August Sapandowski

August Sapandowski (born June 17, 1882 in Lissau , then West Prussia ; † March 10, 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp ) was a German master painter who was honored in 2001 as Righteous Among the Nations .

Life

Stumbling block for Elsbeth Orgler, Wilhelmstrasse 140, in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Sapandowski came from a Catholic family. He took part in World War I as a soldier and through this experience developed into a pacifist . He turned away from Catholicism and joined the KPD in 1921 .

In 1941 the widowed Sapandowski lived in Berlin-Wilmersdorf with his daughter Vera and his Jewish partner Elsbeth Orgler, who had to hide as “illegals” . When Herbert A. Strauss and his girlfriend Lotte Schloß had to go into hiding in October 1942 , he moved them to the basement of his workshop. After six weeks, the two changed hiding places, and Sapandowski hid other Jews, including a mother and her son. However, the hiding place was betrayed by a resident of the house, the hidden Jews were deported , and Sapandowski and Orgler had to go into hiding themselves in Berlin and finally flee to Tyrol . They returned in April 1943, but were arrested by the Gestapo a month later . Elsbeth Orgler was deported to Auschwitz , where she was murdered. Sapandowski was released after three months in prison for “ racial disgrace ” and “ favoring Jews ”.

In spite of this, he continued to hide Jews with him for the next few months, in the meantime up to six people had to live on two ration cards. The Gestapo reappeared in his apartment on June 28, 1944 and arrested him and a Jewish couple who were hiding with him. He was first deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp , then to Bergen-Belsen. In April 1945 his daughter received the news that her father had died on March 10th in Bergen-Belsen "of circulatory weakness".

The memorial Yad Vashem honored August Sapandowski on 16 July 2001 as a Righteous Among the Nations .

literature

• Israel Gutman , Daniel Fraenkel, Jacob Borut: Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations: Germans and Austrians. Wallstein Verlag, 2nd edition, 2005.

Web links

Commons : August Sapandowski  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The other resistance ( Memento of May 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) in the Netzeitung