Heinz Todtmann

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Heinz Henry Todtmann (born March 28, 1908 in Breslau ; † after 1975) was a German-Jewish journalist and Nazi collaborator .

Life

Heinz Todtmann was born the son of the Jewish businessman Max Todtmann (* 1878) and his wife Bertha Brinitzer (* 1883) in Breslau. The family lived at 28 Berliner Str. In Berlin-Pankow in the 1930s . His father was the owner of the house until 1938, operator of a garage and a company for women's coats. On March 9, 1935, Heinz Todtmann married Magda Seraphine Kabaker (* 1916) in Berlin. His parents emigrated on November 22, 1940 via Kobe ( Japan ) to Los Angeles ( California ). Her further fate in the United States is unknown.

Heinz and Magda Todtmann fled to Amsterdam on May 27, 1939, where he posed as a journalist. On August 7, 1939, Magda emigrated to London , where she remarried in 1950 and died in 1993.

Heinz Todtmann, baptized Protestant, was interned on July 17, 1940 in the Westerbork transit camp, where he headed Service Area I (commandant's office) as the Jewish adjutant of the camp commandant and SS-Obersturmführer Albert Konrad Gemmeker . Etty Hillesum as a contemporary witness and Auschwitz victim described Todtmann in her diaries as "not as dangerous as [the Jewish camp manager Kurt Schlesinger ], but just as corrupt and very receptive to female charms".

In the spring of 1944, on Gemmeker's orders, Todtmann wrote the script for a planned Nazi propaganda film about the Westerbork camp, which, however, was not completed; 75 minutes of the film survived the war. The film showed the departure of a transport to the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps and glossed over scenes from everyday life in the camp.

The Westerbork transit camp was liberated on April 12, 1945 by troops of the Canadian army . In 1946, proceedings against Kurt Schlesinger and other prison functionaries began, but were discontinued. It is unknown whether Todtmann was among the defendants. As the de facto deputy head of the corrupt German-Jewish camp administration in Westerbork, Heinz Todtmann was actively involved in the deportation and murder of more than 100,000 Jews.

After the war he continued to work as a journalist and writer. From 1947 to 1957 he worked as a freelance PR consultant in Hamburg for Volkswagen AG and Mannesmann , among others , was a partner in an advertising agency in Düsseldorf and was then managing director of the stainless steel information center , a joint organization of the German steel industry, until 1974 .

Works

  • with Alfred Tritschler : Small car on a long journey. An experience report. Burda, Offenburg in Baden 1949 (new edition: Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2001, ISBN 3-7688-1321-5 ).
  • with Alfred Tritschler: The magician's industry. Steinebach, Munich et al. 1952.
  • Born in fire: steel. A color picture book. Strache, Stuttgart 1956.
  • This is how we see and know more. C.-H.-F.-Müller-Aktiengesellschaft, Hamburg 1956.
  • with Fred Schmitz: Live and weave. A hundred-year-old factory with 250 years of drapery tradition. 1856-1956. Bartram, Neumünster 1956.
  • with Fred Schmitz: At home. 1907-1957. Hanseatische Druckanstalt, Hamburg 1957.
  • Great work for little feet. 50 years of Gustav Hoffmann Kleve. Hoffmann, Kleve 1958.
  • The great harvest. Strache, Stuttgart 1961 (English: The great Harvest. Ibid 1961; Italian: La gran cosecha. Ibid 1961).
  • Pipelines. A book of pipelines made of steel pipes. Franckh, Stuttgart 1962.
  • What we do and how we do it. Beiersdorf-Aktiengesellschaft, Hamburg 1979.

literature

  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (Ed.): Terror in the West. National Socialist camps in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg 1940–1945 (= history of the concentration camps 1933–1945. Vol. 5). Metropol, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-53-0 .
  • Jean-Michel Frodon (Ed.): Cinema and the Shoah. An Art Confronts the Tragedy of the Twentieth Century. State University of New York Press, Albany NY 2010, ISBN 978-1-4384-3027-0 (English).
  • Dirk Mulder, Ben Prinsen (ed.): Verhalen uit kamp Westerbork (= Westerbork Cahiers. Vol. 3). Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork et al., Hooghalen et al. 1995, ISBN 90-232-3024-8 (Dutch).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Record cards from Personal Cards (1939–1994)
  2. ↑ See New York Passenger Lists, via ancestry.com
  3. ^ England & Wales, Marriage Index: 1916–2005; remarried Greenslate; England & Wales, Death Index: 1916–2005, via ancestry.com
  4. ↑ See Raymund Schütz: Vermoedelijk op transport academia.eu, 2011, p. 24 (Dutch).
  5. ^ Esther Hillesum: Etty. The letters and diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943. Complete and unabridged. Edited by Klaas AD Smelik. Eerdmans Publishing Company et al., Grand Rapids MI et al. 2002, ISBN 0-8028-3959-2 , p. 781.
  6. ↑ Westerbork Concentration Camp 1943-44. In: filmhauer.net. Retrieved April 27, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Todtmann, Heinz Henry. In: Who's Who in Marketing, Sales, Advertising, Market Research, and Marketing Consulting. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Verlag Moderne Industrie, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-478-22562-0 , p. 433.
personal data
SURNAME Todtmann, Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Todtmann, Heinz Henry (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and Nazi collaborator
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH after 1975