Julius Meyer (politician, 1909)

Julius Meyer (born September 17, 1909 in Krojanke (West Pr.), † December 2, 1979 in Brazil ) was a German politician (KPD, SED) and 1952/1953 President of the Association of Jewish Communities in the GDR .

After elementary school and an apprenticeship in the leather industry, Meyer joined the KPD in 1930 . In 1935 he went to Berlin and lived illegally for a short time in 1940. Arrested in February 1943, he was sent to various concentration camps , most recently Auschwitz and Ravensbrück . There he was a Kapo and “Jewish elder”.

In 1945 Meyer co-founded the OdF Main Office for Victim Welfare for the Magistrate of Berlin as a KPD member . In the eastern part he took over the chairmanship of the Jewish community from 1946 to January 1953 . He was a member of the board of the VVN and the SED . In 1949 he was elected to the People's Chamber of the GDR for the small fraction of the VVN. On January 15, 1953, he fled to West Berlin for fear of the late Stalinist anti-Semitic campaign that escalated on January 13, 1953 in Moscow (“ Doctors' Conspiracy ”) and before being interrogated by the Central Party Control Commission . The measure was part of the campaign against Paul Merker and Jews accused of being "Zionist agents". He was followed by the chairmen of the Jewish communities in Leipzig, Dresden and Erfurt. By March 1953, 556 Jewish refugees registered in West Berlin.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, his recognition as a political refugee and a dispute about reparation dragged on until 1976. Meyer traveled to Brazil and died there in 1979.

literature

• Karin Hartewig:  Meyer, Julius . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Erica Burgauer: Between memory and repression - Jews in Germany after 1945, Reinbek 1993, p. 180 f.

Web links

• Annette Leo: The “White Coat Conspiracy”. Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (2003; PDF file; 353 kB), p. 19 f.