Emil Bruns

Emil Bruns , after 1950 also Emilio Bruns , (born August 14, 1915 in Hamburg ; † May 10, 1997 ) was a German entrepreneur who was sentenced to imprisonment in one of the Curiohaus trials in 1946 for mistreating female forced laborers. The company he led later rose to become one of the most important construction companies in Germany.

Life

Nothing is known about Emil Brun's parental home and schooling. He was a trained businessman who was exempt from military service due to an accident. Allegedly he joined the NSDAP in 1934; his co-partner had already joined the party in 1932.

Company at war

In 1939 he founded a company called Kowahl & Bruns with the garden and landscape designer Wilhelm Kowahl , which was involved in camouflaging military airports during World War II , but was also commissioned to build fortifications for the Todt organization . Soon there were branches in Paris and Lille; a subsidiary was operating in the Bialystok district . In 1944 the company had around 2,000 employees; in addition to 100 permanent Germans, it was mainly forced laborers.

Since the co-partner Kowahl had already been drafted at the beginning of the war and went missing from 1943, Bruns was in fact solely responsible for the management. In Hamburg, the company was used from 1943 to clear rubble, rebuild and produce concrete slabs for the Poppenbüttel panel house , which was built by captured Jewish women from the Hamburg-Sasel subcamp . As an additional source of income, four specially built community camps were rented , in which forced laborers from various Hamburg companies were housed. Remnants of one of these forced labor camps are now used as an information center for Nazi forced labor .

Indictment and Trial

In 1946 Bruns stood in one of the Curio-Haus trials before a British military court. He was accused of beating and kicking Polish Jewish forced laborers. Bruns protested his innocence and claimed the allegations were lies. On June 10, 1946, Bruns was sentenced to three years imprisonment in the so-called Sasel case trial against those responsible for the Hamburg-Sasel satellite camp. This sentence was reduced to two years in September 1946.

Business success

Bruns served his sentence in full in the Fuhlsbüttel correctional facility ; from there he was able to have a say in major decisions about his company. Even before his arrest, he had invested 75,000 Reichsmarks as a silent partner in an open trading company (OHG). In 1951, Bruns became the sole owner of the company, which was now called civil engineering .

In the 1950s, the construction company was mainly active in northern Germany and employed up to 1,100 workers. Bruns later acquired stakes in shipping companies and invested in Spain and the Caribbean. In his second marriage, Emil Bruns married a Brazilian and from then on called himself Emilio Bruns . In the 1960s he rose to become "one of the most important building contractors in Germany".

In the 1960s he met the building contractor and chairman of the Frankfurt Jewish Community, Ignatz Bubis , who encouraged him to invest in tourism in Israel. The most outstanding project, the Sheraton in Tel Aviv, was completed in 1976 , which Emilio Bruns also managed temporarily as managing director.

Private

In 1977, Bruns married the Israeli Daniela Cohen in his third marriage. In 1983 the family emigrated to Canada and their main residence was in Toronto . He also lived in Germany, Switzerland and Israel.

Bruns died on May 10, 1997. His body was transferred to Trittau and buried in the family grave under the name Emilio Bruns .

literature

• Uwe Leps: The forgotten camp. Forced labor in the shadow of the airport 1943 to 1945. Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-059388-8 .

Web links

• GEW: Report on the process (pdf)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Uwe Leps: The forgotten camp. Forced labor in the shadow of the airport 1943 to 1945. Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-059388-8 , p. 13.
2. ↑ Uwe Leps: The forgotten camp. Forced labor in the shadow of the airport 1943 to 1945. Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-059388-8 , p. 73.