Hanni Lévy

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Hanni Lévy (2019)

Hanni Lévy (born on March 16, 1924 in Berlin as Hanni Weissenberg ; died on October 22, 2019 in Paris ) was a survivor of the Holocaust and a contemporary witness . She was one of around 1,700 to 2,000 Jews who survived in hiding or camouflaging during the Nazi era in Berlin. Her life was portrayed in the film Die Invisbaren - We want to live by Claus Räfle .

Life

Front building Nollendorfstrasse 28 (Berlin-Schöneberg); Hanni Weissenberg lived in the right side wing with the Kolzer family from November 1943 until they moved to Paris in December 1946.
Memorial plaque on the house at Nollendorfstrasse 28

Hanni Weissenberg grew up in the Kaiserkorso in Berlin-Tempelhof (today part of Kleineweg ) and from 1931 in Berlin-Kreuzberg on Solmsstraße . Her father was a photographer, her mother a housewife. Her parents' home was liberal. For her father: "We are Germans, religion is a private matter." She lost both parents at an early age. After the start of the war in 1939, his father Felix Weissenberg (1883–1940) was used for forced labor in agriculture and soon afterwards died of exhaustion, the mother Alice Weissenberg (1890–1942), née. Oberländer, died in April 1942 due to a lack of medical help. Hanni Weissenberg later confessed that she was glad that her parents died so early. This spared them a lot. Her grandmother Cecilia Oberlander (1863-1943) was in the fall of 1942 to Theresienstadt deported and died there in 1943; A stumbling block was laid for them in Else-Lasker-Schüler-Strasse in Berlin-Schöneberg .

Hanni Weissenberg attended elementary school on Gneisenaustraße since 1931 . When in 1935 the Minister of Education issued an instruction on “racial segregation” in public schools, they registered their parents in the Joseph Lehmann School of the Jewish Reform Community in Joachimsthaler Strasse . In the spring of 1939 she graduated from elementary school and then worked as a nanny for a Jewish family for about a year. At the beginning of 1940 she began training as a cleaner , but had to break it off after three months, because at the age of sixteen she was obliged to do forced labor in the textile mill in Zehlendorf , which produced rayon , among other things for parachutes for the Wehrmacht . After the death of her parents, she initially lived with Jewish friends on Augsburger Strasse until they were deported in December 1942. Since she was not “on the list”, she was initially spared and was now alone. In February 1943 she was unable to work due to a serious injury to her right index finger and thus escaped the Gestapo's “ factory action ” . She was at home when the residents of the house were picked up, but was suspected on the way to the factory. Weissenberg spontaneously decided to lock her door, not to respond to the ringing of the doorbell, and then to flee via another apartment and the front building. Except for a coat and handbag, she couldn't take anything with her. “I took to the streets in cold blood,” she recalled, “I had no plan, but I knew I shouldn't attract attention, that is my best protection. Acquaintances helped her to find a hairdresser who bleached her hair in lengthy sessions. She assumed a new identity and, with the help of another acquaintance, managed to find a doctor who would treat her injury without asking for proof of identity. She was able to earn some money by doing the Sunday service for a newspaper delivery person. She often had to change her accommodation until the Most family took her in on Berliner Strasse (today Otto-Suhr-Allee ) in Charlottenburg. She lived with them until November 1943.

Hanni Weissenberg liked to go to the cinema, where she enjoyed the protection of darkness - and when she was homeless again because the older men of the Most family were now threatened with military service, she confided in the ticket seller at the cinema box office. Viktoria Kolzer (1902–1976) took the young woman home to Nollendorfstrasse 28, where she lived with her husband Jean, and lodged her there. Weissenberg was able to stay with the couple until the fall of the Nazi regime; Viktoria Kolzer shared her ration cards with her . The Kolzers saved the young woman's life. Their son was at the front; Jean Kolzer became seriously ill and died in early 1945 to gangrene . Hanni helped with the care. “We grew together like mother and daughter. I got so used to this new life that I almost forgot the danger I was actually in. ”Together with Viktoria Kolzer, she experienced the nights of bombing and finally the fall of the Nazi regime . The contact with the Most family did not break off either.

