Arthur Kochmann

Arthur Kochmann ( December 24, 1864 in Gleiwitz , Upper Silesia - around 1944) was a German lawyer, politician (DDP) and Jewish association functionary.

Life

His parents were Jonas Kochmann (1819–1892) and Ernestine, geb. Schueller (1825-1867).

From 1892 Arthur Kochmann worked as a lawyer and notary at the Gleiwitz district court. In 1899 he became a city councilor and in 1915 chairman of the synagogue community in Gleiwitz. 1919–1924 he was a member of the German Democratic Party (DDP) in the Prussian state parliament. During the referendum (1922) in Upper Silesia, when neighboring communities turned to Poland, he pleaded for membership of Germany. In 1933 he was elected to be the representative for Upper Silesia at the Reich Representation of German Jews . Since the National Socialists came into power , he worked together with the lawyer from Beuthen and secretary of the Jewish Action Committee, Georg Weissmann (1885–1963) for the implementation of Jewish minority rights (see Bernheim petition ).

The fact that he remained unmolested during deportations from 1941 onwards may be due to the fact that his son-in-law - Major Giuseppe Renzetti - was an Italian liaison between Mussolini and Hitler in Berlin. After he moved from Berlin to Stockholm, Kochmann was sent to Auschwitz on December 28, 1943 as the last Jew in Upper Silesia .

literature

• Götz Aly, Wolf Gruner (ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945. Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939. Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p. 693.
• Max P. Birnbaum: State and Synagogue, 1918–1938: a history of the Prussian State Association of Jewish Communities (1918–1938) , Mohr Siebeck, 1981, p. 62 ( digitized version )
• Kochmann, Arthur , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 199

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert Parzer: Upper Silesian Jewish Entrepreneurs , page 62
2. ^ Gliwice on American.edu