Gerhard Marquardt
Gerhard Marquardt (born May 30, 1904 in Posen ; † March 14, 1983 in Essen ) was a German crane operator at Friedrich Krupp AG in Essen. Because of the rescue of Jews in World War II , he was posthumously awarded the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations .
Protection of refugee Jewish women in 1945
Six women from Hungary imprisoned in the Humboldtstrasse satellite camp 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. With the help of Heinz S., an acquaintance and member of the Waffen SS , he was able to procure a larger supply of bread. 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 placed the girls in various places in Essen- Altendorf .
Schneider brought four girls, the Roth and Königsberg siblings, to Fritz Niermann's apartment at Markscheide 50. Rosa Katz came to see an SA man whose name was unknown near the Berliner Strasse bridge . Gisella Israel stayed with Karl Schneider and was looked after by his neighbor Erna Lippold.
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 and Rosa Katz to Venezuela. Gisella Israel went back to Hungary.
Honors
Gerhard Marquardt was posthumously awarded the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations on March 19, 1985 by the State of Israel , together with Fritz Niermann , 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 Gerhard Marquardt.
literature
- 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 .
- 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. 237 .
Individual evidence
- ^ 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 | Marquardt, Gerhard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German Righteous Among the Nations |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 30, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Poses |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 14, 1983 |
| Place of death | eat |