After the liberation of Berlin by the Red Army , Weissenberg had to fear attacks by the Soviet soldiers. She learned that the Mosts were now staying in Berlin-Zehlendorf , where, according to her, the Russian military police controlled the soldiers more strictly. She hiked there on foot with Kolzer. The two women later returned to Nollendorfstrasse. Weissenberg found work in the US Army . At the end of 1946 a brother of her mother, who had been able to emigrate to France, brought her to Paris; he had found her name on a list of the DRK tracing service .

In Paris she met her future husband, a German from a Jewish family. Together they built a painting business. Hanni Lévy never let the connection to Berlin and her rescuers break. Unlike many Holocaust survivors, she continued to speak German: “You cannot exchange children's songs and caresses in a foreign language.” She had two children and five grandchildren.

Hanni Lévy died on the night of October 23, 2019 at the age of 95 in Paris.

Contemporary witness

On August 6, 1958, Hanni Lévy applied for her helper Viktoria Kolzer to be honored as part of the Unsung Heroes initiative , a unique campaign by the Berlin Senate for the honor and financial support of helpers victims of Nazi persecution at the time. In November 1960 this application was accepted and Viktoria Kolzer received a small "honorary support" of 50 DM per month from the Senate. 1978 Lévy achieved that Viktoria Kolzer and Elfriede and Grete Most were included in the list of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem . In 1983 she wrote a 13-page report on her survival in French for her family, which is in the archive of the German Resistance Memorial Center . She herself translated this report into German for the catalog of the exhibition “Forms of Remembrance - Jewish and Non-Jewish Voices on the Expulsion and Murder of Jewish Neighbors in the Bavarian Quarter”. There it appeared under the title “You gave me life a second time”. Review of the time in the underground in Berlin between 1940 and 1945 in 1995 in print.

Lévy appeared publicly as a contemporary witness several times, including at schools or at the Museum for the Blind at the German Resistance Memorial Center. She was committed to putting up a memorial plaque for Viktoria and Jean Kolzer in the courtyard of the house at Nollendorfstrasse 28, at the unveiling of which she was present in 2010, and for the laying of four stumbling blocks for her grandmother and her relatives in 2011. The Grevenbroich director Claus Räfle questioned her in connection with the work on his semi-documentary film Die Invisbaren - We want to live , which describes four fates of surviving Jews in hiding in Berlin. The film also contains an interview with Lévy from 2009. It premiered in 2017, and a book by Räfle with the title The Invisibles - Hide to Survive was also published around the same time . In this environment, Lévy gave a series of interviews for newspapers, magazines and TV stations and was a guest on Markus Lanz's ZDF talk show on November 23, 2017 .

In 2018, another memorial plaque for the Kolzer family was attached to the portal of the house at Nollendorfstrasse 28.

On January 27, 2018, Lévy spoke on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism at the federal party conference of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen in Hanover. There she warned against a return of discriminatory thinking: “It used to be said: The Jews are to blame. Today it's the refugees. "

In early 2019, the film The Invisible - We want to live in the First was shown.

Sources and documents

The biography is mainly based on Lévy's autobiographical report from the 1980s as well as later conversations with the historian Beate Kosmala, among others. It is supported by a number of historical documents given in the text.

Some contemporary historical documents from Lévy's personal history are now in the possession of the Jewish Museum Berlin . These include two farewell letters addressed to Hanni Weissenberg from people who, together with Weissenberg, had done forced labor in the Zehlendorf textile factory and were deported in late 1941 or in the course of 1942.

Honors

literature

  • Hanni Lévy: "You gave me life a second time". Looking back at the time underground in Berlin between 1940 and 1945 . In: Katharina Kaiser, Barbara Jakoby: Places of Remembrance. Contributions to the debate about monuments and memory , Vol. 2: Jewish everyday life in the Bavarian quarter. A documentation. Hentrich, Berlin 1995, ISBN 978-3-89468-147-0 , pp. 61-69.
  • Daniel Fraenkel: The German righteous . In: Israel Gutman , Sara Bender (Ed.): Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations . Volume "Germans and Austrians" , ed. by Daniel Fraenkel and Jakob Borut. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89244-900-3 , pp. 51-295. In it: Kolzer, Viktoria, Most, Elfriede, Most, Grete, files 1392, 1393 , pp. 167–168.
  • Claus Räfle: The invisible. Go underground to survive. A true story. Elisabeth Sandmann, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-945543-44-3 .
  • Hanni Lévy: Let's get out and through! Life and survival story of a Jewish woman from Berlin. Edited by Beate Kosmala (publications by the Silent Heroes Memorial Center, Volume 9). Metropol, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86331-449-1 .

