Erich Nehlhans

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Memorial plaque on the house at Prenzlauer Allee 35, in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg (2010)

Erich Nehlhans , spelling Erich Nelhans (* February 12, 1899 in Berlin ; † February 15, 1950 in the DubrawLag camp ) was co-founder and provisional together with Hans Münzer , Leo Hirsch, Leo Löwenstein , Fritz Katten and Hans Erich Fabian after the end of the Second World War Chairman of the Jewish Community in Berlin and a victim of both German dictatorships.

Life

Erich Nehlhans grew up as one of five siblings in a strictly religious family in Berlin. In 1918 he became a soldier in the Imperial German Army. After the First World War he worked as a merchant and owned a publisher for greeting cards. In 1934 he married the rabbi's daughter Edith Perlinsky. In 1942 he went into hiding in Berlin. His wife was deported to Auschwitz on March 1, 1943 during the factory operation and murdered there.

After the liberation, Erich Nehlhans played a key role in rebuilding community life in the Jewish community in Berlin. In addition to chairing the community, he was responsible for religious affairs. His commitment to the repair of the Rykestrasse synagogue , the Jewish cemetery in Weißensee and other facilities of the Jewish community is known. Nehlhans was in charge of hiring Estrongo Nachama as cantor. As the chairman of the community, he also looked after the social needs of former concentration camp prisoners. He helped many of them to make a fresh start in Palestine and the USA.

Nehlhans handled these relocation matters full-time at the headquarters of the Jewish community in the British sector . Those who wanted to emigrate also included those with Soviet citizenship, including several deserters from the Soviet Army . In March 1948 the Soviet secret police MGB arrested Nehlhans, who was not aware of any wrongdoing, in his apartment in the Soviet sector and took him to a cellar prison on Prenzlauer Allee . On August 4, 1948, a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him to 25 years in a labor camp for anti-Soviet agitation and support for the desertion of Soviet soldiers of Jewish faith . After the death penalty was abolished in 1947, it was the maximum penalty under Soviet law. Initially imprisoned as an SMT convict on the premises of the Sachsenhausen special camp , Nehlhans was transferred to the Soviet Union in October 1948, where he was initially imprisoned in Brest prison. As a result of a serious hepatitis illness , Nehlhans died in the hospital of the DubrawLag special camp in Mordovia . He was buried in the cemetery of the local camp point No. 2.

A Russian military court overturned the verdict on September 24, 1997 and fully rehabilitated Erich Nehlhans.

There is a memorial plaque on the residential building at Prenzlauer Allee 35, Berlin; a street was named after him in Prenzlauer Berg . Because of the spelling of the name, there were serious rifts between a family member, who preferred the Nelhans spelling chosen by Nehlhans , and the initiators of the memorial plaque. There is a memorial stone for Erich Nehlhans in the Jewish cemetery on Heerstraße. The name Nelhans is also written there. The historian Annette Leo , commissioned by the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg to carry out biographical research on Nehlhans, decided to use the Nelhans spelling for her representations . Nehlhans himself signed with Nelhans and this variant is also used in most of the surviving documents.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefanie Endlich: Paths to Remembrance: Memorial sites and places for the victims of National Socialism in Berlin and Brandenburg. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938690-45-1 , p. 323
  2. ↑ Annette Leo: Erich Nelhans. In: Karl Wilhelm Fricke, Peter Steinbach, Johannes Tuchel (eds.): Opposition and resistance in the GDR . Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47619-8 , p. 43
personal data
SURNAME Nehlhans, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nelhans, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Acting chairman of the Jewish community in Berlin
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1950
Place of death DubrawLag