Hillel stork

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Hillel Storch , also Hilel Storch or Gilel Storch (born May 24, 1902 in Dvinsk , Vitebsk Governorate , † April 25, 1983 in Stockholm , Sweden) was a Latvian entrepreneur.

Life

Hillel Storch became involved in the Zionist movement early on . At the age of only 18 he became a representative of the Jewish Agency , which saw itself as representing the Jews in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine . In Daugavpils and Riga he was able to persuade around 3,000 Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Storch's main job was a foreign trade merchant, which is why he moved from Daugavpils to the Riga trade center.

In 1940 Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union. Hillel Storch had to leave his wife and daughter Eleonora behind for the time being when he fled the Soviets to Stockholm. He was imprisoned at the Swedish border for four days, where he met Tage Erlander , who later became friends of the Storch family. In the course of an exchange of agents between Sweden and the Soviet Union, the wife and daughter were released and were able to leave for Sweden in May 1941.

In Sweden Storch represented both the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress . Some Swedish Jews were uncomfortable with his energetic public commitment to the rescue of Jews from the Baltic countries. They feared that this could provoke anti-Semitic reactions. When he once asked for a seat in the synagogue for his wife, who was pregnant with her son Marcus, it was said: “Storch's wife can stand.” In 1943 their second daughter, Ruth, was born. Storch was friends with his neighbor Edgar Klaus , a converted Jew from Riga who worked as a double agent for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. With the Stockholm Chief Rabbi Mordechai Ehrenpreis and other leading figures in Sweden, Storch looked for ways to save living Jews from the hands of the Nazis. Storch was involved in the fact that in 1944 about 350 Polish Jews could be rescued to Sweden by the Jewish Agency and that Sweden accepted 55 Norwegian Jews from " mixed marriages ". In 1944, Ms. Storch learned that her family had been murdered in the Shoah . Members of Hillel Storch's family had also perished.

Count Folke Bernadotte informed Storch in a letter dated February 26, 1945 that, due to Swiss interventions, several thousand Jews were allowed to leave Germany and enter Switzerland and that the German side had promised to release more Jews in return for “consideration”. Heinrich Himmler's personal physician Felix Kersten sent an invitation from Himmler to Storch to come to Berlin and negotiate. Since Storch was not a Swedish citizen, he could not expect any protection from the Swedish state when traveling to Berlin. Fritz Hollander and Norbert Masur stood as emissaries in his stead . The latter took over the job. On April 7, 1945, Hillel learned that Himmler's rival Ernst Kaltenbrunner had instructed Adolf Eichmann to have the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp blown up the next morning . Kersten and Bernadotte then phoned and spoke to Himmler's personal advisor, Rudolf Brandt , to stop this project.

After the war, Storch, on behalf of the World Jewish Congress, ensured that a huge granite block, which Germany had already bought in Sweden for the monument to be erected after the “ final victory ”, was brought to Poland and erected as a memorial in the Warsaw ghetto .

Honors

In 1952 Hillel Storch was awarded the Wasa Order. In an obituary for Hillel Storch in Stockholms-Tidningen , Olof Palme recalled Storch's collaboration with Count Bernadotte and Felix Kersten and his contribution to the rescue of many Jews.

literature

  • Eleonora Storch Schwab: A Daughter Remembers . In: Gertrude Schneider (Ed.): The Unfinished Road. Jewish Survivors of Latvia Look Back . Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz 1999, ISBN 3-89649-431-7 , pp. 175-183.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Eleonora Storch Schwab: A Daughter Remembers . P. 175.
  2. ^ A b Eleonora Storch Schwab: A Daughter remembers . P. 176.
  3. ↑ Gerhart M. Riegner : Never despair. Sixty years in the service of the Jewish people and the cause of human rights . Dee, Chicago 2007, ISBN 1-56663-696-5 , p. 100.
  4. ^ Yehuda Bauer : Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 . Yale University Press, New Haven 1994. ISBN 0-300-05913-2 , p. 245.
  5. ^ Meier Sompolinsky: Britain and the Holocaust. The failure of Anglo-Jewish leadership? Sussex Academic Press, Brighton 1999, ISBN 1-902210-09-3 . P. 214.
  6. ↑ Eleonora Storch Schwab: A Daughter Remembers . P. 181.
  7. ↑ Eleonora Storch Schwab: A Daughter Remembers . P. 177.
  8. ↑ Eleonora Storch Schwab: A Daughter Remembers . P. 179.
  9. ↑ Gerald Fleming : Hitler and the final solution . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1986, ISBN 0-19-285154-3 , p. 178.
  10. ↑ Eleonora Storch Schwab: A Daughter Remembers . P. 180.
  11. ^ A b Eleonora Storch Schwab: A Daughter remembers . P. 182.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Stork, Hillel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Storch, Gilel; Storch, Hilel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Latvian entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Dvinsk , Vitebsk Governorate
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1983
Place of death Stockholm , Sweden