Web links

Commons : Hanni Lévy  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sarah Wildman: Hanni's Story. A chance meeting with a Holocaust survivor at a remarkable exhibition in Berlin. In: Slate , January 27, 2011, online
  2. ↑ https://trauer.tagesspiegel.de/trauerbeispiel/hanni-levy/angebote , accessed on October 27, 2019.
  3. ↑ See Beate Kosmala: Survival strategies of Jewish women in Berlin. Escape from deportation (1941–1943). In: Andrea Löw, Doris L. Bergen, Anna Hájková (eds.): Everyday life in the Holocaust. Jewish life in the Greater German Reich 1941–1945. Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, pp. 29–47, here: p. 46; Barbara Schieb: Afterword. Silent heroes. In: Claus Räfle: The Invisible. Go underground to survive . Sandmann, Munich 2017, pp. 153–157, here: p. 155.
  4. ↑ Stefan Simons: Persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany: Life as a false "Aryan". In: Einestages , October 27, 2017, accessed on January 22, 2018.
  5. ↑ Life dates of the parents see the text accompanying the memorial plaque Jean and Viktoria Kolzer, Berlin, Nollendorfstrasse 28. Online on "Memorial plaques in Berlin" .
  6. ↑ Sigrid Hoff: Hanni Lévy, the invisible - How a Jew survived National Socialism in Berlin. In: Jüdische Allgemeine , October 24, 2017, accessed January 22, 2018.
  7. ↑ Oberländer, Cäcilie Caecilie . In: Memorial Book - Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933–1945 , Federal Archives, accessed on January 22, 2018.
  8. ↑ See Christl Wickert, Hannelore Emmerich: Cäcilie Oberländer (born Sorauer). Biographical compilation . Stolpersteine-Berlin.de, accessed on January 22, 2018.
  9. ↑ Hanni Lévy: Let's get out and through! , P. 23; Lévy, Hanni (nee Weißenberg) . Short biography on the exhibition installation page in Schöneberg Town Hall, “We Were Neighbors - Biographies of Jewish Contemporary Witnesses”, 2014, accessed on January 22, 2018.
  10. ↑ Hanni Lévy: Let's get out and through! , P. 37f.
  11. ↑ Stefan Simons: Persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany: Life as a false "Aryan". In: Einestages , October 27, 2017, accessed on January 22, 2018. See also Alexander Korb on the textile mill: Berlin-Zehlendorf. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 3: Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-52963-1 , pp. 130-132.
  12. ↑ Hanni Lévy: “You gave me life a second time”. Looking back at the time underground in Berlin between 1940 and 1945 . In: Katharina Kaiser, Barbara Jakoby: Places of Remembrance. Contributions to the debate on monuments and memory. Vol. 2: Everyday Jewish Life in the Bavarian Quarter. A documentation . Hentrich, Berlin 1995, pp. 61–69, here: p. 62.
  13. ^ Conversation with contemporary witnesses with Hanni Lévy née Weissenberg, Paris. In: “museum-blindenwerkstatt.de”, June 13, 2012, accessed on January 22, 2018 (evening moderated by Beate Kosmala at the Silent Heroes Memorial Center ).
  14. ^ “Sigrid Hoff: Hanni Lévy, the invisible - How a Jew survived National Socialism in Berlin. In: Jüdische Allgemeine , October 24, 2017, accessed January 22, 2018.
  15. ↑ Sigrid Hoff: Hanni Lévy, the invisible - How a Jew survived National Socialism in Berlin. In: Jüdische Allgemeine , October 24, 2017, accessed January 22, 2018.
  16. ↑ See her autobiographical report in Katharina Kaiser, Barbara Jakoby: Orte des Erinnerns. Contributions to the debate on monuments and memory. Vol. 2: Everyday Jewish Life in the Bavarian Quarter. A documentation . Hentrich, Berlin 1995, pp. 61-69; also Sarah Wildman: Hanni's Story. A chance meeting with a Holocaust survivor at a remarkable exhibition in Berlin. In: Slate , January 27, 2011, online .
  17. ↑ a b Claus Räfle: Die Invisbaren , p. 143.
