Curt Mezger

Curt Mezger (born December 17, 1895 in Munich , † probably March 12, 1945 in Ebensee concentration camp ) was a German-Jewish entrepreneur. He was the last head of the Milbertshofen Jewish camp in Munich . In this role he helped others to make their dire fate more bearable. After the Milbertshofen camp was closed, he was employed as camp manager of the Berg am Laim collective camp from August 19, 1942 . He was arrested on March 14, 1943 and deported to Auschwitz . In January 1945 he was sent to the Ebensee concentration camp, where he perished a month and a half later.

Life

Mezger was born into a family of the upper middle class of Munich and grew up in a stately villa on Karolinenplatz . He completed his school education at the humanistic grammar school. When the First World War broke out , he was drafted into the army and took part in the fighting as Vice Sergeant of the 1st Bavarian Foot Artillery Regiment until 1918.

After the end of the war, he and Anton Gahm founded the company Theo Trockenfeuerlöscher Mezger und Gahm on Brienner Strasse . Around 1928, both changed branches and Gahm took over the sporting goods company Anton Huber , which was based at the same address and where Mezger initially worked. In 1936 he went into business for himself with an agency for sporting goods.

During the time of National Socialism , Mezger was classified as a Jew under the Nuremberg Race Laws . As a result, he was arrested several times and was imprisoned in the police prison on Ettstrasse. After the deportation of Hugo Railing in the concentration camp Sobibor Mezger was established in April 1942 as warehouse manager of the collection and deportation camp Milbertshofen used. During the entire time he lived with his aunt Stefanie von Bayer-Ehrenberg with the Munich patron Countess von Harrach. After the camp in Milbertshofen was closed, he became head of the collective camp in Berg am Laim .

Eleven days after the evacuation of the camp in Berg am Laim, Mezger was arrested on March 14, 1943 while he was doing final work in the empty warehouse buildings. He was first taken to the Stadelheim prison and from there - while his Aryan wife even went to the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin to obtain his release - deported to Auschwitz in autumn 1943 . There he was used as a nurse and death carrier. In the course of the evacuation of the camp, Mezger left Auschwitz on January 18, 1945 and arrived at Mauthausen concentration camp on January 25, 1945 . Four days later, he and almost 2,000 other inmates were transported from the Auschwitz transport to the Mauthausen subcamp in Ebensee, where he was murdered just six weeks later.

There are different details about the exact date of death (March 12, 13, 15 or 17, 1945). His widow was reported to be the official cause of death from bronchitis .

Honors

In memory of Mezger, the Curt-Mezger-Platz in front of the Milbertshofen cultural center was named after him on March 8, 2007 in the Milbertshofen district of Munich .

literature

• Brigitte Schmidt, Werner Grube: Curt Mezger. Camp manager of the Milbertshofen collection and deportation camp. In: People in Milbertshofen. A project of the history workshop in the Milbertshofen cultural center. Kulturhaus edition, Munich 2006

Individual evidence

1. ^ State capital Munich, editor: Curt-Mezger-Platz. Retrieved April 29, 2017 .