Eva Guttsman Ostwalt

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Eva Denise Guttsman Ostwalt , née Lippmann , divorced Hesse (born April 2, 1902 in Cologne ; died May 13, 2010 in Bethesda, Maryland ) was a German survivor of the Holocaust . She was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp from the beginning of 1943 and had to do forced labor in the Siemens Ravensbrück camp from 1944 . After the Second World War she emigrated to the United States and campaigned for compensation for forced laborers into old age .

Life

Eva Lippmann was born in Cologne as the eldest of three daughters of the Jewish couple Emil and Else Lippmann. The Lippman merchant family was one of the assimilated Jewish community members in Cologne and attached great importance to the artistic and musical education of their daughters. After the First World War , Eva Lippman wanted to study art in Cologne and attended various preparatory courses, including a ceramics course in Hameln in 1919 . Due to the lack of admission requirements for a degree, the completion of a humanistic grammar school , she completed a one-year training at a home economics school in Rothenburg ob der Tauber at the insistence of her mother .

Marriage to Karl Hesse

Back in Cologne, she worked as a decorator in a large Cologne furniture store. During one of the numerous concert evenings in her parents' house in 1923 she met the Mannheim cellist Karl Hesse , whom she married on January 12, 1924 in Cologne against the resistance of her parents. As a wedding present, Emil Lippmann gave the couple a violin made by the Italian violin maker Francesco Ruggeri , which was insured for 50,000 Reichsmarks .

One year after the wedding, their daughter Heidemarie was born. The couple initially lived in an apartment in Müngersdorf at Wendelinstrasse 39. After Karl Hesse was offered a position as concertmaster in Dresden in 1927 , the family moved to the southern suburb of Dresden. After the breakdown of the marriage in the late 1920s, the spouses went their separate ways. Eva Hesse moved to Meran with her daughter in 1936 , where she ran a small guesthouse to make a living.

After her sisters Gertrude and Kate to escape to Palestine and the United States had succeeded hoped Eva Hesse to a commitment of her husband abroad to the repression by the Nazis to escape. Karl Hesse turned down the offer to take on a position as concert master in Basel . On January 11, 1938, the marriage was at the request of Eva Hesse divorced . With that she lost all protection that the so-called privileged mixed marriage had granted her. After the passport was not extended by the German embassy in Rome in 1938 , Eva Hesse had to return to Cologne with her daughter. Out of concern for her daughter, she passed custody to Karl Hesse. She only saw her daughter occasionally when she visited Dresden.

Arrest and Ravensbrück concentration camp

Public life for Jews was further restricted after the November pogroms in 1938 . After the death of their father, Else Lippmann and her daughter tried to survive by selling real estate and furniture . In April 1941 Eva Hesse's cousin Karl Hamm tried to get Else Lippmann and her daughter to leave the United States and deposited the corresponding bail. However, the departure was not allowed.

In the early summer of 1942, Else Lippmann was told that her deportation was imminent. With the help of a married couple and the Ballin family, she went into hiding in Wiesbaden . Her daughter Eva bought ration cards for her mother at the black market . In September 1942 the Gestapo arrested her mother in Wiesbaden and Eva Hesse in Cologne and took her to the Klingelpütz prison. While Eva Hesse was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp after three months in dark custody with the prisoner number 22970 , her mother probably remained in Cologne prison until the end of 1943 until she was deported to Auschwitz . Else Lippmann's sister-in-law, Albine Nagel , organized the care of the prisoners.

In Ravensbrück, Eva Hesse first had to do hard physical work and later sew and knit clothes and socks for the guards . In the summer of 1944, she was relocated to the nearby Siemens labor camp and committed to forced labor. There she had to wind capacitors and work on the assembly line mainly in ten-hour night shifts . Once a month in the camp she received censored mail from her daughter Heidemarie, who described life in Dresden during the last years of the war. These letters are now in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum .

In front of the approaching front, the Ravensbrück concentration camp was evacuated at the end of April 1945 and the inmates were sent on the death march west. Eva Hesse was able to escape during an air raid on the second night and was taken to the city hospital in Malchow on May 2, 1945 by a man completely exhausted and emaciated to 41 kg . Here she was treated for three months due to severe malnutrition and avitaminosis .

