Erna Lauenburger

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Erna Lauenburger , called Unku (* March 4, 1920 in Berlin-Reinickendorf ; † between March 23 and April 15, 1944 in the Auschwitz gypsy camp ) was a German Sintiza who was used as a model for the Unku in Alex Weddings' book Ede and Unku served. Unku or Unko is her Sinti name.

Life, family, death in Auschwitz concentration camp

In Berlin , Erna Lauenburger was friends with Grete Weiskopf at the end of the 1920s . With this friendship in the background, Weiskopf wrote the novel Ede und Unku, published in 1931 by Malik Verlag . The photos for the book, which show the real Erna Lauenburger family, are from John Heartfield . Parts of the experiences dealt with in the novel, such as the hiding of a striking worker with Lauenburger's family from the police, reflect actual events.

In 1932 Erna Lauenburger was baptized by the Protestant city mission in Berlin.

Erna Lauenburger moved with her family to Magdeburg in the 1930s . From the Magdeburg period, the increasing racist repression and its deportation can be proven with some details on the basis of preserved files .

She was not legally married to Otto Schmidt, born on February 13, 1918 in Luckenwalde. Her husband, with whom she lived in the Magdeburg Holzweg gypsy camp , was arrested on June 13, 1938 as part of the wave of imprisonment for the "Arbeitsscheu Reich" campaign and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp . The “ Preventive Detention Order ” of June 13, 1938 is preserved in his Magdeburg “Gypsy Personnel File” ZP 232. Other close relatives of Erna lived in the camp, such as her mother and grandmother.

Both daughter Marie was born on August 25, 1938. On April 12, 1939, the 19-year-old mother was summoned by the criminal police, questioned and registered with the police.

Otto Schmidt was killed by injection by camp doctor Waldemar Hoven in the concentration camp on November 20, 1942, after attempted typhus by the Robert Koch Institute . Otto Schmidt belonged to the untreated, infected control group and was one of four inmates who had survived the infection.

After a fixing decree of October 17, 1939 provided for the setting up of “collecting camps for gypsies” to prepare for removal to concentration camps , Erna Lauenburger, along with many other Sinti, was forced to sign a document prohibiting her from leaving her place of residence. Violation of the requirement threatened to be sent to a concentration camp. An "expert statement" bearing Robert Ritter's signature, which she classifies as a "Gypsy mixed breed (+)", is dated July 14, 1941.

The second child, Bärbel Lauenburger, was born on September 24, 1942.

The 160 Sinti, including 125 children, living in the so-called Magdeburg Holzweg gypsy camp , were arrested on March 1, 1943 and deported to the " Auschwitz gypsy camp ". Erna Lauenburger received the prisoner numbers Z 633, her daughter Marie Z 635 and Bärbel Z 634. Her mother and grandmother had the prisoner numbers Z 623 and Z 622, which had been assigned shortly before, which indicates that they were also deported from the Magdeburg camp. A few days before the deportation, Ritter and Eva Justin had visited the camp to complete the deportation documents.

As early as the 1960s, several survivors reported to the GDR civil rights activist and journalist Reimar Gilsenbach that Unku could not cope with the death of her firstborn daughter Marie and was then murdered. Reimar Gilsenbach documented the events in some of his publications after talking to survivors. The 2009 film What Happened to Unku - The Short Life of Erna Lauenburger also deals with Unku's life story.

The exact date of death is only documented by Bärbel Lauenburger, but not by Marie and Erna Lauenburger. According to the latest findings, it lies between March 23, 1944 and April 15, 1944. The descendant Janko Lauenberger and the journalist Juliane Wedemeyer came across documents while working on their book Ede und Unku - the true story in the archive of the Auschwitz State Museum which prove that Unku took part in a typhus blood test on March 23, 1944. The surviving witnesses to her death were transported from Auschwitz on April 15, 1944. The book Ede and Unku - the true story of the 2018 in Gütersloh publishing house appeared , reconstructed and told Unkus fate and that of her family. Lauenberger is the grandson of Kaulas (bourgeois: Helene Ansin, nee Steinbach), who is also mentioned in the children's book Ede and Unku , the cousin Unkus. Lauenberger's grandfather is the eyewitness interviewed by Gilsenach for Unku's time in the Auschwitz concentration camp and her death. There were other contemporary witnesses in Lauenberger's family.

Honor

On January 27, 2011 in Berlin-Friedrichshain a path was named as Ede-und-Unku-Weg in memory of Erna Lauenburger and Grete Weiskopf alias Alex Wedding.

