whom she had smuggled into the room, was also present in order to say good-bye. The unavoidable would have happened if Irene Block had not suddenly decided to act. She removed the star from Fulda’s coat and requested her friend to throw Maria’s dress and ID card in the Main River. She then took Maria by the hand, went to the railway station and rode with her to Ziegenhain (district of Kassel). She housed her ward in a room, which she had rented before as a precaution against air raids. She presented Maria Fulda to the owner of the room as her aunt from Berlin, who after a nervous breakdown required peace and quietness and a daily bowl of soup, but who would not speak very much.
Upon her return to Frankfurt Irene Block was horrified to find out that her friend had not gotten rid of Mrs. Fulda’s things into the Main River. It remained up to her as a last resort to report Fulda as suicidal and as a “missing” Jew. After one week Irene Block brought her protégé back from Ziegenhain and hid Maria Fulda in her apartment in Frankfurt Westend, Unterlindau 51, which was simultaneously her office. When unannounced visitors showed up Fulda hid in a sofa bed or disappeared into a neighboring cellar. The two women lived this restricted lifestyle for 1½ years. None-the-less with one ration card and with the help from friends they managed to avoid all dangers. When Maria Fulda became very sick in April 1943 and needed medicin Irene Block found excuses and told lies, hid her identity and gave the injections. Two of Fulda’s friends were deemed to be dangerous and would have to be repeatedly warned by Irene Block not to talk about their hidden friend. The neighbor Lina Hatschek helped out as Fulda did not have any clothes. When a civil servant from the tax department showed up, Block’s secretary bribed him to leave the office quickly. During this period and also later when the city was bombed the neighbor Else Brauchler made her cellar available where Maria Fulda could hide during the day. Block assumed that this resident did not know Maria Fulda’s identity. When Unterlindau 51 was totally destroyed by fire after an air raid on 22 March 1944 Irene Block and Maria Fulda escaped from the cellar at Unterlindau 55 to the rented room in Ziegenhain. Irene Block registered herself and her protégé as having been bombed out in Frankfurt and applied for a postal ID under the name “Maria Fischer”.
A month later she registered Maria as a member of her household and in that way Fulda-Fischer was able to receive her own ration coupons.
The Americans occupied the district around Kassel on 30 March 1945 and Maria was set free. For a long time she could not believe that she had been saved. Four additional months went by before she acknowledged her real name to the American authorities. Both women lived in Frankfurt until Maria Fulda’s death in 1966. Fulda dedicated herself to having Irene Block honored in Yad Vashem as one of the “The Righteous among the Nations”. Despite many affidavits Dr. Irene Block was only honored –posthumously– in 1992.
See: Petra Bonavita, Mit falschem Pass und Zyankali, Stuttgart 2009,
pages 54-57
Maria Schaefer, maiden name Eberstadt, allowed herself to be baptized at her wedding. She was protected via a “privileged mixed marriage”. However, this did not help her as a young widow. An efficient police bureaucrat at the residents’ registration office added “not Aryan”, but the neighborhood did not think about denouncing the mother and her two sons whom they had known for a long time. It turned out to be a piece of luck that she was not known to the Nazi authorities during these years: she did not receive any grocery ration cards, she transferred her house to her son and earned her own income by privately renting out rooms.
She rode her bicycle through Bockenheim, went on vacation with her sons in Austria and lived undisturbed – until 1943. Rumors circulated in that year, which later became true: the Jewish “mixed marriage partners” were deported to the concentration camp Auschwitz after being held in a Gestapo jail for three months.
Maria Schaefer reacted immediately. For her own safety she deregistered herself in Frankfurt on 8 February 1943 with a supposed move to Paderborner Stasse 9, Berlin. As a subsequent inquiry confirmed, she was never registered at this address. Rather, she had registered herself as a sub-tenant by friends who lived at Margarethenstrasse 4. And not only that. After numerous exchanges of letters she got to know the mailman and she applied for a mail ID. She did not stay long in Berlin. Her sister-in-law in Hildesheim as well as countless acquaintances and friends with whom she stayed for months supported her during these two years. Maria Schaefer returned to Frankfurt on 17 May 1945 where she registered herself again in her small house at Blanchardstrasse 9.
