Charlotte Holzer

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Charlotte Holzer , née Abraham (born December 7, 1909 in Charlottenburg , † September 29, 1980 in Berlin-Pankow ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism , a member of the Herbert Baum group and a Jewish nurse .

childhood and education

Erika Charlotte Abraham was born on December 7, 1909 as the second daughter of Max and Margarete Abraham in Berlin-Charlottenburg. She grew up in a middle-class Jewish family, but the father could only ensure a modest livelihood for the family as a representative of the leather industry. After completing secondary school, she began training as an infant sister in a Jewish children's home in Berlin-Niederschönhausen . She then moved to the Jewish Hospital in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen in order to complete an apprenticeship as a full sister. She was employed there from 1927 to 1942 as a nurse.

Membership in the KPD and the Herbert Baum group

Abraham joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1931 . In the same year she married Gustav Paech ; their daughter Eva was born on August 21, 1933. Five days later, her husband was arrested as a member of an illegal communist cell and to two years ' imprisonment convicted. After these events, she was initially no longer politically active. The couple divorced in 1936 due to estrangement. In 1940 she met her former friend from the Jewish youth movement, Herbert Baum , who was treated as a patient in the Jewish hospital. She joined the resistance group around Baum. When it carried out an arson attack on the Nazi propaganda exhibition The Soviet Paradise on May 18, 1942 , a number of the members of the group were arrested. Charlotte Abraham, who was not involved in the attack, initially went into hiding, but was arrested by the Gestapo on October 7, 1942 for illegally distributing ration cards . After a trial, she was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for “violating the war economy” and transferred to a prison in Leipzig .

Condemnation and escape

Shortly afterwards, the Gestapo discovered her membership in the Baum group and she and other members of the group were sentenced to death by the second senate of the People's Court on April 29, 1943 for high treason . She was in quarantine for a scarlet fever disease when the verdict was announced and only found out later about the verdict. After being transferred to various prisons several times, she managed to escape during a bombing raid. She was first taken in and hidden by Dorothea Schneider , a pastor's widow in Potsdam . She then managed to go into hiding under a false identity in a forced labor camp .

After 1945

After the collapse of the National Socialist regime, she married Richard Holzer, an acquaintance from the Herbert Baum group, in 1946. A son was born on June 2, 1947, but died shortly after the birth. She took up a job in the pregnancy and mothers advice center in the Berlin-Pankow district and was involved in tuberculosis and infant care. In 1953 she joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany .

She campaigned for the memory of Herbert Baum and his colleagues, in whose memory a memorial stone was set up in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weissensee .

Charlotte Holzer died on September 29, 1980 in Berlin; she, her husband Richard and their son are buried in the Jewish cemetery in Weissensee.

literature

Web links

credentials

  1. ↑ Page 159 at Margot Pikarski: Youth in Berlin's resistance. Herbert Baum and comrade in arms. Military Publishing House of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1978,
personal data
SURNAME Holzer, Charlotte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Jewish resistance fighter against National Socialism, nurse
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH September 29, 1980
Place of death Berlin