Frida Poeschke

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frida Poeschke (born May 23, 1923 ; † December 19, 1980 in Erlangen ) was the life companion of Rabbi Shlomo Lewin and was murdered with him by the neo-Nazi Uwe Behrendt , a member of the right-wing extremist military sports group Hoffmann , for anti-Semitic motives.

Life

Poeschke was the widow of the former Lord Mayor of Erlangen, Michael Poeschke (1901-1959). In 1964 she got to know the chairman of the Israelite Religious Community in Nuremberg, Rabbi Shlomo Lewin. She became his partner, who supported him with his publishing work and, as a Protestant Christian, was committed to the Judeo-Christian dialogue with him .

assassination

On December 19, 1980, a Friday around 7:00 p.m., the neo-Nazi Uwe Behrendt shot Shlomo Lewin and Frida Poeschke in their house at Ebrardstrasse 20 in Erlangen. He shot her torso three times each and then executed those who had fallen to the ground with a targeted headshot . He left a pair of sunglasses at the crime scene that had been made in Heroldsberg , the former residence of the neo-Nazi Karl-Heinz Hoffmann . However, the investigators looked for the perpetrator or perpetrators for five months in the vicinity of the victim Lewin. At the beginning, they passed on alleged inconsistencies in his biography to the media. On December 22, 1980, the Nürnberger Nachrichten claimed without any evidence that Lewin had turned out to be “personal adjutantDajans ”issued. There are rumors that he was a "sideline" employee of the Israeli secret service Mossad . On December 23, the Nürnberger Zeitung claimed that an unnamed former Mossad agent had denied Lewin's work as an agent, and suggested a felicitous murder by agents . The author also referred to Israeli newspaper articles that Lewin described as "impostors" and thus in turn followed the French newspaper Le Monde . The German police had told her that Lewin had passed himself off as Dajan's adjutant in the 1973 Yom Kippur War . In fact, Lewin only got involved in the Palestine WarParticipated in 1948 and never mentioned the Yom Kippur War biographically. No media report referred to Lewin's public appearance against neo-Nazis, namely the WSG, from which the perpetrator came. The chief public prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Rudolf Brunner, referred to Lewin's allegedly “colorful curriculum vitae” and had his cellar searched because it was suspected that he had “collected or kept compromising material” there in order to blackmail other Jews. Brunner hoped that this would provide “valuable information about the possible group of perpetrators”. It turned out, however, that Lewin had used his archive exclusively for the operation of his publishing house.

Immediately after his murder, the police and media discredited Lewin, steered the investigation in the wrong direction and damaged social solidarity with the Jewish victim of a right-wing extremist murder. It was not until May 1981 that the investigators asked the manufacturer of the sunglasses about buyers and found that they had belonged to Hoffmann's friend Franziska Birkmann. By then, Behrendt had left Germany and could no longer be asked about the motives for the crime, accomplices and the selection of victims. As a result, Hoffmann was not involved in the murder. the judgment followed his own statements. After the Nuremberg Regional Court acquitted Hoffmann of complicity and established Behrendt as the sole perpetrator, Hans-Wolfgang Sternsdorff commented in the magazine Der SpiegelHow these “deficiencies in the investigation” prevented the investigation of the motives for the crime: “It appears as if the investigators in this murder case were blinded. For months the police were not looking for the Lewin murderer in the spectrum from the far right, but among members of the Jewish community. "

After this crime, the establishment of the Israelite religious community in Erlangen failed to materialize. To date, the offense has not been fully clarified, among other things because the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution refuses to release files, since inspection of these documents would endanger "the welfare of the Federal Republic of Germany".

The lawyer Ronen Steinke compared the investigative methods and priorities of the authorities at the time with the "terrible treatment of the investigators with the victims of the neo-Nazi gang" National Socialist Underground (NSU). In both cases, the investigators suspected above all the victims and their surroundings and portrayed the murdered as people "who had been overtaken by their alleged dark secrets". In Nuremberg in particular, where three of the NSU murders took place, the authorities, he concluded, could have drawn the right lessons and conclusions from the Lewin case.

Commemoration

Street sign at the Lewin-Poeschke facility in Erlangen

On December 15, 2010, a green area at the Erlangen town hall, near the crime scene, was renamed Lewin-Poeschke-Anlage to commemorate the double murder.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.erlangen.de/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-2096/
  2. ↑ Sebastian Wehrhahn, Martina Renner, Lorenz Blumenthaler: "Murdered by the hands of bad guys": The murder of Shlomo Lewin and Frida Poeschke. In: amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de . December 18, 2020, accessed December 19, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b Ulrich Chaussy: The Oktoberfest attack and the double murder of Erlangen , Berlin 2020, pp. 253-257; Ronen Steinke: Terror against Jews. How anti-Semitic violence grows and the state fails. 2nd edition, Berlin Verlag, Berlin / Munich 2020, p. 11 f.
  4. ↑ Ronen Steinke: Terror against Jews. How anti-Semitic violence grows and the state fails. 2nd edition, Berlin Verlag, Berlin / Munich 2020, p. 11 f.
  5. ↑ Hans-Wolfgang Sternsdorff: "Boss, I shot the chairman". Der Spiegel, November 9, 1984
  6. ^ Matthias Quent, Jan Rathje: From the Turner Diaries via Breivik to the NSU: Antisemitism and right-wing terrorism. In: Samuel Salzborn (Ed.): Anti-Semitism since 9/11. Events, debates, controversies. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2019, ISBN 978-3-8487-5417-5 , p. 165
  7. ↑ Ronen Steinke: Terror against Jews , Berlin / Munich 2020, p. 12 f.
  8. ^ Egbert M. Reinhold: Lewin-Poeschke-Anlage reminds of murder victims. Erlanger Nachrichten , December 15, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Poeschke, Frida
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German murder victim, partner of Shlomo Lewin
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1923
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1980
Place of death gain