See: Petra Bonavita, Mit falschem Pass und Zyankali, pages 74-83
Vera Kiefer was born out of wedlock to a Jewish mother and was adopted by a non-Jewish couple. She was married to Alfons Kiefer and had two sons. Her husband died in 1938. With the use of a false name she was helped by numerous people in the years since 1942: Willy Loos let her stay numerous times at his apartment, which was located at Oberlindau 64; using the name “Maria Probst” she lived illegally with Veronika Müller in Brückenau in 1943/44, with a few breaks in between; Karl Probst arranged for her stay under his name in various hotels and bed-and-breakfast locations, and furthermore, provided her with groceries. She spent one year illegally and hidden in the “Sprudel Hotel” in Bad Nauheim. She survived and married her rescuer Karl Probst in 1950. She was a member of the Jewish Community in Frankfurt after 1945.
Rosa Meseberg, maiden name Levi, was warned for years by a “Nazi-Zellenleiter” (a neighborhood leadership position within the Nazi hierarchy) whom she knew. Her husband should “get rid of her”, which meant he should find her safe housing in a secret location. Her daughter was unable to handle the threat of persecution when required to appear before the Gestapo and committed suicide along with her two year old out of wedlock son in 1941. After a bombing attack at the end of March 1944 Heinrich Leinberger, the “Nazi-Zellenleiter” who had warned her for a long time, falsified her bombing damage ID by writing Kaiser as her maiden name instead of “Levi”. She went to the small town Bieber near Gelnhausen with this document, where she survived the time of persecution.
Dr. Hanf-Dressler, whom Valentin Senger visited in the 1940’s because of a severe stomachache, noticed the religious circumcision but did not said anything and allowed the patient to go home. In 1944 towards the end of the war the sons Alexander and Valentin were recruited into the Wehrmacht. The recruitment doctor did not refer to their circumcision and thus they became part of the final Wehrmacht contingent. Valentin’s father’s boss at the company Fries knew of the Jewish heritage as did the latter’s girlfriend Ionka. In the final year of the war Valentin’s father took care of Russian prisoners of war. His usage of Yiddish idioms did not arouse any suspicion when contacting the authorities. The Sengers’ true identity was never uncovered. No one denounced them within their circle of acquaintances.
But not all members of the Senger family endured these years with so much luck. Valentin’s mother Olga died in October 1944 of heart failure. His brother Alexander did not survive the war. Valentin, his sister Paula and his father Jakob met the liberation with a lot of sorrow.
See: Valentin Senger: Kaiserhofstraße 12, Frankfurt/Main 2010
and Rainer Wolffhardt’s film from the Hessischer Rundfunk
“Kaiserhofstraße 12”. Otto Kaspar was honored for his rescue
efforts, when the street behind the new police headquarters
in Frankfurt am Main was renamed “Polizeimeister-Kaspar-Straße”.
She was at her parents’ house in Meisengasse on 19 October 1941 when her roommates Selma and Regina Schermann were sent for deportation She decided that she could not sit around and wait to be herself arrested. She began to prepare her illegal life in Frankfurt with the help of her fiancé and good friends. A simulated suicide was intended to distract the Gestapo. She intentionally left clothing and laundry lying around, prepared a suicide note which her mother presented to the police submitting a missing person report. Her mother was repeatedly requested to come to the police station during the next few days each time when a female body was hauled from the river and would have to be identified. However, as a result of her preparations Erna had already gone into hiding in the apartment of Ludwig and Anna Geisel, a working couple who lived at Gellertstrasse 29. Her fiancé provided her with groceries and she stayed in the apartment for three years. To hide in an apartment in Frankfurt for three years is a long time, and by the end of November 1944 she was unable to bear this “hidden lifestyle” any longer. She took the first steps in the direction of liberated France, only to be arrested in Straßburg by American soldiers. She remained in jail for nine months, until the validity of her story could be confirmed and she was released. She married her rescuer Karl Barth in 1946. Erna told her story to a group of friends in a pub one day. All the people sitting at the table had “flaws”, i.e. they were “non-Aryan” according to Nazi laws. Erna Barth lived in an apartment belonging to the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Workers’ welfare association) viewing the Main River until her death in 1999.
In January 1941 the Frankfurt Quakers requested the American Friends Service Committee in the USA to look again for a guarantor. Manfred Ehlbaum had already decided to pursue another way at that time. It is not known if the mother knew of her son’s plans. However, Manfred had already ended his Hachschara apprenticeship in October 1940 with the explanation that he planned to emigrate. He crossed illegally into Yugoslavia at the end of 1940 with other teenagers.
Recha Freier, the founder of Youth Aliya in Berlin, had organized this illegal journey. She had taken 100 entry certificates for Palestine without asking, when she herself had escaped in the summer of 1940. Using tricks and lies from her location in Zagreb she put pressure on her office in Berlin and managed to get 120 youths out of Nazi Germany including several Frankfurt teenagers.
