Eva Warburg

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Eva Warburg (born December 31, 1912 in Hamburg ; † November 24, 2016 in Rehovot (Israel)) was a German kindergarten teacher who, after Kristallnacht, helped move several hundred Jewish children from Germany to Sweden, from where they went to Palestine should emigrate. After her marriage in 1946 she was named Unger-Warburg. Her husband was Naftali Unger († 1987), born in 1909 , the co-organizer of the so-called seafaring hachshara .

Life

Eva Warburg was one of three daughters of the married couple Anna and Fritz Warburg and part of the so-called Mittelweg branch of the Hamburg Warburg family .

Although there are many indications of Eva Warburg's activities for the survival of Jewish children, only a few biographical data are available about her. Anne E. Dünzelmann's brief outline from 2015 is almost the most complex thing you can find out about Eva Warburg Leben: “Daughter of Anna and Fritz Warburg [..] from Hamburg and a kindergarten teacher by profession. After the pogrom night in 1938, traveled to Stockholm and worked for the Jewish community there. Was an employee of the Aid Association of German Jews * and took care of the Kinderalijah and Kindertransporte to Sweden (see Klas Back). In 1945 she and her husband emigrated to Palestine. Lives currently in Rehovot / Israel . ”From the obituary (see web links) it can be inferred that she completed an apprenticeship as a gardener or attended a horticultural seminar after graduating from high school. The Yad Vashem documentation (see works and estate) also contains only rudimentary biographical data: “Eva Warburg began working for the youth alijah in Sweden in 1938, u. a. because she spoke Swedish since childhood. Until then, Eva Warburg had run a children's home in Hamburg. ”Even in Ron Chernow's extensive family biography, there are only a few references to Eva. Among other things, he reports that in the mid-1930s, under anti-Semitic abuse, she lost her job in a kindergarten and set up her own daycare center there. He was mainly visited by children of Orthodox Jews, Eva turned to Zionism and introduced kosher cuisine. This representation of Chernow is also confirmed by her sister Ingeborg in her book Memories .

“In the meantime the pressure on our family had become unbearably strong. My mother had already resigned from the chairmanship of the Froebel Association in 1933 and had to give up her work on the boards of many Hamburg kindergartens and in the youth department. She helped my sister Eva with her work in the Jewish kindergarten. Eva founded this after-school care center when she could no longer work in her kindergarten at the port. The children no longer came from the harbor area, but from the quarter around the Hamburg synagogue. Many of them were raised Orthodox. [..] With the support of my mother, Eva became more than an educator in this kindergarten: a social worker and emigration aid. During this time, both learned a lot about Jewish history and religion in order to be able to meet the demands of parents and children. Eva began to study Zionism very intensively and to work for the emigrants. She even tried to make our household kosher for a while, but didn't succeed. [..] When the family emigrated to Sweden in 1939, Eva took all the children from her kindergarten to Stockholm and helped them emigrate. In Sweden she placed them in Jewish-Swedish families. From Stockholm Eva then worked for the youth Alijah, the emigration to Palestine. "

Rudberg writes about Eva Warburg's move to Sweden that this took place at the invitation of "Mosaiska församlingen i Stockholm (The Jewish Community of Stockholm)". Eva Warburg accepted this invitation at the express request of Henrietta Szold and had become the representative of the children and youth Alijah in Stockholm. How many of her kindergarten children she brought to Sweden with her is unclear: of the 45 or so children from her kindergarten in Hamburg, most likely emigrated to other countries and only nine came to Sweden with her. Chernow and Ingeborg Warburg Spinelli unanimously report that Eva Warburg actually wanted to emigrate to Palestine at that time, but refrained from doing so at Henrietta Szold's request.

Eva Warburg's sisters were Ingrid Warburg Spinelli and Noni Warburg , who had passed her exams at the Quaker School in Eerde in 1939 and then worked in a kindergarten in Stockholm supervised by the Quakers . In contrast to Ingrid, who lived in Rome until her death, the other two sisters moved to Israel.

The Children of Blankenese is a German TV docudrama from 2010. The setting is the so-called “White House” of the Warburg family in Hamburg-Blankenese . “The entire property on the Kösterberg in Blankenese was requisitioned during the National Socialist rule. [..] After the end of World War II, Erik Warburg , having returned from exile, received the possessions on the Kösterberg such as u. a. the white house back. The Warburg family made the White House and the Red House available from 1946–1948 for the accommodation of children and young people who had been liberated as survivors in the concentration camps (especially Bergen-Belsen) by the Allied troops. ”In the White House , Also known as Warburg Chiidrens Health Home , the children freed from the concentration camp experienced “care and warmth. Their teachers hugged them, kissed them, combed their hair, looked after and looked after the frightened children. Most of them have never forgotten this tenderness. In Israel they founded an association and were always in contact with Eva Warburg-Unger, Eric Warburg's cousin, who looked after them and now lives in Israel. "

Help for persecuted Jewish children in Sweden

The Swedish policy towards Jews wishing to enter Sweden was rather restrictive:

