Fritz Niermann

Fritz Niermann (born September 24, 1898 in Essen ; † March 9, 1976 ibid) was a grocer in Essen. Because of the rescue of Jews in World War II , he was posthumously awarded the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations .

Life

Until World War II

As the son of a baker, Fritz Niermann learned the bakery trade in his father's business. As a volunteer, he took part in the First World War and then continued to work as a baker. In 1931 he opened a grocery store in Essen- Altendorf on the corner of Markscheide 50 and Amixstrasse. There he moved into a ground floor apartment with his wife and two daughters. Because of his Christian convictions, the Catholic Niermann supported the German Center Party in 1933 and got to know the social politician Heinrich Hirtsiefer . Niermann distanced himself from National Socialism .

Russian prisoners of war came into Niermann's shop during World War II. He supplied them with bread and let them into his apartment, where they and his housekeeper Gertrud Hahnen married Danzer could prepare the meat they had brought with them and eat them there. Towards the end of the war, Niermann hid Russian prisoners of war.

Protection of refugee Jewish women in 1945

Newly erected memorial plaque from the former Markscheide 50 house

Six women from Hungary imprisoned in the subcamp Humboldtstrasse in Essen- Fulerum (namely: Gizella Israel, Rosa Katz, Agnes and Renée Königsberg as well as Elizabeth and Erna Roth) were driven daily to forced labor in Walzwerk II at Friedrich Krupp AG . At the end of February or beginning of March 1945, in the turmoil of an air raid, they were able to flee on their way from the camp to work before being transported from the camp on Humboldtstrasse to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . When the SS guards fled to the air raid shelter and the girls stayed behind, they saw their chance to escape.

They spent a few days in the cellar of the destroyed morgue of the Jewish cemetery on Reckhammerweg . Then they came to the nearby house of Gerhard Marquardt , the Krupp employee whom Rosa Katz had met while caring for his sick wife. He offered her help at the time and now provided the girls in the mourning hall with bread and water. The six girls were seen there and were able to stay in Marquardt's emergency accommodation, a gazebo on the city meadow, where his wife Erna Marquardt cooked for them. Then Marquardt hid the girls in a ruined house on Reckhammerweg and later in an abandoned gazebo. After a little later the gazebo no longer offered a safe hiding place, the fugitive girls turned to the stove mason and Krupp master Karl Schneider, who was remembered by the girls for being treated well. Schneider put the girls in different places in Essen-Altendorf.

Schneider brought four girls, the Roth and Königsberg siblings, to Fritz Niermann's apartment at Markscheide 50. Heinrich Edelmeier and Adolf Gatzweiler from the security service helped Niermann to rescue the girls. Niermann, whose wife and daughters had been evacuated as a result of the air raids, was able to look after the four girls for about four weeks with the help of his housekeeper Gertrud Hahnen until the Americans marched in on April 11, 1945. He had seen the girls earlier on their way from the camp to work and had turned to the Krupp masters he knew for help, including Karl Schneider, so that they could get things such as bread or soap outside the company.

In the end, all six young women survived in their respective hiding places until the end of the war. The four women hidden by Niermann, the Roth and Königsberg siblings, emigrated to the USA.

After the war

As a CDU supporter , Niermann was a member of the Essen city council that was appointed by the British occupying power in 1946 . He is one of the co-founders of the party in Essen.

Honors

2013 named after Fritz Niermann place in Essen-Altendorf

Fritz Niermann was posthumously awarded the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations on March 19, 1985 by the State of Israel , together with Gerhardt Marquardt, for his courageous and selfless help, which had put his life in danger .

The house at Markscheide 50, in which four of the six women who had fled had been kept hidden by their rescuer Fritz Niermann, was demolished in 2011 as part of an urban development project to create the Niederfeldsee with adjacent new residential buildings. The memorial plaque on the house was secured and re-erected in 2014 on a meadow in the area of the former house to commemorate. On May 22, 2013, a small square within the new housing estate was named after Fritz Niermann.

literature

Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads . Ed .: City of Essen, Historical Association for the City and Abbey of Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 , p. 261, 262 .

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Walter Kern: Silent Heroes from Essen. Resisting the Persecution 1933–1945 . Old Synagogue Essen, Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-924384-41-8 , p. 66-73 .
^ Israel Gutman, Daniel Fraenkel, Jacob Borut: Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations: Germans and Austrians . Wallstein, 2005, ISBN 3-89244-900-7 , p. 191, 192 .

personal data
SURNAME	Niermann, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH	September 24, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH	eat
DATE OF DEATH	March 9, 1976
Place of death	eat

[Kern-1] Walter Kern: Silent Heroes from Essen. Resisting the Persecution 1933–1945 . Old Synagogue Essen, Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-924384-41-8 , p. 66-73 .

[2] Israel Gutman, Daniel Fraenkel, Jacob Borut: Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations: Germans and Austrians . Wallstein, 2005, ISBN 3-89244-900-7 , p. 191, 192 .