One of those who managed to come to her in Zagreb via this smuggler route was Manfred Ehlbaum. Without papers, with enormous fear of the Yugoslavian police and housed in a tent in the middle of the winter he eventually managed to reach Palestine in April 1941 after many months of travel via Greece, Turkey and Syria. He lived on a kibbutz during his first few years there. Only at the end of the war did he find out that his father Leiser Jitzchak Ehlbaum had been murdered in Bernberg a.d. Saale on 2 March 1942, after being imprisoned in numerous concentration camps. His mother Perla and sister Hanni were deported from Frankfurt to Sobibor on 11 June 1942.
See: Karl Kleinberger, i.e. Kalman Givon belonged to this
group of refugees. He was one of 16 children, who in the
winter of 1940/41 got out of Frankfurt and was rescued
via Recha Freier’s initiative. His report about his experience
can be found:
www.schoah.org/zeitungen/givon.htm
Regarding Recha Freier:
www.norden.de/media/custom/512_4969_1.PDF?1396342302
See Internet links: Hachschara and Youth Aliya
Georg Vogel was fired from his job as assistant for the city of Frankfurt at the end of 1933 because of his anti-Nazi-attitude, which was deemed “politically unreliable”. His membership in the Jewish sports club “Bar Kochba” and his friendly relationship with Jews showed his opposition to the Nazis. He went to the Rothschild-Hospital in 1936 because a World War I injury required the amputation of his left thigh. He was well taken care of by the nurse Bertha Klein. Bertha remembered this level of trust when her husband Emil was approached by the couple Simon and Gela Saemann to look for a safe escape route along the Swiss border. Large transports disguised as evacuation departed from the Frankfurt “Großmarkthalle” (the Wholesale Market was the meeting place for the jews to be deportated) towards the Eastern countries (Poland and Russia) since May 1942. It was only a question of time before the Saemanns would also receive a deportation order. Georg Vogel expressed his willingness to hike along the Swiss border and look for an escape route. Upon his return three days later the escape plan was leaked. Georg Vogel was denounced as an escape helper and arrested on 13 October 1942. After two months in Frankfurt jails Georg Vogel, who was almost 50 years old, was transferred to the concentration camp Dachau, where he was imprisoned until the end of the war. His release document was dated 14 June 1945. Emil Klein and Simon und Gela Saemann were murdered in the concentration camp Auschwitz. Bertha Klein and her two sons were expelled to Belgium, her husband’s country of birth, and survived after being hidden separately by Belgian families.
The contact between the “Aryan” Germans on the one hand and the Jewish Germans on the other hand became ever more dangerous after the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 came into effect, and was persecuted as “preferential treatment for Jews”. Friendly interaction with Jews, the transfer of food, advice and deeds connected with leaving the country could be interpreted in a mean-spirited way as “anti-social behavior” and could lead to questioning and imprisonment and in later years could even end in the concentration camp Ravensbrück for “Aryan” women or in the camp Dachau for “Aryan” men. The ghettoization of Frankfurt Jews in the Ostend neighborhood made it difficult to maintain the former neighborly contacts. One met secretly when it was dark and in remote spots. The start of the war and the introduction of food ration coupons resulted in critical shortages for Jewish households. After a few months the food ration coupons were marked with a “J”, which meant less rations and permitted shopping in only very few jewish stores. For example, coal was one of the limited items and was only delivered at the end of the heating period when the “Aryan” households had been taken care of, i.e. much too late for the Jewish households. The politics of hunger of the Hessian “Gauleitung” (regional leaders) ensured that the limited food supplies were too little to live on and too much to die.
Contrary to the commonly held opinion that there was indifference as to the fate of the Jewish neighbors and friends, there are countless examples of neighbors and friends helping to obtain food supplies. Anyone who was prepared to oppose the measures of the “Gauleitung” had to use imagination and energy so that humanitarian aid would not give the “National Socialists” a chance to denounce. Since the introduction of the infamous yellow star in September 1941 – sewn chest high onto clothing – greetings between neighbors with and without the star, let alone the transfer of food supplies, were dangerous.
Hermine Baumeister, together with her daughter and husband, went at night from their home on Frankenallee to bring food supplies to the senior cantor’s family, the Saretzkis. They walked the entire way in order to avoid attracting the attention of the conductor on the tram who would have noticed the regular nightly trips.
