Elvira Sanders Square

Elvira Sanders Square (* 15. September 1891 in Cologne , † 10. August 1942 in the Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a German - Dutch Damenhuthändlerin and manufacturers widow and was born as a Jew murdered in the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Life

childhood and education

Elvira Platz was born into the large Jewish family of Jonas Platz and his wife Ida (née Heimbach). After training as a milliner , Elvira and her sister Selma moved to Leiden in the Netherlands and headed the hat department in a department store. In Leiden she met her future husband, Joseph Franziskus Xaverius Sanders, who owned a soap factory.

Conversion and Baptism

Influenced by the relationship with the Catholic Sanders, Elvira Platz sought contact with the Catholic Church and was baptized on March 30, 1918 in Oegstgeest . The two married on June 25, 1918 in the St. Peter's Church in Leiden, and a year later their only child, Anna, was born.

Persecution and assassination

Elvira Sanders-Platz and her husband took an active part in the fate of their Jewish relatives in Germany, who increasingly suffered from the anti-Jewish measures of the National Socialist regime . After the pogrom of November 9, 1938, Xaverius Sanders and his lawyer brought nine family members from Germany to Leiden and initially brought them to his house.

After the death of her husband on August 17, 1939, Elvira Sanders-Platz became increasingly involved in the church, in particular the parish charity . She also attended the theological courses given by the young Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx with great interest .

At the beginning of July 1942, the mass deportations of Jews from the Netherlands began, who, according to official reports, were allegedly brought to "labor camps". On July 11, the Dutch churches protested against these measures in a joint telegram to the Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands , Arthur Seyß-Inquart . Seyß-Inquart reacted with the surprising assurance that Jews of all Christian denominations baptized before 1941 would be exempted from deportation if the churches did not make their protest public. Unimpressed by this offer, the Reformed State Church (as the largest Christian denomination) and the Catholic bishops of the Netherlands published their protest telegram on Sunday , July 26th, 1942. The Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht , Johannes de Jong , sent one across the country on the same Sunday Read out a pastoral letter dated July 20, which denounced the actions of the Germans against Jews. In response to this, 244 former Jews who had converted to Catholicism , including Elvira Sanders-Platz, were arrested by the Gestapo on August 2, 1942 and taken via the Amersfoort transit camp to the Westerbork transit camp . From there, Elvira wrote the last letter she received on August 6th, in which she gave her fate a Christian interpretation: “So this is my choice to share the suffering of our Lord.” On August 7th, Elvira became Sanders-Platz with the Reichsbahn in the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau deported and there in the August 10, 1942 gas chamber murdered.

Elvira Sanders-Platz was accepted as a witness of faith in the Roman Catholic German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

• Elisabeth Prégardier : Elvira Sanders Square. In: Helmut Moll (ed.): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century. Volume I. 7th, updated and revised edition, Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , pp. 405-407.
• Elisabeth Prégardier, Anne Mohr, Roswitha Weinhold (collaborators): Edith Stein and her companions. Way into death and resurrection. In: Zeugen der Zeitgeschichte , Vol. 5, 2nd edition, Annweiler 1998.

Web links

• Entry on Elvira Sanders-Platz with Martyrs of the Archdiocese of Cologne

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Felix M. Schandl: "I saw the Church grow out of my people". Edith Stein's Christian relationship to Judaism and its practical consequences. In: Teresianum 43 (1992/1), pp. 53-107; here: p. 103 f.