Erich Mahrt

Erich Mahrt (* 1910 in Rendsburg ; † 1988 ) was a German electrician who was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Yad Vashem Memorial in 2017 .

Life

Erich Mahrt grew up in a working class family from Rendsburg. He worked as an electrician for the Hamburg Süd shipping company , was a member of the KPD and was temporarily placed in protective custody in 1933 .

In 1930 Mahrt met the Jewish woman Wally Gortatowski (1910–1979), who was also from Rendsburg. After Gortatowski moved to Berlin via Itzehoe in 1939 , Mahrt followed her there in 1940. As early as the summer of 1942 he rented a garden shed in a Berlin arbor colony , in which Wally Gortatowski hid from December 1, 1942, the day on which she received the deportation notice to Auschwitz for December 9, until the end of the war. As a result, she was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust .

Erich Mahrt and Wally Gortatowski married in July 1945, and the marriage resulted in a son born in 1946. In 1949 they returned to Rendsburg, then emigrated to Argentina , and returned to Rendsburg in 1976 as a pensioner. In 1979 Wally Mahrt committed suicide , Erich Mahrt died in 1988.

Honors

In 2006, Frauke Dettmer, the then director of the Jewish Museum Rendsburg , applied to the Israeli Yad Vashem memorial to honor Erich Mahrt as Righteous Among the Nations . After a detailed examination, your application was granted in 2017. Erich Mahrt is the first native of Schleswig-Holstein to be honored as Righteous Among the Nations.

In 2013 a street on the site of the former Feldwebel-Schmid-Kaserne in Rendsburg was named after Erich Mahrt.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Yad Vashem bestows high honorary degrees. Kiel News from November 4, 2017, page 13.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Israel honors Erich Mahrt from Rendsburg. In: Kiel News . November 3, 2017. Retrieved November 5, 2017 . 
3. ↑ New use. Anton Schmid is also honored. In: Schleswig-Holsteinische Landeszeitung . August 30, 2013. Retrieved November 5, 2017 .