  18. ↑ Mourning for Hanni Lévy , juedische-allgemeine.de, published and accessed on October 23, 2019.
  19. ↑ Beate Kosmala: Hanni Lévy in Berlin and Paris. Epilogue. In: Hanni Lévy: Let's get out and through! Life and survival story of a Jewish woman from Berlin. Metropol, Berlin 2019, pp. 161–177, here: pp. 166f.
  20. ↑ See Sarah Wildman: Hanni's Story. A chance meeting with a Holocaust survivor at a remarkable exhibition in Berlin. In: Slate , January 27, 2011, online . See also the Rescue Story in the Yad Vashem database and Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations, Germans and Austrians , pp. 167–168.
  21. ↑ See Beate Kosmala: Survival Strategies of Jewish Women in Berlin. Escape from deportation (1941–1943). In: Andrea Löw, Doris L. Bergen, Anna Hájková (eds.): Everyday life in the Holocaust. Jewish life in the Greater German Reich 1941–1945 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, pp. 29–47, here: p. 41.
  22. ↑ Katharina Kaiser, Barbara Jakoby: Places of Remembrance. Contributions to the debate on monuments and memory. Vol. 2: Everyday Jewish Life in the Bavarian Quarter. A documentation . Hentrich, Berlin 1995, pp. 61-69. The history of this document is described in the preliminary editorial note, p. 61.
  23. ↑ See this and this DVD , which were created in connection with such contemporary witness appearances at schools in 2015 and are available in the library of the Jewish Museum Berlin .
  24. ^ Conversation with contemporary witnesses with Hanni Lévy née Weissenberg, Paris. In: “museum-blindenwerkstatt.de”, June 13, 2012, accessed on January 22, 2018 (evening moderated by Beate Kosmala at the Silent Heroes Memorial Center ).
  25. ↑ See the text accompanying the memorial plaque Jean and Viktoria Kolzer, Berlin, Nollendorfstrasse 28, online on the memorial plaque in Berlin ; see also Hanni Lévy: A beautiful story. In: aktuell - information from and about Berlin, June 2011, online .
  26. ↑ Christl Wickert / Hannelore Emmerich: Biography of the Stolperstein for Emma Oberländer, online at Stolpersteine-Berlin.de .
  27. ↑ a b Hilmar Klute: Larger than life . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 2, 2018.
  28. ↑ Claus Räfle: The Invisible. Go underground to survive. A true story. Elisabeth Sandmann, Munich 2017.
  29. ↑ ZDF : Markus Lanz dated November 23, 2017 ( Memento of the original dated November 25, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de 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. , accessed November 24, 2017.
  30. ↑ Karen Noetzel: Recently a plaque commemorates the Kolzer family. In: Berliner Woche , July 15, 2018.
  31. ↑ Quoted from: Stefan Braun: What is important in these times: do not forget anything. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 27, 2018.
  32. ↑ Barbara Nolte: "I was there, I was blonde, I was a Berliner" In: Der Tagesspiegel , January 15, 2019.
  33. ↑ See Beate Kosmala: Survival Strategies of Jewish Women in Berlin. Escape from deportation (1941–1943). In: Andrea Löw, Doris L. Bergen, Anna Hájková (eds.): Everyday life in the Holocaust. Jewish life in the Greater German Reich 1941–1945 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, pp. 29–47, here: p. 41.
  34. ↑ farewell letter from Hans Bossack Hanni Weissenberg, December 9, 1942 and farewell letter from Lilo Epstein Hanni Weissenberg, between October 1941 and April 1,942th
personal data
SURNAME Lévy, Hanni
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weissenberg, Hanni (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German survivor of the Holocaust and contemporary witness
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 2019
Place of death Paris