Joel Brand

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Joel Brand (1961)

Joel Jenö Brand (born April 25, 1906 in Naszód , Transylvania , † July 13, 1964 in Bad Kissingen ) was a Hungarian-German-Israeli left-wing socialist Zionist .

Life

Joel Brand grew up in Erfurt , where his parents moved in 1910. His mother tongue was German, but he remained a Hungarian citizen. He attended the elementary school and finally the upper secondary school in Erfurt. He then did a commercial and telephone technical training, in order to then work for telephone companies in Leipzig, Breslau and Stuttgart. In 1930 he joined the Thüringische Telefonesellschaft mbH founded by his father Max Brand and was most recently head of the sales and leasing department.

Brand hoped for a socialist revolution and an answer to the mass unemployment at the time and was active in Zionist and left-wing organizations. On September 6, 1932, Brand was arrested in Frankfurt am Main on a court order. The charge was that of betraying military secrets. On February 22, 1933, the Kassel Higher Regional Court sentenced him to two years in prison. On September 6, 1934, Brand in Frankfurt / Main was released. On the day of his release, Brand emigrated to his sister, who lived in Romania, via Hungary, his native country, in order to avoid further persecution. Since he did not receive a residence permit in Romania, Brand had to return to Hungary after six months. But in Hungary he was “a stranger in his own country” because he had to learn the national language first. Fortunately, part of the population from the Austro-Hungarian rule still spoke German. The political developments in the German Reich and in the Soviet Union made him a Zionist. He worked in the Budapest telephone company. In 1940 Brand had to go to the Székesfehérvár Jewish labor camp for half a year , where he had to wear a yellow Jewish armband and work physically. But at heart he had finished with Europe and actually wanted to emigrate to Palestine , which is why he joined some young Zionists with the same goal. In this group, the Budapest aid organization “Waada Ezra we Hazalah” (Council for Help and Rescue), which belonged to the “left wing” of the Zionist movement, he met Hansi Hartmann in 1944 , his future wife.

This Zionist group acted as an aid organization from 1942 onwards, which helped Jewish refugees from Germany in Hungary before the German occupation of Hungary (March 1944), and later rescued Jews in Hungary from deportation to Auschwitz .

After the German invasion of Hungary, Brand had to wear a Jewish star between April 5 and May 17, 1944 . He was then sent by Adolf Eichmann to Istanbul in May 1944 to act as a broker between the German Reich and the Allies: According to a proposal by Heinrich Himmler , up to 1 million Jews should leave the country in return for delivery of 10,000 trucks and other urgently needed ones Goods are allowed (“blood against goods”). As soon as Brand returned to Budapest with the consent of the Jewish organizations and the Allies, the gas chambers in Auschwitz would be dismantled and the first 100,000 Jews liberated. The Allies and also the Jewish Agency suspected a trick in this offer, which is why this action did not take place.

After his mission failed, Brand went to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine and there joined the Zionist underground organization Lechi . He later became an Israeli citizen.

In September 1956, Brand went from Israel to the Federal Republic of Germany and settled as a writer in Frankfurt am Main. The book Die Geschichte von Joel Brand , which appeared in 1956 in Germany, was created as a “joint work” with Alexander Weißberg-Cybulski and based on Joel Brand's memories .

In 1961, Joel Brand testified as a witness on several days of the trial in Jerusalem as part of the Eichmann trial and reported in detail about his meeting with Adolf Eichmann in April 1944 in Budapest, about the offer "blood for goods" made by him, about his trip to Istanbul and the reasons why, in his opinion, the said "barter" had not taken place. Joel Brand's wife, Hansi Brand, was also heard as a witness in the trial.

Joel Brand died of a heart attack on July 13, 1964 at the age of 58 .

Publications

  • Adolf Eichmann. Facts versus fables. Ner-Tamid-Verlag. Munich-Frankfurt 1961

Film adaptations and radio plays

Based on a template by Heinar Kipphardt , two television films and a radio play were made in the 1960s.

literature

  • Alex Weissberg (d. I. Alexander Weissberg-Cybulski ): The story of Joel Brand. Publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Cologne-Berlin 1956
  • Heinar Kipphardt: Joel Brand. The story of a business. Publishing house Suhrkamp. Frankfurt am Main 1965

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Spiegel-online: Died: Joel Brand on July 22, 1964
  2. ↑ Alex Weissberg: The story of Joel Brand. Publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Cologne-Berlin 1956.
  3. ^ Testimony of Joel Brands in the Eichmann trial in 1961, beginning on the 56th day of the trial, Yad Vashem: Eichmann Trial, Online, Youtube ; see. also on the 59th day of the negotiation: Online, Youtube , accessed on July 16, 2019.
  4. ↑ See Hansi Brand's statement on the 58th day of the negotiation: Online, Youtube.
  5. ↑ Cf. Died: Joel Brand . In: Der Spiegel 30 (1964), July 22, 1964 , accessed on July 15, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Brand, Joel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brand, Joel Jenö (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Zionist
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Naszód , Transylvania
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1964
Place of death Bad Kissingen