Arthur Ernest Dowden

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Arthur Ernest Dowden was a British diplomat. He became known as a helper for Jews persecuted by the Nazi system in Germany after the anti-Semitic riots of November 1938 ( Reichskristallnacht ).

Life and activity

On December 13, 1922, Dowden was appointed British Vice Consul in Bratislava . After the dissolution of this consulate on October 20, 1928, he worked for Lloyd's.

On December 11, 1934, Dowden was appointed British Vice Consul in Frankfurt am Main . In this post, in which he was subordinate to the Consul General Robert Smallbones , he remained until the British declaration of war on the German Reich after the attack by the Wehrmacht on Poland in September 1939. From November 16, 1939 to June 1940 he was then at the British Embassy in Rome busy.

After the anti-Jewish pogroms in Germany in November 1938 , Dowden, together with his superiors, undertook numerous assistance in favor of the Jewish population group, which was now being persecuted in an intensified form by the Nazi state: In the first few days after the rioting by members of the storm departments against synagogues and Jewish shops through the city in the consulate's automobile on November 9, 1938 and brought groceries to the apartments of Frankfurt Jews who were not allowed to leave them due to a curfew imposed after the pogroms against Jews and were therefore unable to provide themselves with groceries. In addition, in the days after the November pogroms, he granted numerous Jews a safe refuge from attacks by SA units and other Nazi supporters in the building of the consulate, which was regarded as the diplomatic representation of another state as an extraterritorial area , so that they are here Persecution from the ranks of state or party organizations of the National Socialists were initially withdrawn.

The plaque commemorates the help that the two English diplomats Smallbones and Dowden made from their consulate in Frankfurt to Jewish people to enable them to escape from Nazi Germany after November 9, 1938.

Above all, however, in the months following the riots in November 1938, Dowden, together with his superior Smallbones, enabled several thousand German Jews to leave Germany for Great Britain or the overseas territories of the British Empire by granting them entry visas in an unbureaucratic and generous manner . In favor of the persecuted, they went far beyond the requirements for a visa and also issued visas to people who were legally not allowed to be granted entry into British territory. For those affected, the visa meant the opportunity to leave the National Socialist territory. In view of the Holocaust that began a few years later , the two are often credited with removing thousands of people from the Nazis' access, in which they would otherwise be very likely to have been attacked by the Nazi leadership during the Second World War Measures aimed at exterminating European Jews would have been put to death.

After the start of the war, Dowden was classified by the National Socialist police as an enemy of the state: In the spring of 1940 the Reich Security Main Office placed him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who would be included in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British island by the special SS units following the occupation forces special priority should be located and arrested.

Today a memorial plaque on the building of the former British Consulate General on Guiolettstrasse and the corner of Feuerbachstrasse in Frankfurt am Main commemorates Dowden's and Smallbone's aid to German Jews in the months after the November 1938 pogroms. It was opened on May 8, 2013 in the presence of the then British Ambassador to Germany, Simon McDonald , and the Lord Mayor of Frankfurt, Peter Feldmann , unveiled.

literature

  • The Foreign Office List and Diplomatic and Consular Year Book , 1949, p. 213.
  • Petra Bonavita: Quakers as saviors in Frankfurt am Main during the Nazi era , Schmetterling Verlag, Stuttgart, 2014, ISBN 3-89657-149-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Petra Bonavita: Quakers as saviors in Frankfurt am Main during the Nazi era , pp. 160–163 & "Men first" - the "smallbones scheme" of the British consul in Frankfurt am Main . Bonavita, p. 166, also reports that Dowden drove through the streets of Frankfurt after the pogrom night to distribute food.
  2. ^ Entry on Dowden on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .
personal data
SURNAME Dowden, Arthur Ernest
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH before 1922