Antonienheim (Munich)
The Antonienheim of the Israelitische Jugendhilfe e. V. Munich was a children's home that was originally built for orphans and poor children of the Jewish community in Munich and beyond.
history
In 1925 the Israelitische Jugendhilfe e. V. the house at Antonienstraße 7. The first chairwoman of the association, Elisabeth Kitzinger , remembered looking back:
- The new home, located in a beautiful garden, consisted of 20 rooms ... On March 29, 1926 the children moved into the new home. Orphaned, illegitimate or endangered children were accepted into the home ..., as well as girls who had finished school to learn about the household and how to care for children .
From 1933 onwards, the Antonienheim was increasingly taking in children and young people whose parents tried to find ways of survival for themselves and their children. The Gauleiter ordered the home to be closed as early as 1938. Several pupils could still be brought to England with the help of child transports. Due to the good relations with the city's Jewish office, Elisabeth Kitzinger was able to obtain a postponement of the dissolution of the home. The educators and teachers tried to replace the missing parental home for the children and young people and to give them a sense of security despite massive disruptions to the home operations by the population and the city administration. Henny Seidmann, a household student in the home, reported in her autobiography about everyday life:
- It was strict in the Antonienheim, and a lot was demanded, but there was human warmth. We were always looked after, always protected. When stones flew, the teachers were there to take care of us. For what the environment has offered us, we were not only doing well, we were doing very well!
In November 1941 20 children and 4 caregivers were deported and all murdered. The former home child Ernst Grube remembers the deportations:
- Almost all of the children were picked up within a few months. Only a few emigrated before ... Children in groups were picked up from our home at night and taken away in buses at ever shorter intervals. We didn't know where we were going. We said goodbye in tears ... Most of these transports went to Theresienstadt and from there to the extermination camps in the East .
In April 1942 the home had to cease operations for good. The rest of the children, their teachers and the home manager, Alice Bendix , first came to the assembly camp in Berg am Laim . From there they were sent to various death camps on March 13, 1943 in a cattle wagon. a. to Kaunas (Lithuania) to the Kauen concentration camp there, deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp and murdered. The SS organization Lebensborn e. V. built a mother's home in the Antonienheim . The building was destroyed during one of the nights of bombing in Munich.
Memorials
Since 2002 there has been a memorial on the sidewalk in front of the site of the former Antonienheim. The property owner had refused to put a plaque directly on the building that stands there today. The memorial is a text column created by Hermann Kleinknecht and contains a transparent pane with a photo showing two former residents looking out of the window.
Coordinates: 48 ° 9 ′ 53.2 " N , 11 ° 35 ′ 24" E
The school center opposite has been called the Alice Bendix Vocational School Center since 2004 , named after the director of the children's home.
literature
- Elisabeth Kitzinger: Jewish youth welfare in Munich. (1904–1943), in: Hans Lamm (Ed.): Von Juden in München. A memorial book, Munich 1958, p. 75 ff
- Ernst Grube: You Jew 'sneak up! . Childhood in Munich 1932 to 1945, In: Landeshauptstadt München (Hrsg.): Jüdisches Leben in München, München 1995, p. 43 ff
- Bertha-Susanne Oppenheimer: Research on Elisabeth Kitzinger (1881–1966) and her work for Jewish child and youth welfare in Munich (1904–1943), Munich 2006 (unpublished diploma thesis)
- Henny Seidmann: Berlin - Barcelona - Munich. A Munich Jew remembers, Munich 2006
- Martin Ruch: "In the meantime we have only been starred". The diary of Esther Cohn and the children from Munich's Antonienheim, superbookdeals 2006
- Helga Pfoertner: Living with history. Vol. 2, Literareron, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-8316-1025-8 , pp. 56-61 ( PDF; 3.8 MB ( Memento from December 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ))