Herbert Pardo

Herbert Joseph Benjamin Pardo (born August 20, 1887 in Hamburg ; † February 8, 1974 in Haifa ) was a German politician ( SPD ) and a functionary in Jewish communities in Hamburg.

Life and work

After graduating from Wilhelm-Gymnasium , Pardo, who was a Sephardic Jew, studied law in Munich , Berlin and Kiel . After obtaining his doctorate in law with the work The criminal criterion of usuriousness of a loan , he settled in 1912 as a lawyer in his hometown of Hamburg. He ran a law firm with Manfred Heckscher on Schauenburgerstrasse in Hamburg's old town . He took part in the First World War as a naval judge. From 1920 he was in addition to his general legal services and general counsel of the police officers association. Until 1933 he was chairman of the Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg several times and was also a member of the board of the Hamburg Zionist Association .

After the National Socialists came to power , Pardo and most of his family emigrated to Haifa in August 1933, whereupon his license to practice as a lawyer was withdrawn in February 1934 due to his absence. In Palestine, he and friends founded a steel furniture factory and a chrome-plating factory. However, both went bankrupt in 1938, so that Pardo lost all of his assets. He then worked as managing director of the Jewish Industrial Association in Haifa. His sisters Angela and Gertrud, after whom the Gertrud-Pardo-Weg in Alsterdorf is named, returned to Germany in 1938 and were murdered in Nazi extermination camps in the 1940s. Brother Manfred emigrated to New York , where he took his own life. Herbert Pardo himself survived the Shoah in Palestine .

In September 1947 Pardo returned to Hamburg, where he was again admitted to the bar on November 7 of the same year. He was elected to the board of directors of the Jewish community . As their legal advisor , he was mainly involved in reparation processes and negotiations. In 1948 he played a leading role in calling for a trial against Veit Harlan , who had directed the anti-Semitic film Jud Suss . After he had moved back to Haifa in the 1950s and was still able to continue practicing his legal work, exempting him from the residence obligation, he gave back his license in 1971 for reasons of age.

The Herbert-Pardo-Weg in Neuallermöhe is named after Pardo .

Political party

Pardo joined the SPD in 1910. From 1924 he was involved in the Hamburg state board of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold .

MP

After the November Revolution of 1918, Pardo was a member of the workers 'and soldiers' council for Greater Hamburg . Subsequently, from 1919 to 1931, he was a member of the Hamburg Parliament . There he was u. a. Member of the Tax Deputation, Prison Authority and University Committee. Since 1927 he was a member of the influential citizens' committee .

Public offices

From 1926 to 1928 Pardo was a member of the State Court for the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

Publications

• The criminal criterion of the usuriousness of a loan , Hamburg, Wettig, 1909, Rostock, Univ., Diss., 1909
• The Petersen trial before the jury in Hamburg. Crimes against humanity (together with Siegfried Schiffner), Auerdruck, Hamburg 1948.
• Jud Süß - historical and legal material on the Veit Harlan case (together with Siegfried Schiffner), Auerdruck, Hamburg 1949.

literature

• Heiko Morisse: Jewish lawyers in Hamburg. Exclusion and persecution in the Nazi state. Christians-Verlag, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-7672-1418-0 , page 151.
• Michael Studemund-Halévy : Pardo, Herbert Joseph. In: The Jewish Hamburg. A historical reference work. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0004-0 , pages 205f.
• Federal Bar Association (Hrsg.): Lawyer without law. Fate of Jewish lawyers in Germany after 1933. Berlin 2007, pp. 215/216
• Michael Studemund-Halévy & Maria Koser (ed.), The Pardos: from the Ottoman Empire via the New World to Hamburg; Booklet accompanying the exhibition "Searching for traces. A stumbling block for Gertrud Pardo", Hamburg 2013.

Web links

• Photos of Herbert Pardo and his family