"Until 1939, the care and support of refugees was seen entirely as the responsibility of the organization or individual who had provided authorities with the guarantees made on behalf of the refugees. [..] Jewish refugees were seen primarily as the responsibility of Sweden's small Jewish communities. In 1933, there were approximately 7,000 Jews in Sweden, 4,000 of whom lived in Stockholm. Because membership in a religious congregation was mandatory according to Swedish law, all Jews with Swedish citizenship belonged to one of the official Jewish communities. All of the major communities created their own relief committees to raise and distribute funds for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.
Despite Sweden's restrictive immigration policy, local Jewish representatives managed to negotiate a few concessions. The first was a transmigration quota that allowed for temporary residence permits to be given to young Jews who did their agricultural re-training on Swedish farms. The program was run by the Zionist Hechaluz movement and gave the youth the work experience required to obtain immigration certificates to Palestine. The second was a similar quota for German Jewish school children who attended the Landschulheim Kristinehov boarding school. "

Nevertheless, in 1938 the then Swedish Foreign Minister still believed that the influx of Jewish people “could have a negative impact on public opinion in the country”. He was supported in this by the Jewish community in Stockholm, 'which did not want to have anything to do with their fellow believers from the East who were regarded as inferior', said Weiss. Nevertheless, after 1939 a contingent of 400 Jews was allowed to enter Sweden, negotiated by Cora Berliner from the Reich Association of Jews in Germany . Thanks to the efforts of Eva Warburg, 450-500 German-Jewish children could also be accepted. "

Eva Warburg was already living in Sweden in 1938 and took care of the minors in particular as part of the Kinder- und Jugendalija . As with the Kindertransporte to England, “Jewish donors and the Jewish community made themselves available as guarantors for the children in Sweden. This should make it easier for parents to travel to a country of exile. The young people of the Children's and Young People's Aliyah entered the country on the children's quota, but instead of being reunited with their parents in a country of exile, they were supposed to emigrate to Palestine with other young people in kibbutzim. A large number of them were housed in a home initiated by Eva Warburg near the city of Falun. Most of them worked there for the farmers in the area. However, they lived and learned together in the home, which made it look like a kibbutz. "

But not all of these 500 or so children and young people who came to Sweden with Eva Warburg's support did not have the prospect of emigrating to Palestine. Nevertheless, it bordered on a miracle “that the Jewish Agency had realized the increased danger for the children in Sweden and, contrary to its previous policy, generously a total of 95 of the certificates it administered on behalf of the Mandate Government for the adolescents to enter Palestine at once in Sweden. “But that still did not guarantee the actual departure. The outbreak of World War II had far-reaching consequences for emigration from Sweden. Communication and travel routes were suddenly drastically restricted and caused high costs, because in fact "only the very arduous and also very expensive land route via the Soviet Union" was open, and the funds required for this from Jewish networks in Western Europe or the USA could go to Germany Western campaign can no longer be transferred. Eva Warburg tried to compensate for this loss of foreign financial support by increasing the willingness of the Jewish community in Stockholm to donate. However, their financial resources were already quite exhausted, which is why Eva Warburg argued that the departure of the children and adolescents would also free up funds that had previously been needed for their accommodation in Sweden. With this offsetting - saved accommodation costs in Sweden versus travel costs for the transfer to Palestine - Eva Warburg could convince.

After the financing of the trip to Palestine was secured, other serious obstacles arose. “In addition to the costs, issuing a visa turned out to be the biggest obstacle. Visas for Lithuania, the Soviet Union, Turkey and Syria were required on the planned route. The Turkish government in particular appeared to have been hesitant. Ankara insisted on written guarantees that all other countries had issued transit visas. However, the Syrian visa depended on the Turkish one. Not only Chaim Weizmann , the President of the World Zionist Organization , personally spoke to the Turkish ambassador in London, the Jewish Agency sent its own representative to Istanbul. ”According to“ the Turkish regulations that have been in force since 1938, Jews from countries with anti-Semitic legislation (i.e. meanwhile most of the states of Eastern and Southeastern Europe) entry into or transit through Turkey is generally prohibited. Exceptions required a decision by the Turkish government. [..] The fact that each transit permit required a separate resolution from the entire Turkish cabinet underlines how difficult it was for large numbers of refugees to transit through Turkey. "

Guttstadt mentions that in August 1940 the Turkish government “granted a transit visa for a group of 450 German-Jewish children and companions who took place in December”, who were children and young people from Sweden who were cared for by Eva Warburg but obviously not among them. At the end of September 1940, there was still no transit visa for Turkey in Stockholm, and to this day it is still unclear whether the group has actually left Sweden.

“The source itself does not tell us whether the children really got to Palestine. In the records of the Stockholm Jewish Community and its Aid Committee there are no reports of such a large number of children and young people leaving the country after October 1941, and Hälsinggården was not dissolved. On the contrary, the kibbutz grew even further when the Chaluzim came to Sweden from Denmark in October 1943. [..] It is to be hoped that after the liberation of Europe in 1945, some managed to emigrate to Palestine after all. "

The kibbutz Hälsinggården mentioned in the quote was a project that Eva Warburg started while waiting for the transit visa. It was supposed to become a branch of the Jugendalija and was probably partly due to the resignation over the protracted visa negotiations.

