Käthe Starke-Goldschmidt

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Stumbling block for Käthe Starke-Goldschmidt in Hamburg-Othmarschen

Kathe Starke Goldschmidt , nee Goldschmidt (* 27. September 1905 in Altona / Elbe ; † 10. August 1990 in Hamburg ) was a doctorate in German theater scholar , because of their "Jewish origins" during the period of National Socialism the end of June 1943 in the Ghetto Theresienstadt was deported and survived the Holocaust . After the liberation , she secured the Theresienstadt bundle and published her memories of her imprisonment in Theresienstadt.

Life

Käthe Goldschmidt, daughter of Iska and Hulda (née Schönberg) Goldschmidt, grew up with her sister Erna (1902–1977) in Altona. Her father was the owner of the "Firma Louis Goldschmidt" bank and the last chairman of the Jewish community in Altona. After completing her school career, Goldschmidt studied German literature , philosophy , art history at the University of Heidelberg and in Munich from 1927 , and later theater and literary studies with Artur Kutscher . At the same time, she worked as an actress and director in the Munich Academic Playing Group in order to be employed at a theater after graduation. After the National Socialists came to power , the Spielschar was disbanded in 1934. Goldschmidt had a son in 1935. To protect her son from reprisals, Goldschmidt intended to marry an “ Aryan ” fellow student and not her Jewish friend Martin Starke (1899–1957). However, the Gestapo forbade her to do so under the Nuremberg Race Laws . She was able to place her son, disguised as an "Aryan" orphan, at the Catholic Blue Cross in Munich. She returned to Hamburg in 1937 at the latest, where she worked for a time as a dramaturge at the theater of the Jewish Cultural Association. After her father died in 1938, the family continued to run the company for a short time. In the course of the gradual disenfranchisement of the German Jews, the Goldschmidts also had to pay a Jewish property tax, hand over valuables and finally move into a “Jewish house” in October 1940. The mother died at the end of 1941 and thus escaped deportation. Käthe and Erna Goldschmidt, who were also threatened with deportation, had to move into a “ Jewish house ” in September 1942 .

On June 23, 1943, Käthe and Erna Goldschmidt were deported from the Hanover station in Hamburg with another 107 people to Theresienstadt. She later reported the following about the circumstances:

“No - nobody from our transport to Theresienstadt started screaming. Nobody kicked us in the back either, as I had seen eleven months earlier in the school courtyard on Sternschanze , if the old people couldn't climb the high folding steps on the police vans fast enough. The head of the Jewish Department of the Secret State Police , State Police Headquarters Hamburg , 'Herr' Göttsche , who gave us the farewell convoy with his staff, showed several nuances more unofficial than usual. No film cameras buzzed, no cameras hung around their necks took private photos of pretty helpers, of wretched figures on the platform, or of stretchers with dying old people. In comparison, there was nothing going on today. "

In Theresienstadt, Käthe Goldschmidt initially worked in the cleaning service and came into contact with the prominent prisoners in this context. Later she worked in the central library of the ghetto under the library manager Emil Utitz . She managed to secure the so-called Theresienstadt bundle, typewritten, partly illustrated résumés of 92 prominent prisoners. In addition, she received 64 watercolors and drawings from the ghetto from the chief librarian of the central library, Hugo Friedmann, before his deportation to Auschwitz , which she was able to save until the liberation of the Theresienstadt ghetto on May 8, 1945. Other secured documents included the accounts of the central library. Due to a quarantine because of typhus , she was only able to leave Theresienstadt on July 28, 1945 and return to Hamburg.

Käthe Goldschmidt then worked for a few years for the actor and director Helmut Käutner , with whom she was friends. After that she lived with her sister and the father of her child, the Auschwitz survivor Martin Starke in Hamburg-Othmarschen . Goldschmidt married Starke in 1950 after she brought her son to Hamburg in 1947. Her memoirs were published in 1975 under the title Der Führer gives the Jews a city . This title was chosen after the propaganda film made in Theresienstadt by the Nazis Theresienstadt . The theater scholar Goldschmidt received her doctorate in Munich in 1948.

Goldschmidt-Starke died in Hamburg in 1990 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Bornkampsweg .

In memory of Goldschmidt-Starke, her husband and her sister Erna, stumbling blocks were laid in front of her former home in Hamburg's Grottenstrasse .

Fonts

  • The Führer gives the Jews a city. Haude & Spenersche Verlagbuchhandlung, Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-7759-0174-4 .

literature

  • Linde Apel, in collaboration with the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg and the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (ed.): Sent to death - The deportations of Jews, Roma and Sinti from Hamburg, 1940 to 1945 . Metropol Verlag, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-940938-30-5 .
  • Axel Feuss: The Theresienstadt convolute. Altonaer Museum in Hamburg, Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg / Munich 2002, ISBN 3-935549-22-9
  • Kirsten Heinsohn: The Jewish Hamburg: A historical reference work . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0004-0
  • Beate Meyer, in collaboration with the Institute for the History of German Jews (ed.): The persecution and murder of Hamburg's Jews 1933–1945: history, testimony, memory . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0137-5
  • ... In the black night and silent silence I have to find my way alone ...: Käthe Starke-Goldschmidt's deportation to Theresienstadt and her return to Hamburg; Pictures, impressions, reports, documents . State Center for Political Education, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-929728-67-5 . (Audio book)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Birgit Gewehr: Stumbling blocks in Hamburg: Käthe Starke-Goldschmidt
  2. ↑ Käthe Starke: The Führer gives the Jews a city. Pictures, impressions, reports, documents . Berlin 1975, p. 23. Quoted in: Linde Apel, Frank Bajohr, Ulrich Prehn: The deportations from Hannoversche Bahnhof 1940–1945. Historical course and traces of memory , lecture in Hamburg 2008, hamburg.de (PDF; 145 kB)
  3. ↑ Käthe Starke on ghetto-theresienstadt.info
  4. ^ "Prominent album" of the Jewish self-government: The Theresienstadt convolute on hagalil.com
  5. ↑ Axel Feuss: The Theresienstadt-Konvolut , Hamburg / Munich 2002, p. 12f.
  6. ↑ Linde Apel, in collaboration with the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg and the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (ed.): Sent to death - The deportations of Jews, Roma and Sinti from Hamburg, 1940 to 1945 Hamburg 2009, p. 168
  7. ↑ Illustration and location of Dr. Käthe Starke, b. Goldschmidt at garten-der-frauen.de
  8. ↑ Booklet (PDF; 920 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Starke-Goldschmidt, Käthe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strong, Kathe; Goldschmidt, Käthe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater scholar and survivor of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Altona / Elbe
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1990
Place of death Hamburg