Karl Neuhof

Karl Neuhof (born November 25, 1891 in Friedberg (Hesse) ; † November 15, 1943 murdered in Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was a German grain wholesaler, communist and anti-fascist resistance fighter .

Life

Neuhof returned from the First World War with two wounds and the Iron Cross , which Kaiser Wilhelm II personally presented to him, as a war opponent. But to suppress the putsch of Kapp and Lüttwitz , he took up arms again in order to take an active part in the clashes in the Ruhr area. Immediately after the end of the war he left Judaism.

In 1921 he moved from Friedberg to Berlin. He worked as a wholesaler for grain exports and imports at the Jewish company Neufeldt & Co. In 1923 he married Gertrud Jaffke (1901–1987). Since 1926 he belonged to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the Red Aid of Germany (RHD) and the workers' sports club "Fichte". He lived with his family in Berlin-Frohnau and was a member of the KPD local group Glienicke / Nordbahn . Together with his wife, he participated in an unemployed kitchen.

From 1933 on, the Neuhofs' houses were searched. He became unemployed and later worked as a huckster in construction. Most recently he had to do forced labor in the so-called 'Jewish column' of the Warnecke and Böhm paint factory in Weißensee.

In the late autumn of 1942 and on January 13, 1943, his old friend Wilhelm Beuttel , instructor of the Central Committee of the KPD, stood in front of Neuhof's apartment in Berlin-Frohnau, looking for accommodation for his illegal work in Germany. The Neuhof couple gave him shelter, although they themselves were in danger. Wilhelm Beuttel and the Neuhof couple were arrested on February 10, 1943. Until May 27, 1943, Karl Neuhof was in the Lehrter Strasse police prison , then in the Moabit remand prison . With an interim transfer to the police headquarters in Alexanderplatz , Neuhof was admitted to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in October 1943 and shot as a resistance fighter of Jewish descent on November 15, 1943 without judgment. Gertrud Neuhof was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp . She survived the death march in May 1945 and was liberated by the Red Army .

Peter Neuhof (* 1925), the son of Karl and Gertrud Neuhof, was also arrested and received his father's estate along with the diary and the letters he received. In 2006 he published the story of his family.

Karl Neuhof's sister Antonie Maurer (1895–1945) died in the Uckermark concentration camp . His mother Helene Neuhof died in 1942 at the age of 82 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp .

Reception & honors

Stolperstein , Zeltinger Strasse 65, in Berlin-Frohnau

Memorial stone for Karl Neuhof

Karl Neuhof was the namesake of a polytechnic high school in Glienicke / Nordbahn from December 1959 until the fall of the Berlin Wall . The memorial stone in front of the school building still reminds of the resistance fighter.

On November 8, 2000, a bronze plaque, including the name of Karl Neuhof, in memory of Jews in Frohnau, was erected on the forecourt of the Johanneskirche, 17 Zeltinger Platz. Among other things, it bears the inscription: "Jewish neighbors / 1933–1945 / persecuted / expelled / murdered / forgotten?"

On March 17, 2011, a stumbling block was laid for him in front of the building in Zeltinger Str. 65 in Berlin-Reinickendorf.

Public mentions of the history of Karl Neuhof and his family can be found in the Silent Heroes memorial .

literature

• Luise Kraushaar : German resistance fighters 1933 to 1945. Biographies and letters. Published by the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED. Volume 1, Dietz Verlag, Berlin (East) 1970, DNB 456423494 , p. 532.
• Hans-Joachim Fieber et al: Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime 1933 to 1945. Published by the history workshop of the Berlin Association of Former Participants in the Anti-Fascist Resistance, Persecuted by the Nazi Regime and Survivors (BV VdN) eV Volume 5: L to O. trafo- Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89626-355-2 , pp. 273f.
• Peter Neuhof : When the browns came. A Berlin Jewish family in resistance. Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 2006, ISBN 3-89144-356-0 .
• Hans-Rainer Sandvoss : Resistance from the workers' movement in Berlin from 1933 to 1945. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-936872-94-1 , pp. 474-475.
• Hans-Rainer Sandvoss: Resistance in Pankow and Reinickendorf. (= Resistance 1933–1945. Issue 6). ed. vd German Resistance Memorial Center. Berlin 1992, DNB 930072235 , pp. 137-140 and pp. 214f.

Web links

Commons : Karl Neuhof  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography of Karl Neuhof
• Collections of the Jewish Museum Berlin on Karl Neuhof

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Neuhof: A youth in the shadow of persecution. Conversation with contemporary witnesses - experiences and fates of German Jews under National Socialism (with video recording of the eyewitness conversation on December 3, 2018); Jewish Museum Berlin 2018.
2. ↑ Peter Neuhof: When the brown ones came. A Berlin Jewish family in resistance . Bonn 2006, p. 17.
3. ↑ Peter Neuhof: It was such an unlikely lucky circumstance that I survived this terrible time . In: Berliner VVN-BdA (Ed.): "Ask us, we are the last". Memories of those persecuted by National Socialism and people from the anti-fascist resistance. An interview brochure . Part 4. Berlin 2013, p. 25–35, here p. 26 . Full text
4. ↑ Peter Neuhof: When the brown ones came. A Berlin Jewish family in resistance . Bonn 2006, p. 9.
5. ↑ Peter Neuhof: When the brown ones came. A Berlin Jewish family in resistance . Bonn 2006, p. 188.
6. ↑ Peter Neuhof: When the brown ones came. A Berlin Jewish family in resistance . Bonn 2006, p. 206.
7. ↑ Hans Wolf: Peter Neuhof: Moving evidence of a bad time. Peter Neuhof reads from his book "When the Browns Came". In: Wetterauer Zeitung. November 21, 2007, accessed on November 23, 2016 (on the Friedberger Geschichtsverein eV website). 
8. ^ Jews in Frohnau. In: Gedenkenafeln-in-berlin.de. Retrieved January 6, 2018 . 
9. ^ AG Stolpersteine ​​Reinickendorf: Information on the Stolperstein for Karl Neuhof. In: Coordination Office Stolpersteine ​​Berlin. Retrieved January 3, 2018 . 
10. ↑ Hidden in the bread wagon. In: Silent Heroes Memorial Center. German Resistance Memorial Center, accessed on January 5, 2018 .