Curt Epstein

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Curt Epstein (born in Heydekrug in 1898 ; died in Zurich in 1976 ) was a German lawyer , victim of the Nazi regime, and senior state official.

Life

Curt Epstein, who came from a German-Jewish family, had a doctorate in law and worked as a judge in Berlin and Heydekrug. After the incorporation of the Memel area into the National Socialist German Reich , he was imprisoned as a Jew in a concentration camp for several years, including in the Dachau concentration camp . After the end of the National Socialist regime, he was State Commissioner for Reparation in Hesse and State Commissioner for the Care of Jews in Greater Hesse from 1945/46 to 1950. He was one of the founders of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN). In July 1948 he headed a movement that reclaimed the Offenbach synagogue for the Jewish community. He was exposed to criticism, his office was supposed to be closed as early as 1948, which sparked violent protests from the persecuted. In March 1950 he had to relinquish the management of reparation because, in the opinion of his employer, the Hessian Interior Minister Heinrich Zinnkann (SPD), he was not doing his job satisfactorily. With Philipp Auerbach (Bavaria), Marcel Frenkel (North Rhine-Westphalia), Alphonse Kahn (Rhineland-Palatinate) and Ludwig Loeffler (Hamburg), he belonged to a group of former Nazi persecuted Jews of Jewish origin who were reorganized at the beginning of the 1950s the compensation policy had to give up their office as state commissioner, which worsened the initial situation of the victims. This was preceded by an attempt to scandalize Epstein as a member of the supervisory board alongside Philipp Auerbach and Walter Kolb of a "Jewish industrial and commercial bank", in which fraudsters appropriated blocked compensation funds and the VVN had protested against the establishment of the bank in advance . Although the members of the supervisory board, who had a purely representative function, were not accused in the subsequent proceedings, Epstein left Germany and emigrated to Israel . At times he also lived in Brazil .

Curt Epstein was married to Eva Epstein, nee Meier (died 1974).

literature

  • Jay Howard Geller, Jews in Post-Holocaust Germany. 1945–1953, Cambridge (USA) 2005
  • Constantin Goschler , reparation, West Germany and those persecuted by National Socialism 1945–1954 (= sources and representations on contemporary history, vol. 34), Munich 1992
  • Günter Heuzeroth , persecuted for political reasons: Resistance and persecution of the regional labor movement in documents, life reports and analyzes, presented in the events in Weser-Ems, 1933–1945, Vol. 1, Osnabrück 1989
  • Eva Kolinsky, After The Holocaust, Jewish Survivors in Germany after 1945, London 2004
  • Regula Ludi , Reparations for Nazi Victims in Postwar Europe, Cambridge (USA) 2012
  • Gilad Margalit , The Post-War Germans and “their Gypsies”. The treatment of the Sinti and Roma in the shadow of Auschwitz, Berlin 2001
  • Boris Spernol: In the crossfire of the cold war. The Marcel Frenkel case and the repression of the communists , in: Norbert Frei / José Brunner / Constantin Goschler (eds.): The practice of reparation. History, experience and impact in Germany and Israel (series of publications by the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University, vol. 28), Göttingen 2009, pp. 203–236, here: pp. 220ff., P. 221
  • Old Prussian biography, additions to volumes I to III, delivery 2, Elwert, Marburg 1989, p. 1203

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Old Prussian Biography, Supplements to Volumes I to III, Delivery 2, Elwert, Marburg 1989, p. 1203
  2. ↑ Jay Howard Geller, Jews in Post-Holocaust Germany. 1945-1953, Cambridge (USA) 2005, p. 65.
  3. ↑ Boris Spernol: In the crossfire of the cold war. The Marcel Frenkel case and the repression of the communists , in: Norbert Frei / José Brunner / Constantin Goschler (eds.): The practice of reparation. History, experience and impact in Germany and Israel (series of publications by the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University, vol. 28), Göttingen 2009, pp. 203–236, here: pp. 220ff., P. 235.
  4. ↑ Boris Spernol: In the crossfire of the cold war. The Marcel Frenkel case and the repression of the communists , in: Norbert Frei / José Brunner / Constantin Goschler (eds.): The practice of reparation. History, experience and impact in Germany and Israel (series of publications by the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University, vol. 28), Göttingen 2009, pp. 203–236, here: pp. 220ff., P. 235.
  5. ↑ banking scandal. The money is gone, in: Der Spiegel, October 4, 1950, see also: [1] .
  6. ↑ David Heredia, On the image of Jews after Auschwitz: the early reporting in the magazine Der Spiegel, Freiburg 2008, p. 162.
  7. ↑ rlb., Who failed in Frankfurt ?, in: Die Zeit, October 30, 1952, see also: [2] .
  8. ↑ Dr. Curt Epstein, in: Der Spiegel, February 21, 1951, [3] .
personal data
SURNAME Epstein, Curt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, Nazi victim and senior state official
DATE OF BIRTH 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Heydekrug
DATE OF DEATH 1976
Place of death Zurich