Alfred Klee

Alfred Klee (born January 25, 1875 in Berlin , † November 10, 1943 in Westerbork concentration camp , Netherlands ) was a German lawyer and Zionist leader .

Life

Alfred Klee joined the Zionist movement at a young age and was a member of the Great Action Committee from 1899. He is described as a brilliant speaker and belonged to the close circle of friends of Herzl , Nordaus and Wolffsohn .

He was also involved in the Jewish Community in Berlin (member of the Assembly of Representatives since 1920) and stood up for the Eastern Jews .

From 1914 he was chairman of the Zionist Association for Germany and from 1933 belonged to the Reich Representation of German Jews .

In 1931 he was involved in the trial of Count Reventlow's slanderous pamphlet on The Elders of Zion .

In 1938 he fled to the Netherlands , where he was deported to Westerbork in 1943.

family

Klee had been married to Teresa Stargardt since 1899, who died of starvation on March 25, 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , shortly before the camp was liberated. The daughters Esther (1900–1980) and Ruth Judith (1901–1942) as well as the son Hans (1906–1958) emerged from the marriage. Esther, who became known as Esther Eugenie Klee-Rawidowicz after her marriage to the philosopher Simon Rawidowicz , was a biologist and focused on researching cancer tissue cultures. The younger daughter was married to the long-time press chief of the Prussian state government, Hans Goslar , with whom she had two daughters, Chana and Rahel (the former appears in Anne Frank's diary as Lies Goosens). The son-in-law also died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

literature

• E. Rawidowicz: “Alfred Klee”, in: Ernst Gottfried Löwenthal: Probation in Downfall , 1965, pp. 94–97.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 384.