Josef Taussig

Josef Taussig (born December 1, 1914 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; died March 10, 1945 in Flossenbürg concentration camp , German Reich ) was a Czechoslovak journalist , writer , satirist and actor , one of the central figures in the cultural scene of the Theresienstadt ghetto .

Life

After attending the commercial academy in Prague and in Teplitz-Schönau, Taussig took further training at another school (for graphics). He was then hired by an advertising company and eventually by a Prague bank. At times he also worked as a journalist for the youth magazine “Hej rup”. The aryanization measures following the German occupation of Prague brought the Czech Jew considerable difficulties from March 1939. From then on, Taussig kept himself afloat with all kinds of odd jobs and worked a. a. as farm workers and construction workers on the railway in the Bohemian and Moravian provinces.

On December 5, 1942, Taussig and his parents Otto and Frederike were deported from their home in Hlinsko to the Theresienstadt ghetto. There, Josef Taussig quickly made a name for himself as a critic and satirist and took part in several stage activities such as the program “Pepi's Sermons”. Taussig's particular merit is the documentation of artistic life in Theresienstadt: He prepared a series of protocols, and he paid particular attention to the analysis and characterization of the cabaret scene in the camp. On October 28, 1944, Taussig was transferred to the Auschwitz extermination camp together with a number of famous German film and stage artists such as Kurt Gerron and Otto Wallburg . Thanks to his young age and his physically healthy constitution, he survived the camp and was transferred at the end of January 1945 via the Groß-Rosen subcamp (Silesia) to the Bavarian concentration camp Flossenbürg on February 13, 1945, where Taussig died four weeks later.

Web links

• Josef Taussig on ushmm.org

literature

• Judaica bohemiae Státní židovské muzeum, 1982. Under inventory number 326 there is also a photocopy of the criticism of the Theresienstadt cabaret by Josef Taussig (the original document is the private property of M. Kárny).
• Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 417.