Hints

  • Erna Lauenburger is also mentioned in Frieda Zeller-Plinzner's Jesus im Zigeunerlager (Neumünster 1934).
  • Erna Lauenburger's Magdeburg "Gypsy Personnel File" ZP 420 has been preserved.

literature

  • Steffi Kaltenborn: Lauenburger, Erna, called Unku (also Unko). In: Eva Labouvie (Ed.): Women in Saxony-Anhalt, Volume 2: A biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the 19th century to 1945. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-412-51145-6 , p. 264 -266.
  • Janko Lauenberger , Juliane von Wedemeyer: Ede and Unku - the true story. The fate of a Sinti family from the Weimar Republic to the present day. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2018, ISBN 978-3-579-08694-1 .
  • Gabriele Wittstock: Unku - The fate of a young Sintezza. In: Unwantedly persecuted murdered. Exclusion and terror during the National Socialist dictatorship in Magdeburg 1933–1945. Magdeburg museums, Magdeburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-930030-93-4 .
  • Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in cooperation with the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg: Memorial book: The Sinti and Roma in the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp. Saur-Verlag, Munich a. a. 1993, ISBN 3-598-11162-2 .

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your anger. Berlin 1993, p. 178.
  2. ↑ a b Commemoration of "Ede und Unku" by Alex Wedding and the Sinto-German boxing champion Johann Rukeli Trollmann. Press release of the City of Berlin No. 3/2011 from January 6, 2011.
  3. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach, Wolfgang Ayaß , Ursula Körber, Klaus Scherer and others: Enemy declaration and prevention. Forensic biology, gypsy research and anti-social policy. (Contributions to National Socialist Health and Social Policy, Volume 6), Rotbuch, Westberlin 1988, ISBN 3-88022-955-4 , p. 110.
  4. ↑ Susanne Blume Berger, Ernst Seibert (2007): Alex Wedding (1905 to 1966) and the proletarian children's literature. Praesens publishing house Sniplet
  5. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your anger. Berlin 1993, pp. 186, 189.
  6. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your anger. Berlin 1993, p. 189: photo of the document; Otto Schmidt also had no criminal record.
  7. ↑ In addition to the promptly assigned prisoner numbers of the Auschwitz gypsy camp (see memorial book, main book women, p. 41), which prove a simultaneous deportation, this is supported by the fact that her mother in Erna Lauenburger's Magdeburg police files in the registration sheet of May 9, 1939 as a witness for the identification is specified (see: Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your Zorn. Berlin 1993, p. 187, 195.) Gilsenbach names the relationships.
  8. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your anger. Berlin 1993. Pictured at Gilsenbach: registration sheet from May 9, 1939, with the note of a “Gypsy certificate v. Berlin "and entry of the" Gypsy camp in Magdeburg, Holzweg "as place of residence, p. 186 f., Expert opinion no. 2543 of July 14, 1941, p. 188.
  9. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your anger. Berlin 1993, p. 192: Photo of the death report (telegram from Buchenwald concentration camp to Magdeburg police) with the wrong cause of death and the message that Almar Schmidt, the dead woman's mother, who also lived in the Magdeburg gypsy camp, could collect the ashes within 4 weeks. Sheet 54 of his Magdeburg file ZP 232.
  10. ↑ Annette Hinz-Wessels 2011, p. 13.
  11. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your anger. Berlin 1993, p. 188.
  12. ↑ Gedenkbuch, Hauptbuch Frauen, p. 41, none of them have a date of death noted in the ledger.
  13. ↑ Gedenkbuch, Hauptbuch Frauen, p. 41, Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your Zorn. Berlin 1993, p. 195. Gilsenbach names the relationships.
  14. ^ Reimar Gilsenbach, Wolfgang Ayaß, Ursula Körber, Klaus Scherer a. a .: Enemy declaration and prevention. Forensic biology, gypsy research and anti-social policy. (Contributions to National Socialist Health and Social Policy, Volume 6), Rotbuch, Westberlin 1988, ISBN 3-88022-955-4 , p. 110.
  15. ↑ Janko Lauenberger, Juliane Wedemeyer: Ede and Unku - the true story. Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2018, ISBN 978-3-579-08694-1 , pp. 164, 229, 230.
  16. ↑ Archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum: Section III Main Books of the Gypsy Camp, Section V Letter and list for the laboratory broadcast from March 23, 1944-16062 / 3b
  17. ^ ITS archive Bad Arolsen: Ansin, Kurt: transfer to Buchenwald 2839-235; Correspondence file Pauline Weiß, 209/204
  18. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your anger. Berlin 1993, p. 172.
  19. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach: Django, Oh sing your anger. Berlin 1993. Pictured at Gilsenbach: cover sheet, p. 180, ED photo, p. 181, photo, p. 182, photo by Otto Schmidt, p. 181, fingerprints, p. 184, criminal record extract (not previously convicted), p. 185, registration form dated May 9, 1939, with the note of a “Gypsy certificate v. Berlin "and entry of the" Gypsy camp in Magdeburg, Holzweg "as place of residence, p. 186 f., Expert opinion no. 2543 of July 14, 1941, p. 188.
personal data
SURNAME Lauenburger, Erna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Unku; Unko
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Sintezza
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Reinickendorf
DATE OF DEATH between March 23, 1944 and April 15, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz gypsy camp