Else Dormitzer

Else Dormitzer , née Forchheimer , pseudonym Else Dorn , (born November 17, 1877 in Nuremberg ; died June 3, 1958 in London ) was a German children's book author.

Life

Else Forchheimer was a daughter of the timber merchant and sawmill owner Salomon Forchheimer and Klara Ehrlich. She attended the secondary school for girls in Nuremberg and a daughter institute in Heidelberg. In 1898 she married the Nuremberg lawyer Sigmund Dormitzer (1869–1943).

From 1914 Dormitzer wrote feature articles in the Franconian Courier . From 1919 she worked in the administration of the Jewish community in Nuremberg and was the first woman to be appointed to the main board of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith . Between 1923 and 1927 she published children's books in the Pestalozzi publishing house, mainly under the pseudonym Else Dorn.

The Dormitzer couple were attacked, mistreated and injured twice in their apartment during the Night of the Reichspogroms in 1938. They then had to have their house and property Aryanized for 10% of the value . They emigrated to the Netherlands on March 1, 1939 and lived with a daughter in Hilversum . Her daughters Elisabeth Rosenfelder and Hildegard Haas had previously managed to escape to Great Britain and the Netherlands. In 1942 they were expelled from Hilversum and ghettoized in Amsterdam and deported on April 22, 1943 with the first transport from Holland to the Theresienstadt ghetto . Her husband died on December 9, 1943 in the camp in Theresienstadt. Dormitzer was asked to do various physical work and was involved in the cultural program of the Judenrat in the ghetto. From October 1944 she worked in the camp's post office. After the liberation by the Red Army , the Dutch, including the Germans who had previously emigrated from Germany to Holland, were transported in cars from Theresienstadt to Bamberg in June 1945 and from there in cattle wagons to the Netherlands. The emigrants were interned in the Sittard quarantine camp and released in July 1945.

Dormitzer moved to England and received British citizenship in 1951. After the end of the war she reported on Theresienstadt in three episodes and gave radio lectures on the BBC . She was able to publish the poems she had written in prison in Hilversum in 1945 .

Her manuscripts were lost while fleeing Nazi Germany, and her diary entries were destroyed after her death at her own request.

Works (selection)

• Cultural bearers of the present on cremation: survey, organized on behalf of d. Association of cremation associations in the German language . Nuremberg: Thümmel, 1910
• Famous Jewish Women Past and Present . Berlin: Philo Verlag, 1925
• The ride goes around the earth; You dear little ones come with me! . Pictures by Suska . Fürth in Bavaria: G. Löwensohn, 1925
• Good friends from the country . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Good comrades . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Hurray, hurray, now we are here! . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Children's joys . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Strange animals . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Rural joys . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Enjoy it for you . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Pleasure from the country . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• What are we playing . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Good friends from the country . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Wild and tame animals . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• All sorts of pastimes . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• On the sea beach . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Holidays at the sea . Berlin-Grunewald: Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt, 1927
• Contribution in: For the twilight hour . Fürth in Bavaria: G. Löwensohn, 1928
• Contribution in: The new Frida Schanz book . Fürth in Bavaria: G. Löwensohn, 1929
• Theresienstadt pictures . Hilversum: De Boekenvriend, 1945

literature

• Dormitzer, Else. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 6: Dore – Fein. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-598-22686-1 , pp. 4-7.
• Wolfgang Benz : Station on the way to destruction. Unstoppable decline: the dignified couple Sigmund and Else Dormitzer. In: Wolfgang Benz: Theresienstadt: a story of deception and destruction . Munich: Beck, 2013, pp. 96-101
• Sandra Alfers: keep writing. Life and poetry of Else Dormitzer . Berlin: Hentrich and Hentrich Verlag Berlin 2015 ISBN 978-3-95565-114-5 [not used here]
• Dormitzer, Else , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 69

Web links

• Literature by and about Else Dormitzer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Else Dormitzer in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Else Dormitzer , at ghetto-theresienstadt (private site)