After her discharge from the hospital, Eva Hesse immediately went to Dresden to look for her daughter Heidemarie. She had to find out that her daughter, together with her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, had died in the bombing raid on February 13, 1945 in the house at Bankstrasse 9.

Post-war Germany and emigration

In the near future, she first found accommodation with the Ballin family in Seesen , as the house in Cologne had also been destroyed by bombing . In 1946 she moved to Kempfenhausen and met a childhood friend, the silversmith Heinz Peter Guttsmann, who had been imprisoned in the Theresienstadt ghetto during the Nazi era . In April 1947 the couple married in Berg am Würmsee. On March 6, 1947 Eva Guttsmann joined the Association of Victims of National Socialism . After Eva and Heinz Peter Guttsmann had seen no future for themselves as Jews in post-war Germany, they decided to emigrate to the USA at the end of 1947 . Heinz P. Guttsmann explained his reasons for emigrating in a letter to the editor of the Neue Welt newspaper in November 1947:

“It is not the big crimes like desecration of a grave: it is the daily little needle pricks that make life a martyrdom. ... We are people who loved our homeland and believed in the better in the people. We suffered in our homeland with the hope in our hearts that reason would return. It was free! Our suffering, the death of millions ... in vain! 'In vain' ..., a tragic word at the end of an era, at the end of which the words 'Never again!' should have stood. A shocking conclusion for someone who would rather spend the rest of his life in a foreign country than continue to be a ... 'victim of fascism'. "

- Heinz P. Guttsmann : Neue Welt, number 5, November 1947, p. 5

United States of America

Eva Guttsmann and her husband settled in Washington, DC with the support of family members who had already emigrated to the United States . They received American citizenship on June 25, 1953 . When they were naturalized , both changed their names to: Eva Denise Guttsman Ostwalt and Harry Peter Ostwalt. As a family name, they chose the maiden name of Heinz P. Guttsmann's mother, Ostwalt. In the USA, she continued to campaign intensively for compensation for her imprisonment and forced labor in the Siemens labor camp. In April 1956, she was awarded the Bavarian State Office for compensation 31 months detention in prison and concentration camp a compensation of 4,650 DM awarded.

After a lawsuit , Eva Guttsman Ostwalt got her father's Ruggeri violin back, which was sold in Boston to make a living in the United States. Even after the death of her husband, Eva Guttsman Ostwalt worked as a saleswoman and decorator in Silver Spring to secure her livelihood until 1974 . Up until old age she fought for compensation for the forced labor in the Siemens labor camp. In 1999, at the age of 97, she received compensation from the Siemens Humanitarian Relief Fund for Forced Laborers . After a fall in the household in 2005, she had to give up her independent life. She spent the last years of her life in a retirement home in a suburb of Washington. Eva Ostwalt died on May 23, 2010 at the age of 108 in Bethesda, Maryland .

reception

Stumbling block for Eva Lippmann in Cologne-Lindenthal , Bachemer Strasse 327

In 1999, the journalist Dagmar Schröder-Hildebrand published some of the cooking recipes that Eva Hesse had collected from camp inmates from 15 countries in the Ravensbrück concentration camp , which she had noted on smuggled work slips from Siemens during her detention. The women captured in the Ravensbrück concentration camp had remembered their favorite dishes from their homeland, which Hesse had secretly recorded, in times of greatest deprivation and hunger. In the course of time, a collection of over 100 recipes was created. In the course of the publication of the cookbook, she gave Dagmar Schröder-Hildebrand numerous interviews from which the author Eva Ostwalt's life story in “I'm dying of hunger!” Wrote down recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

In 2008 her life was filmed by the documentarist Michael Marton on behalf of the WDR . The 45-minute film Lust am Leben - At 103 in America was shown on March 26, 2008 on ARD . In the same year, the 60-minute documentary To Live, What Else! about the life of Eva Ostwalt.

