Hannah Karminski

Hannah Karminski (actually Minna Johanna Karminski , born April 24, 1897 in Berlin ; died June 4, 1943 in Auschwitz-Birkenau ) was a German educator, protagonist of the Jewish Women's Association and social worker at the Reich Association of Jews in Germany . She helped many persecuted to emigrate and fell victim to the Holocaust .

Hannah Karminski

Live and act

Memorial plaque on the building at Ziegelstrasse 12 in Berlin-Mitte

Stolperstein , Oranienburger Strasse 22, in Berlin-Mitte

Hannah Karminski, daughter of the banker Adolf Abraham Karminski and his wife Selma geb. Cohn was born in her parents' apartment at Oranienburger Strasse 22 in the Spandauer Vorstadt. After attending the Luisenschule, Hannah trained as a kindergarten teacher in the renowned Pestalozzi-Froebel-Haus . She then worked for a short time in a Jewish kindergarten in Berlin and then attended the social pedagogical institute headed by Gertrud Bäumer and Marie Baum in Hamburg , where she trained as a social worker . She started her first job in Frankfurt am Main as the director of the local Jewish girls' club . Here she came into contact with Bertha Pappenheim , who was almost 40 years older than her , and who won her over for the Jewish Women's Association.

“They were almost like mother and daughter. They often had different opinions, especially when it came to the question of whether professional or volunteer social workers were preferable. Hannah Karminski, who practiced this activity as her profession, opposed Bertha Pappenheim's preference for volunteer workers. According to her employees, however, the younger woman understood excellently to reconcile fronts that were breaking out in the women's association. She always succeeded in appeasing Bertha Pappenheim's excited feelings when things didn't go according to her will "

- Marion A. Kaplan

Hannah Karminski returned to Berlin around 1925 and until 1938 took over the editing of the papers of the Jewish Women's Association for Women's Work and Women's Movement . An important concern of Hannah Karminski was to enforce and further develop the education and professional activity of growing Jewish women against the traditional image of the family, with the aim of their social equality . When, in April 1933, Jewish girls and women were no longer allowed to attend the existing kindergarten teachers' seminars, Hannah Karminski supported the establishment of a Jewish seminar for the training of kindergarten teachers, day care workers and nanny .

On November 10, 1938 Hannah Karminski was arrested, but released after a few hours. The papers of the Jewish Women's Association were banned from that day. From 1939, after the forced dissolution of the Jewish Women's Association, Hannah Karminski headed the welfare department and later welfare and emigration advice within the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, which was forcibly amalgamated by the Nazi authorities . She held this office until she was deported . In this position of responsibility she helped thousands of people to emigrate and thus saved them from the impending extermination . She personally accompanied Kindertransporte to England, through which a total of around 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were saved.

In addition to her work for the Reichsvereinigung , Hannah Karminski taught in the Jewish seminar for kindergarten teachers and after-school care workers , which she co-founded , where she occasionally had to take exams.

Hannah Karminski looked after her colleague and friend until Bertha Pappenheim's death (1936) and later took on her functions in the women's association. In the following years she teamed up with the Montessori pedagogue , head of the Theodor Herzl School and head of school at the Reichsvereinigung, Paula Fürst . She was deported to Minsk on June 26, 1942, together with another friend, the economist Cora Berliner . The loss of her partner Paula hit Hannah Karminski incredibly hard.

“Today is Paula's birthday. How does she like it to be spent? One cannot even send one's thoughts to a fixed point - and yet she will feel them, ”she wrote in a letter in August 1942. Relatives in Switzerland encouraged her to leave Hitler's Germany , but every opportunity to emigrate herself or to escape illegally, Hannah Karminski declined out of deep connection with her humanitarian tasks.

On December 9, 1942, Hannah Karminski - ill, with a high fever - was arrested and deported from Berlin to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the 24th Osttransport with over 1000 people. There she was murdered on June 4, 1943.

Quote

"This work can no longer give satisfaction: It has hardly anything to do with what we mean by welfare work, and where it is about people and not about land or money, liquidation is particularly difficult. But, Since you have to do with people, there are occasional moments when it makes sense to still be here - and that has to be enough as 'satisfaction'. "

- Quote from Hering / Maierhof (2007)

Honors

The city of Berlin named Hannah-Karminski-Strasse in the Charlottenburg district after its former citizen.

Fonts (selection)

• International Jewish women's work . In: The morning. Monthly Journal of Jews in Germany , 5 (1929) No. 3, pp. 280–287. ( Online , choose year)
• Career issues for girls [review] . In: The morning. Monthly Journal of Jews in Germany , 11 (1935) No. 5, p. 237. (also online)
• Social legislation . In: Vom Jewish Geist: a series of essays . Edited by the Jewish Women's Association. Biko, Berlin 1934
• Jewish-religious women's culture, in typical forms and expressions, in Emmy Wolff Hg .: generations of women in pictures . Herbig, Berlin 1928, pp. 163-172.

Literature (selection)

• Manfred Berger : Hannah Karminski. Committed to Jewish tradition. In: Berlin Aktuell. 2000 / No. 66, p. 12.
• Manfred Berger: To commemorate the 100th birthday of the Jewish social worker Hannah Karminski. In: Our youth . Vol. 49 (1997) No. 4, p. 136.
• Sabine Hering , Gudrun Maierhof: Hannah Karminski. In: Social Extra . Vol. 31 (2007) No. 3, p. 49. ( online version )
• Marion A. Kaplan: The Jewish women's movement in Germany. Organization and goals of the Jewish Women's Association 1904–1938. Hamburg 1981, pp. 148-150.
• Ursula Köhler-Lutterbeck, Monika Siedentopf: Lexicon of 1000 women. Bonn 2000, pp. 171-172. ISBN 3-8012-0276-3 .
• Ernst G. Lowenthal: Probation in the downfall. A memorial book. DVA, Stuttgart 1966, pp. 89-93.
• Gudrun Maierhof: Assertiveness in chaos. Women in Jewish Self-Help 1933–1943. Frankfurt / New York 2002, pp. 71–77, 193–195.
• Gudrun Maierhof: 'I stay to do my duty'. Hannah Karminski (1897-1942). In: Sabine Hering (Ed.): Jewish welfare in the mirror of biographies. Frankfurt / Main 2006, pp. 220-228.
• Ludwig Romanoff: Jewish welfare shown using the example of selected women's biographies ( Cora Berliner , Clara Israel , Hannah Karminski, Hilde Lion , Bertha Pappenheim , Alice Salomon ). Passau 2006, pp. 83-126.
• Peter Reinicke : Karminski, Hannah , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 289.

Web links

Commons : Hannah Karminski  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Hannah Karminski in the catalog of the German National Library
• Detailed article

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Birth register StA Berlin IX No. 753/97 .
2. ↑ Kaplan (1981), p. 148.
3. ↑ cf. Gottwaldt / Schulle, The "Deportations of Jews" [...] (2005): 240-42
4. ↑ cit. n. Romanoff 2006, p. 125.
5. ↑ Auschwitz Death Registers, The State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau page 25383/1943 cf. Yad Vashem database ( page of testimony , memorial book entry and deportation list Berlin, see under Johanna and Minna Karminski)
6. ↑ 1942; "Liquidation" here takes obviously respect to the (the National Association of RSHA forced) participation in the expropriation and acquisition of the victims for deportation, the scope of which was apparently not aware of it), S. 49th