Gretel Förster supplied 18 families with food between 1940-1943. She worked on an estate in Bockenheim and instead of taking her pay in cash she delivered the “profit from her work” at night to the doorsteps of the affected. Patients gave unused ration coupons to Dr. and Mrs. Kahl, who in turn sent their son with very full baskets from Bockenheim to Ostend. Children aroused less attention than adults. Margarete Stock wrote about the procurement of food supplies by “proper Germans” for their Jewish friends, that although there was “no fat, meat, butter, vegetables, fruit, etc. for these poor people” everything possible was done for them. The Gestapo noted in detail in 1941 that there were approx. 100 “German blooded” household helpers working for Jewish families. The women who had been working there for decades did not want to leave their employers.
There was a great readiness to denounce such food supplies transfers. Walter Gottmann, who worked at the Department of Nutrition issued ration coupons without the imprinted “J” to his jewish acquaintance Max Prager. This was not allowed after Prager’s non-Jewish wife died. The action was denounced and Prager committed suicide on 12 January 1942 in order to avoid being sent to prison and deported. The employee Walter Gottmann was arrested ten days later because of “friendly relations with a Jew”, transferred to the concentration camp Dachau, where he died on 1 June 1942.
Karl Wischmann did not stop cutting Jewish customers’ hair. He was arrested in June 1942 and died in the concentration camp Groß-Rosen a few months later. The barber Karl von Walter survived the concentration camp in Dachau to which he had been sent for “favoritism to Jews”.
Otto Drews, a guard who worked in the Preungesheim prison, brought out letters from Jewish prisoners and brought in food supplies. He was sentenced to prison for 2½ years and died soon after his release.
Frieda Rodiger knew Josef Stern since 1931 and helped him out with food supplies and cigarettes. She was observed doing so on 19 January 1942. After being held for three months while awaiting trial she was sentenced to 15 months in the concentration camp Ravensbrück. She survived. Josef Stern was transferred to the concentration camp Dachau, where he committed suicide on 3 August 1942.
Else Epstein had established the “Bund für Volksbildung” (Federation for Adult Education) with her late husband Wilhelm Epstein. She supplied her Jewish brother-in-law Dr. Richard Löwenthal and did not allow herself to be prevented from continuing to meet her Jewish friends. A three-week prison sentence did not intimidate her, and in 1942 she was sent to the concentration camp Ravensbrück for eight months. She left Frankfurt after her release in order to avoid being persecuted by the Gestapo. She did not return to Frankfurt until 1945.
Martin Bertram operated a bakery at Rohrbachstrasse 58 since 1922. In 1933 he refused to hang up the sign “German Business”, which prohibited Jews from buying bread in his store. He was forced to give up his business in 1935. In 1936 he was sent to a concentration camp until the end of the war, because he was a Jehovah Witness.
On 19 January 1942 a customer observed that Theodor Schmidt, the owner of a fish store, gave two fishes as a present to the jew Josef Stern. The men had known one another for years. The eager customer followed Josef Stern from Schweizer Strasse to the clock tower at Sandweg. Once there he spoke to two policemen and denounced Josef Stern, who was arrested and shortly thereafter deported to a concentration camp. Theodor Schmidt was sentenced to three months in prison and according to his wife died two years later from the consequences thereof.
The nurse Luise Zorn met in dark archways and house entrances in order to give half starved people a small package. She climbed over the wall of the Jewish hospital at night and brought her own bandages and assisted during operations.
The supply of food was further limited at the end of 1942. There were less than 1000 Jews in Frankfurt after the conclusion of the large deportations (Jewish “mixed” spouses”, persons who were qualified as Jews, Jews with foreign nationalities and those employees who were engaged with winding up the Jewish Community. For them the already reduced rations were reduced even further. No meat, eggs, milk and bread ration cards.
Tilly Cahn wrote in her diary about the little bit which she was able to distribute in November 1941: “A large part of my daily work involves obtaining potatoes (very often as part of an exchange deal) and to bring these to them.” In February 1942 she commented: “misery wherever one looks.”
Theodor Hume ran an orthopedic supply store and was one of the last permitted to service his Jewish clients. He tried to comfort the complaining hungry customers with the comment “nothing sticks to the bones”. After that he bought a hundredweight of potatoes. The 35-year- old man was denounced in 1944 because of his anti-Nazi behavior; he died three months later.
Herbert Buchhold was familiar with the shortage of provisions. He worked at the large grocery store Schade & Füllgrabe on Hanauer Landstrasse. According to the Nazi racial laws he was categorized as a Grade 1 mixed blood and should have held back in order not to become a target. Herbert Buchhold was also denounced by an ardent Nazi because he gave groceries and damaged goods to Jews. He was arrested on 5 March 1943 and sent to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Monowitz. He was 23 years old at the time and he survived.
