Clare Barwitzky

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Clare Barwitzky , also Claire Barwitzky (born June 19, 1913 in Neisse , Upper Silesia, † March 10, 1989 in Meiningen ) was a German Catholic pastoral worker and Righteous Among the Nations .

Life

Clare Barwitzky was the daughter of an unskilled worker who was employed by the Deutsche Reichsbahn . In 1932 she passed the Abitur, but her wish to become a teacher could not be fulfilled. She accepted the offer of the German-speaking French pastor Laurent Remillieux from Lyon to become his secretary. He was the spiritual leader of the “Compagnons de Saint François” (Companions of St. Francis); Clare Barwitzky joined the movement.

In 1933 she returned to Germany and completed an apprenticeship as a pastoral assistant in Freiburg im Breisgau , which she completed in 1935. With this training she worked in the municipality of Vaujany ( canton Le Bourg-d'Oisans ).

After the occupation of France, the situation in Vaujany became dangerous because of the resistance there . She went to Saint-Étienne and, as a German, worked unrecognized in a Catholic family care facility. This ran a home near Chamonix , in which 30 Jewish children found protection from deportation at the start of the anti-Semitic campaign in 1943 . In order to conceal their identity, they were provided with forged identity documents. Clare Barwitzky looked after the children together with the French director and two Jewish women. After Lyon was bombed, she went there to pick up two Jewish children who had lost their parents. The area was liberated in late summer 1944.

After some time in Paris, Cläre Barwitzky returned to Germany and worked as a pastoral assistant in Leipzig , from June 1947 in Saalfeld and later in Meiningen. In 1969 she retired for health reasons.

Already during the GDR era she was supposed to be honored for her work to save Jews, but she did not want the state to use her as an " anti-fascist peace fighter". In March 1991, Clare Barwitzky was posthumously named Righteous Among the Nations .

literature

  • Barwitzky, Claire . In: Daniel Fraenkel, Jackob Borut (Ed.): Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations. Germans and Austrians . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2005, pp. 64-65 ISBN 3-89244-900-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ M. Veronika Stauch: Memories of Sister Cläre Barwitzky (PDF; 1.9 MB). In: Catechetical Institute of the Diocese of Würzburg (Ed.): RU-Kurier. Information on religious education . Issue 22, April 2003 pp. 14–15
  2. ↑ Chronicle of the Corpus Christi community in Saalfeld ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.katholische-kirche-saalfeld.de
personal data
SURNAME Barwitzky, Clare
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barwitzky, Claire
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic pastoral worker and Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH June 19, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Neisse , Upper Silesia
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1989
Place of death Meiningen