Aleksandrs Bergmanis
Aleksandrs Bergmanis , also Alexander (Sascha) Bergmann (born May 30, 1925 in Riga ; died January 12, 2016 in Riga) was a Latvian lawyer and Holocaust survivor.
Life
Alexander Bergmann's father Žanis was a teacher and director of the Jewish school in Riga and a member of the Jewish community. Bergmann experienced the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 . After the German conquest of Latvia in 1941, his family was imprisoned in the Riga Ghetto. On November 30 and December 8, 1941 , the SS and their Latvian auxiliaries shot and killed around 27,500 Jews in dug pits in the Rumbula forest , including his mother and his 13-year-old brother. His father was later murdered as well.
Bergmann became a prisoner in the Kaiserwald concentration camps , the Stutthof concentration camps and the Buchenwald concentration camps . He was liberated in January 1945 during the Allied bombing of Magdeburg , where he was deployed in a column of prisoners for fortification work. His older brother Mika also survived his imprisonment in the concentration camp, and in September 1945 both were returned to Latvia, which was now again occupied by the Soviets.
Bergmann studied, married and worked as a lawyer in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic .
After the political change in 1990 , Bergmann became chairman of the Association of Former Jewish Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners in Latvia (LEGU) in 1993. Bergmann stood up for the surviving victims of National Socialism. In 1993 he supported the research of journalists John Goetz and Volker Steinhoff in the news magazine Panorama , in which it was shown that former members of Latvian SS units in the Federal Republic received war victim pensions, while Latvian victims of the Nazi regime received no support. When in 1997 still no support was paid, he himself appeared in a panorama broadcast alongside Chancellery Minister Friedrich Bohl .
After 2000 he helped compatriots to apply for compensation for forced laborers through the Federal Republic of Germany.
In 2004 Bergmann published his report on imprisonment in the concentration camps. Bergmann regretted that he was not given the opportunity to talk to students in Latvia as a contemporary witness , as is possible in Germany.
He was buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Riga Smerlis .
report
-
Zapiski nedocheloveka . Riga: [sn], 2005. (Russian) ISBN 9984196879
- Alexander Bergmann: Records of a subhuman. A report on the ghetto in Riga and the concentration camps in Germany. Ingrid Damerow's translation. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86108-316-0
- Zemcilvēka piezīmes . Riga: Latvijas Ebreju draudžu un kopienu padome, 2011.
literature
- Lorenz Hemicker: The end of a journey into hell , review, in FAZ , April 11, 2015
- German Riga Committee: Mourning for Alexander Bergmann , January 23, 2016
- Winfried Nachtwei : Mourning over Alexander Bergmann's death - WN advertisement and reactions , January 24, 2016
Web links
- Alexander Bergman , at: Museum of the Riga Ghetto and the Holocaust in Latvia (en)
Individual evidence
- ↑ John Goetz and Volker Steinhoff: Consoling to Death - Bonn's Cynical Dealing with Nazi Victims , Panorama, August 28, 1997
- ^ Statement in the film On Dealing with the Disappearance by Ojars J. Rozitis
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bergmanis, Aleksandrs |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bergmann, Alexander |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Latvian lawyer and Holocaust survivor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 30, 1925 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Riga |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 12, 2016 |
| Place of death | Riga |