Erich Kulka

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Erich Kulka (1993)

Erich Kulka , originally Erich Schoen (born February 18, 1911 in Vsetín ; died July 13, 1995 in Jerusalem ) was an Israeli historian, writer and publicist of Czech origin and a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust .

Life

Kulka, who was employed in the timber industry, was imprisoned for communist resistance activities during the Second World War in the Small Fortress Theresienstadt , in the Dachau concentration camp , the Neuengamme concentration camp , and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . In Birkenau, he and Ota Kraus ran the locksmith's shop in the men's camp, which was a liaison center for the international camp resistance. During the "evacuation" of the Auschwitz concentration camp in January 1945, he was able to escape with his twelve-year-old son Otto Dov Kulka .

After the war he worked as a writer and, together with Ota Kraus, wrote a comprehensive work on Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Death Factory . This relevant work was followed by other topic-related publications. Kulka, who later became the honorary chairman of the Israeli Auschwitz Committee, testified on April 16, 1964 in the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial and referred the court to the Auschwitz album. His son Otto Dov Kulka, who later became a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , also testified as a witness in the Auschwitz trial. Kulka emigrated to Israel from Czechoslovakia in 1968 . In the 1980s he devoted his research in particular to the special command of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , which he carried out at times with the Israeli historian Gideon Greif . Kulka received an honorary doctorate from the Spertus College of Judaica in Chicago in 1989 . The University of Jerusalem has had an Erich Kulka Fund since 1991, from which prizes are awarded annually for excellent research, particularly on the Holocaust.

In November 2004, a memorial was dedicated to Erich Kulka in the former Gestapo prison in Theresienstadt.

Fonts (selection)

  • with Ota Kraus: The death factory. Translated from the Czech by Zora Weil-Zimmering. Kongress-Verlag, Berlin 1957.
  • with Ota Kraus, Hanna Tichy: mass murder and profit. The fascist extermination policy and its economic background. Dietz, 1963.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Czechs group of prisoners on www.hagalil.com
  2. ↑ Raphael Gross , Werner Renz (ed.): The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963-1965). Annotated source edition. Scientific series of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Volume 1, Campus, Frankfurt 2013, ISBN 978-3-593-39960-7 , p. 282
  3. ↑ LAGERGEMEINSCHAFT AUSCHWITZ - CIRCLE OF FRIENDS OF AUSCHWITZER, 22nd year, issue 2 bulletin, December 2002, p. 14ff. (pdf; 241 kB) ( Memento from June 18, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Erich Kulka at www.ghetto-theresienstadt.de
  5. ↑ Cornelia Brink: Icons of Destruction: Public Use of Photographs from National Socialist Concentration Camps after 1945 , Akademie Verlag, 1998, ISBN 9783050032115 , p. 126
  6. ↑ Otto Dov Kulka on www.saalbau.com
  7. ↑ Sonderkommando studies ( Memento of the original from March 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sonderkommando-studien.de
  8. ^ Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership , homepage
  9. ^ Newsletter-Theresienstadt, number 45, July 1998
  10. ^ Newsletter-Theresienstadt, number 58, January 2005, p. 12
personal data
SURNAME Kulka, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nice, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli writer, historian and publicist and survivor of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Vsetín
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1995
Place of death Jerusalem