See: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden 1933-1945,
Editor: Kommission zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Frankfurter
Juden, Frankfurt am Main 1963, Pages 442-455. With regard to
“Favoritism of Jews” see also the women from Frankfurt am Main
who were deported to the concentration camp Ravensbrück:
amongst others Else Foshag, Maria Lang, Anna Rodiger, Anna
Strebe, Else Schneider, Gladys Schulz, in: Studienkreis Deutscher
Widerstand 1933-1945, Frankfurt am Main KZ Ravensbrück,
Lebensspuren verfolgter Frauen, 2009.
On 28 October 1938 the 17-year-old Esther and her parents, who were born in Warsaw, were deported to Poland along with two of her four siblings. As Esther was just short of her eighteenth birthday and did not yet have her own passport she was separated from her family in Zbaszyn at the Polish border. She watched her family continue on to their uncertain fate after being pulled out of the line of people who had been deported. She was housed in an emptied synagogue with many other people. No one provided them with anything to eat or drink, only the Jews who lived in the city were permitted to receive provisions. After a few days a young Jew came to her and indicated that the gate was open and there was not any guard on duty. She took advantage of this convenient moment and escaped. The helpful Jews in Zbaszyn bought her a train ticket to Frankfurt and she stood at the doorstep of her parents’ former apartment at Hanauer Landstrasse 84 in Frankfurt Ostend before 9 November. A Christian neighbor opened the sealed door for her. It was not a place of refuge but rather a temporary place to stay. Her sympathetic neighbor bought some of her possessions, so she could use this little bit of money to travel to her sister in München. However, she could only stay there a short while, because her sister had a ticket to Shanghai. Esther returned to Frankfurt. Some short overnight stays followed: with her former employer, who lived on the Zeil, with a former teacher from the Philanthropin and finally with her friend Hertha Hahn and the latter’s parents at Telemannstrasse 20. The Hahn family also sat on packed suitcases. Gustav and Recha Hahn had sold their house and property in Frankfurt-Fechenheim and waited for an entry visa for Great Britain. They had even initiated a second exit alternative for their 17-year-old daughter Hertha. She was able to obtain a Domestic Permit, which was tied to a position in a British household after she had completed a cooking and language course. The Hahns arranged that the already approved Domestic Permit be transferred in Esther’s name, because they expected to leave together very soon. To receive a visa for Great Britain with which one could leave Nazi Germany was like winning a lottery prize.
Esther emigrated to London on 17 May 1939. Once there she inquired as to the status of the visa for the Hahn family and was told that it would be sent in the next few days. However, the days turned into weeks and until the start of the war in September 1939 the Hahn family had still not managed to start their journey, which they had organized in time. They were deported to the ghetto in Lodz as part of the first large deportation on 19 October 1941, where they were killed. Esther also never saw her parents, sister Rosa and brother Leo again. She moved to the USA with her husband in 1945.
The loopholes to escape to Great Britain via a transit visa, a Domestic Permit or as part of a children transport closed with the start of the war on 1 September 1939.
Based on an unwritten agreement the Quakers were responsible, within the Christian welfare centers, for the care of all those adults and children without a registered religion. But in reality they did not turn anyone away who asked for help. Thousands of children – Frankfurt was the collection point for the surrounding cities – traveled from the main railway station to Hoek van Holland. From there they traveled by ship to Harwich and continued onward with the train to Liverpool Railway Station in London. Dr. Martha Wertheimer from the Children Transport Department and Isidor Marx from the Jewish Orphanage accompanied the children on the train as did the Quakers Else Wüst and Elisabeth Mann. These had to be reliable chaperones, because someone who used his position as chaperone to escape himself jeopardized the entire operation. Trains left Frankfurt twice per month as of January 1939; there were three larger “children packages” in these trains as of May/June. There were often 500 children, sometime “only” 50. Tricks were used in order to also enable 18-year-old students from the “Jewish Training Center” to leave the country as part of the contingent of the children transports. The last train left Frankfurt on 31 August, because with the start of the war in September 1939, the borders were then closed
.
About Martha Wertheimer: Hanno Loewy (Editor): Martha Wertheimer,
In mich ist die große dunkle Ruhe gekommen, Frankfurt/Main 1996.
Helga Krohn (Editor): Vor den Nazis gerettet, Sigmaringen 1995.
Rebekka Göpfert: Der jüdische Kindertransport von Deutschland nach England
1938/1939, Frankfurt/Main/New York 1999 and
Rebekka Göpfert: Ich kam allein, München 1994.
Petra Bonavita: Quäker als Retter …, Stuttgart 2014, pages 116-141
Internet: Links to Jewish Social Care, office of
the protestant reverend Gruber, Refugee Children’s Movement