In memoriam

Chernow can tell a little about Eva Warburg's life after the end of the Second World War: “Eva continued her work with small children, which was interrupted by the Third Reich, and looked after fifty children in a kibbutz. Because she wanted to bring one thousand seven hundred Jewish orphans interned in Cyprus to Palestine, she turned to Elenor Roosevelt for help in 1947, who forwarded her letter to President Truman. “How successful this initiative was is not known.

Eva Warburg celebrated her centenary on January 31, 2012. The school in Hamburg, which bears the name of its mother and to which Eva Unger-Warburg remained closely connected, remembered this event.

Eva Warburg-Unger died on November 24, 2016 shortly before the age of 104. On an Israeli website, the obituary is dedicated to the "woman with a big heart". The article in Hebrew contains many details about Eva Warburg's life.

Works and Estate

  • Eva Unger Warburg; Philip Warburg: From Mittelweg to the Middle East. Warburg family migrations to Israel. Warburg family reunion, Mohonk Mountain House , Rehovot, 1999. Proof only in WordCat: From Mittelweg to the Middle East . The title alludes to the Mittelweg 17 apartment in Hamburg, where Eva Warburg spent part of her childhood and youth.
  • Yad Vashem's “Digital Collection” contains the Documentation regarding the activities by Eva Warburg in rescuing children before the outbreak of the war, 1938–1966 . These include:
    • 1. Interview with Eva Warburg regarding her activities in Sweden in rescuing children through Youth Aliyah, from 1938, 1966
    • 2. Report regarding the journey Warburg made to Germany 14 years later;
    • 3. Letters by Hamburg Jewish community members to Dr. Warburg in Sweden, 1942;
    • 4. Correspondence regarding the establishment of a DP camp in Koesterberg-Blankenese that would be under the jurisdiction of the JDC;
    • 5. Miscellaneous items: Lists of children, poems, newspaper clippings of photographs and articles, booklets regarding the Jewish hospital in Hamburg, Youth Aliyah and more.
      The entire inventory can be downloaded as a PDF file. Unfortunately, the detailed interview (point 1) with her from 1966 is only documented in Hebrew script. The letters documented in point 3 are exciting, but do not concern them so much, but rather the activities for setting up a displaced person camp in the “White House” in Hamburg-Blankenese mentioned above.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eva Warburg & Naftali Unger
  2. ↑ For the history of the seafaring Hachschara see also: Ina Lorenz: Seafaring Hachschara in Hamburg (1935-1938). Lucy Borchardt: "The only Jewish shipowner in the world."
  3. ↑ ANNE E. DÜNZELMANN: STOCKHOLMER SPAZIERGÄNGE ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2015 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. , P. 64. On youtube there is - in Hebrew - an interview with Eva Unger-Warburg from 2014 that lasted over an hour . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.exilarchiv.de
  4. ↑ Ron Chernow: The Warburgs. A Family Odyssey , p. 515
  5. ^ Ingrid Warburg Spinelli: Memories , pp. 150–151.
  6. ↑ Pontus Rudberg: The Swedish Jews and the victims of Nazi terror, 1933-1945 , pp. 48-49.
  7. ↑ Ron Chernow: The Warburgs. Odyssey of a Family , p. 573, & Ingrid Warburg Spinelli: Memories , p. 151. When asked how many children from the earlier kindergarten went with Eva Warburg to Sweden first and then to Israel, Warburg Spienelli does not give a precise answer either Answer and only speaks “of almost everyone”.
  8. ^ History of the White House in Blankenese
  9. ^ The children of Blankenese
  10. ^ Pontus Rudberg: Sweden and Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 , pp. 68-69
  11. ↑ ANNE E. DÜNZELMANN: STOCKHOLMER SPAZIERGÄNGE ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2015 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. , P. 6 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.exilarchiv.de
  12. ↑ a b c d e f g Clemens Maier-Wolthausen: An impossible journey (weblink)
  13. ^ Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust , p. 237
  14. ^ Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust , p. 237
  15. ↑ The story of Kibbutz Hälsinggården was the subject of the film "The Kibbutz in Falun", which the newspaper DAGEN reported on January 29, 2009 and in which Eva Warburg also had a say. Kibbutz i Falun blev en fristad för 60 judiska barn (The kibbutz in Falun became a haven for 60 Jewish children)
  16. ^ Ron Chernow: The Warburgs , p. 728
  17. ↑ In the footsteps of the namesake
  18. ^ Anna-Warburg-Schule congratulates Eva Unger-Warburg on her 100th birthday
  19. ↑ Eva Warburg, the woman with the big heart (in Hebrew).
  20. ^ Eva Warburg digital collection
personal data
SURNAME Warburg, Eva
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Unger-Warburg, Eva
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German kindergarten teacher, teacher, organizer of aid campaigns for persecuted Jewish children
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 2016
Place of death Rehovot (Israel)