In Cologne's Lindenthal district , the artist Gunter Demnig laid stumbling blocks for Eva Lippmann and her parents in front of the family's former property at 327 Bachemer Strasse as a souvenir .

Works about Eva Guttsman Ostwalt

  • Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: “I'm dying of hunger!” Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Donat-Verlag, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X .
  • Michael Marton, Eva Ostwalt: To Live, What Else! 2008 movie.
  • Michael Marton, Eva Ostwalt: Lust for Life - At 103 in America . 2008 movie.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 94 .
  2. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 111 .
  3. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 109 .
  4. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 119 .
  5. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 125 .
  6. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 126 f .
  7. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 147 .
  8. ↑ a b c Eva Oswalt papers - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved April 13, 2018 .
  9. ^ Historical archive of the city of Cologne: Description unit - Best. 495 - A 404 - Corridor 117: Siegburger Straße. Retrieved April 24, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Eva Oswalt papers (Item 2008.86.1_001_001_0005). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  11. ↑ a b Eva Oswalt papers (Item 2008.86.1_001_002_0001 to 2008.86.1_001_002_0004). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Friday - Siemens raises questions. Retrieved April 23, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 136 .
  14. ↑ Eva Oswalt papers (Item 2008.86.1_001_004_0009 to 2008.86.1_001_004_0020). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 218 f .
  16. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 53 f .
  17. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 77 .
  18. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 140 .
  19. ↑ Eva Oswalt papers (Item 2008.86.1_001_008_0003). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Eva Oswalt papers (Item 2008.86.1_Oversize_003_0004). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  21. ↑ Eva Oswalt papers (Item 2008.86.1_001_008_0019, 2008.86.1_001_008_0020). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  22. ↑ Eva Oswalt papers (Item 2008.86.1_001_009_0001, 2008.86.1_001_009_0002). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 120 .
  24. ↑ Eva Oswalt papers (Item 2008.86.1_001_009_0016 to 2008.86.1_001_009_0019). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  25. ↑ Linde Apel: Persecution of Jews and the concentration camp system: Jewish women in Ravensbrück . In: Gisela Bock (Ed.): Genocide and Gender: Jewish Women in the National Socialist Camp System . Campus, Frankfurt / New York 2005, ISBN 3-593-37730-6 , pp. 57 f .
  26. ↑ Heike Mundzeck: At 103 in America . ( Abendblatt.de [accessed on April 23, 2018]).
  27. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: I'm dying of hunger! : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 1-237 .
  28. ↑ A century of will to live . In: Der Tagesspiegel Online . March 25, 2008, ISSN  1865-2263 ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed April 15, 2018]).
  29. ↑ To live, what else! a film by Michael Marton - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved April 15, 2018 .
  30. ↑ Eva Oswalt papers (Item 2008.86.1_001_011_0001 to 2008.86.1_001_011_0149). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 24, 2018 .
  31. ↑ NS Documentation Center Cologne: Stumbling block for Eva Lippmann. Retrieved April 20, 2018 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ In the literature, different German and American spellings of their family names are given. After the divorce from Karl Hesse in 1938, she kept the family name Hesse until she remarried in 1947 . After marrying Heinz-Peter Guttsmann for the second time, she took the family name Guttsmann . as part of her naturalization in the United States, she changed her name to Eva Denise Guttsman Ostwalt (official spelling in the naturalization certificate of June 25, 1953). Ostwalt was the maiden name of Heinz-Peter Guttsmann's mother. The spelling of the German family name Guttsmann was in from 1953 Guttsman changed. After her husband died, she usually only used the surname Ostwalt , which is sometimes given in literature and in correspondence as the misspelling Oswalt , Oswald or Ostwald . However, even after the war, the name Eva Hesse , which she carried during the National Socialist era, was used for all compensation matters .
personal data
SURNAME Guttsman Ostwalt, Eva
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guttsman Ostwalt, Eva Denise; Ostwalt, Eva (after the death of the second husband); Lippmann, Eva (maiden name); Hesse, Eva (first married name); Guttsmann, Eva (second married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American survivor and contemporary witness of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 2010
Place of death Bethesda, Maryland