Jakob Edelstein

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Jakob Edelstein

Jakob Edelstein , also Yaakov , Yacov , Jakub , Jacob Edelstein or Edlstein (born July 25, 1903 in Horodenka , Galicia , † June 20, 1944 in Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a Czechoslovak lawyer, association official and Zionist and from 1933 to December 4 1941 head of the Palestine Office in Prague . He was the first Jewish elder in the Theresienstadt ghetto .

Live and act

Jakob Edelstein, who was brought up as a Zionist, moved with his family to the Moravian town of Brno at the time of the First World War . Edelstein became involved in Zionist youth organizations from 1926 and worked in the Hechaluz main office from 1929 . In 1933 he became director of the Palestine office in Prague . In 1937 he worked for three months at the Keren Hajessod in Palestine . After the annexation of the Czech Republic on March 15, 1939, Edelstein remained in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and became the contact person responsible for the German occupiers for the emigration of Czech Jews to Palestine. Between 1939 and 1941 he traveled abroad several times and made contact with Jewish officials there to exchange information; so he traveled to Palestine, Trieste , Vienna , Genoa , Berlin , Pressburg and Amsterdam . Edelstein was deported from Ostrava to Nisko on October 18, 1939 with his colleague Richard Friedmann and about 1,000 other Jewish men as part of the so-called Nisko and Lublin Plan . After this plan failed, Edelstein returned to Prague in November 1939. Edelstein endeavored to prevent the Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from being deported to Poland. He therefore repeatedly suggested that the German occupiers use Czech Jews as workers in the protectorate. Edelstein saw the establishment of the Theresienstadt ghetto as a success because he and the other Jewish functionaries were unaware that Theresienstadt was planned as a transit camp for the extermination camps .

On December 4, 1941, Edelstein and his family arrived in the Theresienstadt ghetto by order of SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Günther . There he was immediately appointed the first Jewish elder and chaired the twelve-member Judenrat . In the ghetto, Edelstein was particularly interested in the education of the youth and in productive work processes. At the end of January 1943, Edelstein was replaced as the Jewish elder by Paul Eppstein and now became his first deputy. The different number of registered and actual ghetto inmates led to his arrest on November 9, 1943. In mid-December 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz and was housed in Block 11 of the main camp. On June 20, 1944, Edelstein first had to watch the murder of his wife Miriam and his son Ariel before he himself was shot in the crematorium .

literature

  • Israel Gutman (ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust - The persecution and murder of European Jews. 3 volumes, Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 .
  • Hans Günther Adler : Theresienstadt. The face of a coercive community 1941–1945. Afterword Jeremy Adler. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-694-6 (reprint of the 2nd, combined edition Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1960; 1st edition ibid. 1955).
  • Ruth Bondy : "Elder of the Jews": Jakob Edelstein of Theresienstadt. From Hebrew, 1989, ISBN 0-8021-1007-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yakov Edelstein, of blessed memory. In: Yizkor Book Project. Former Residents of Horodenka and Vicinity in Israel and the USA, 1963, accessed December 6, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Edelstein, Jacob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Edelstein, Jakub
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak Zionist and first Jewish elder of the Theresienstadt ghetto
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Horodenka
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp