Use Totzke

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Ilse Sonja Totzke (born August 4, 1913 in Strasbourg , German Empire ; died March 23, 1987 in Hagenau , France ) was a German musician and Righteous Among the Nations .

Life

Ilse Totzke's mother, Sofie Wilhelmine Huth, was an Alsatian and actress. Her father Ernst Otto Totzke worked as Kapellmeister at the Strasbourg City Theater and in the Eden Theater . After the end of the First World War , Alsace was reintegrated into France in 1919 and Otto Totzke was expelled as a Reich German . Ilse Totzke moved to Mannheim with her father and then attended a boarding school in Bamberg . As the parents' marriage was broken, her mother stayed in Alsace, where she died early. Ilse Totzke later took action against the father because of the maternal inheritance, so that it came under guardianship administration. Her father died in 1933, and when she came of age in 1934 she was given the power to dispose of a fortune of 42,000 Reichsmarks , from which she could live well. From March 1932 she studied piano, violin and conducting at the Conservatory in Würzburg . In 1935 she had a serious motorcycle accident that threw her back in her studies. She became a loner. As the American historian Laurie Marhoefer has shown in the American Historical Review , she was increasingly marginalized by her environment, which viewed her withdrawn manner, her preference for men's clothing and her lesbian orientation with suspicion .

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Totzke showed her aversion to the Nazi regime and refused to give the Hitler salute . Among her acquaintances were Jewish women who were increasingly marginalized and disregarded by society. Since 1936 she was monitored by the Gestapo (on record) and from 1939 onwards she was repeatedly denounced by her neighbors and the student adviser Ludwig Kneisel, head of the University Institute for Physical Education . In 1938 or 1939 she was expelled from university. She evaded the labor service for women by pointing out the aftermath of the skull injury in the motorcycle accident. After several summons to the Gestapo, in which she courageously confessed to her contacts with Jews, she was warned in October 1941 that she would otherwise be sent to a concentration camp . Any friendly relationship with Jews was made a criminal offense by the Reich Main Security Office in October 1941 and, through the obligation to wear the Jewish star, could also be monitored in public and by informers.

In the summer of 1942, while staying in Alsace, she explored possible escape routes to Switzerland and in November 1942 crossed the Green Border with two Jewish women . The Swiss border authorities promptly rejected them. In December 1942 she was summoned again by the Gestapo and had to admit that she was still in contact with Jews. On February 27, 1943 she undertook another illegal border crossing near Durmenach , together with the flautist and kindergarten teacher Ruth Basinski. This time they were from the Swiss border guards to the German border police delivered . Basinski was imprisoned in Auschwitz concentration camp , where she survived as a member of the women's orchestra .

In May 1943 Totzke was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and had to do forced labor there . She covered up her identity and became Sonia Totzki from Poland. At the end of April 1945 she got to Sweden thanks to a rescue operation by the Swedish Red Cross .

After the Second World War , Totzke went to Paris, where she got by with odd jobs. From August 1954 she lived in Würzburg again and applied for compensation . She was granted DM 8,750. She then lived in Alsace.

In 1995 she was posthumously honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial . Wurzburg was the occasion of her 100th birthday on August 4, 2013, the southeast borough Keesburg the Ilse-Totzke street named after her.

“By naming this street after Ilse Totzke, we keep alive the memory of a citizen of our city who, in the so-called Third Reich, opposed an inhumane policy with extraordinary courage and helped people who were blamelessly excluded and disenfranchised only because of their Jewish descent and were persecuted. It has shown that in the face of evil, every person is free to choose what is good and not to remain indifferent. That's why we're honoring her today, four days before her 100th birthday, by naming this street after her. "

- July 30, 2013: The then Lord Mayor Georg Rosenthal on naming the street

literature

Fiction

  • Peter Roos : Love Hitler. Novel of an illness, a trilogy: "The fellow traveler and me", "The Gestapo files and me", "Eva Braun and me" . With an afterword by Egon Schwarz , Klöpfer and Meyer, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-931402-34-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jutta Körner, Dorothea Keuler: Ilse Totzke , at FemBio
  2. ↑ Laurie Marhoefer: Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State: A Microhistory of a Gestapo Investigation, 1939-1943 . In: The American Historical Review . tape 121 , no. 4 , October 2016, ISSN  0002-8762 , p. 1167–1195 , doi : 10.1093 / ahr / 121.4.1167 ( oup.com [accessed September 19, 2018]).
  3. ↑ At least the name of one of Ilse's friends, Gertrud Hengstenberg-Tichauer from Würzburg, who works as an X-ray assistant in Frankfurt, has been passed down by name to posterity: The Swiss border as an escape destination in mind , website rettungs- resistance-frankfurt.de , accessed on January 25, 2017
  4. ↑ For deportation from Switzerland see chapter 4.3 Asylum refusal , in: Gregor Spuhler ; Jean-François Bergier , Valérie Boillat: Switzerland and the refugees at the time of National Socialism. Independent Expert Commission Switzerland - Second World War , Bern 2001, ISBN 3-908661-04-8 , pp. 168–201
  5. ↑ Agnes Grunwald-Spier: Who betrayed the Jews? : the realities of Nazi persecution in the Holocaust . The History Press, Stroud 2016. In the literature on the women's orchestra, Ruth Basinski is also called Ruth Bassin.
  6. ↑ Forms of the name used were Ilse Anny Totzke , Ilse Anni Totzke , Ilse Annie Totzke , Ilse Sonja Totzke , Sonia Totzki , Ilse Sonia Totzki ; see. for biographies: Ilse Totzke at www.fembio.org , accessed on January 24, 2017
  7. ↑ Ilse-Totzke-Straße: Remembering a role model with extraordinary courage , website of the city of Würzburg, accessed on January 25, 2017
  8. ↑ Marcel Atze : Hitler in myself. Peter Roos' triptych of coming to terms with the past "Love Hitler" . Review, at literaturkritik.de , February 1999
personal data
SURNAME Totzke, Use
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Totzke, Ilse Sonja (full name); Totzke, Ilse Anny; Totzke. Ilse Anni; Totzke, Ilse Annie; Totzke, Ilse Sonja; Totzki, Sonia; Totzki, Ilse Sonia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician and Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1987
Place of death Haguenau , France