Jonas Kessler

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Jonas Kessler (born March 24, 1908 in Cologne ; died August 5, 1944 in Krakow ) was a German merchant of Jewish origin. In 1944 he was shot in the Plaszow concentration camp .

Jonas Kessler's grandparents came from Galicia and came to Cologne around 1905. The parents Isaak Mosche (born October 23, 1878) and Sara Czipe Kessler (born December 27, 1881) had a total of eight children, four daughters and four sons; Jonas was the first boy after four girls. Isaak Kessler died in December 1918 as a result of war injuries sustained in the First World War and was buried in the old Jewish cemetery on the Melatengürtel. Sara Kessler had to raise her eight children alone and also ran a shop for buying and selling. The family lived at the Carthusian farm in the southern part of the city .

Jonas Kessler was an avid athlete. He boxed successfully in the Jewish sports club JBC Makkabi Cologne , one of two purely Jewish German boxing clubs , in the light heavyweight division . He graduated from high school and trained as a businessman. From 1926 he was in a relationship with a non-Jewish woman; the couple, who were not married, had two children. After the Nuremberg Laws came into force , the Kessler couple carried out a sham separation and could only meet in secret, and Jonas Kessler was no longer allowed to practice his profession.

Stumbling blocks for Sara and Jonas Kessler, Kartäuserhof 8 ( Altstadt-Süd )

On the day after the pogrom in 1938, Jonas Kessler fled to Belgium with members of his Jewish family of origin; he could not say goodbye to his wife, but only briefly to his daughter in front of her school in Cologne. He then fled with his family to Poland, where they finally had to live in the Warsaw ghetto after 1941 . From there, Kessler was deported to the Plaszow labor camp near Kraków , where he was shot on August 5, 1944.

Kessler's mother Sara and three of her daughters died in Auschwitz in 1942/43 .

Stumbling blocks for Sara and Jonas Kessler have been laid in front of House 8 in the southern part of Cologne . For Jonas Kessler's sister, Eva Silberstein (born Kessler, on April 2, 1906) and her daughter Cilli-Rosa Silberstein (born on July 2, 1933) , two more stumbling blocks were laid at Kartäuserhof 13.

Jonas Kessler's brother Sally survived the Holocaust, became a managing board member of the synagogue community in Cologne after the war and sat on the Cologne City Council for the SPD .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ bundesarchiv.de: Kessler, Jonas Jakob memorial book entry , accessed on July 3, 2017
  2. ^ Barbara Becker-Jákli (with the assistance of Aaron Knappstein): The Jewish cemetery in Cologne-Bocklemünd. History, architecture and biographies . Ed .: NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne . Emons, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-95451-889-0 , pp. 177 .
  3. ↑ Horst Matzerath , Elfi Pracht , Barbara Becker-Jákli (eds.): Jüdisches Schicksal in Köln 1918–1945 - Catalog for the exhibition of the Historical Archives of the City of Kön / NS Documentation Center (November 8, 1988 to January 22, 1989, in Cologne Stadtmuseum / Alte Wache), City of Cologne 1988, pages 76, 77 and 309
  4. ↑ a b NS Documentation Center Cologne - Sara Kessler. In: museenkoeln.de. Retrieved March 22, 2015 .
  5. ↑ a b NS Documentation Center Cologne - Jonas Kessler. In: museenkoeln.de. Retrieved March 22, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Official Journal of the City of Cologne, July 9, 2014 (PDF) City of Cologne, July 9, 2014, accessed on March 25, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Kessler, Jonas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German boxer, victim of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1944
Place of death Plaszow concentration camp