Leonardo De Benedetti

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Leonardo and Jolanda De Benedetti (1929 wedding picture).

Leonardo De Benedetti (born September 15, 1898 in Turin ; died October 16, 1983 in Turin) was an Italian doctor. From February 1944 until the liberation in January 1945 he was a prisoner in the Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp , about which he and Primo Levi presented a report in 1946 .

Life

De Benedetti had practiced as a doctor in Rivoli until the racial laws passed in Italy in 1938 forced him to give up his profession as a Jew. During the Second World War the family in Asti was evacuated. At the beginning of December 1943, De Benedetti tried to flee to Switzerland with his wife Jolanda, his mother and other Jews . The Swiss border police only allowed refugees over 65 years of age, pregnant women, sick people and parents with children under the age of twelve to cross the border. De Benedetti and his wife were therefore forced to return to occupied Italy, where they were arrested by Italian fascists in Lanzo d'Intelvi . After their imprisonment in Como and Modena , the De Benedettis were taken to the Fossoli police and transit camp and deported to Auschwitz on February 22, 1944 .

The couple were separated on arrival in Auschwitz on February 26, 1944. While Jolanda De Benedetti was murdered in a gas chamber , Leonardo De Benedetti came to the Auschwitz-Monowitz concentration camp as a prisoner with the number 174,489. There he made friends with Primo Levi , whom he had already met in Fossoli and who had been deported to Auschwitz on the same transport. After the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, De Benedetti worked as a doctor for the Soviets in the Auschwitz central camp and in Katowice . In July 1945 he, Levi and other deportees set out for Italy and, after an arduous journey, reached Turin on October 19, 1945. This odyssey is described by Levi in ​​his novel The Breath .

In Italy, De Benedetti practiced again as a doctor. Together with Levi, at the request of the Soviet government, he prepared a report on the hygienic and sanitary conditions in Buna-Monowitz. In 1947 he appeared as a witness in Warsaw at the trial against the former commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Höß . In the 1950s he began to report publicly about his experiences in Auschwitz. De Benedetti's five-page letter Indictment against Dr. Josef Mengele was sent in 1959 through Hermann Langbein to the public prosecutor at the regional court in Freiburg im Breisgau , which in that year issued the first two international arrest warrants against the fugitive, former SS camp doctor from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Josef Mengele . De Benedetti described in detail the processes involved in so-called “sick selections” in Monowitz and how Josef Mengele himself had been subjected to four selections in the camp's infirmary. De Benedetti attributed it to his profession as a doctor that Mengele did not allow him to be transferred to the infirmary of the main camp or to Birkenau , which would have resulted in his certain murder; this although his prisoner number was already on the respective "list of prisoners to be transferred". In 1970/1 he testified as a witness in the trial of Friedrich Boßhammer , who was the commandant of the Fossoli camp.

Publications

  • with Primo Levi : Rapporto sulla organizzazione igienico-sanitaria del campo di concentramento per Ebrei di Monowitz (Auschwitz-Alta Slesia) . In: Minerva Medica XXXVII (July-December 1946), pp. 535-544.
  • Primo Levi with Leonardo De Benedetti: Cosi fu Auschwitz. Testimonianze 1945–1986 , 2015 (German. That was Auschwitz. Testimonies 1945–1986. With Leonardo De Benedetti , trans . By Barbara Kleiner. Hanser, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-446-25449-7 ).

literature

  • Robert SC Gordon: Per una 'storia naturale della distruzione'. Levi e De Benedetti tra medicina e 'memoria concreta' . In: Luigi Dei (Ed.): Voci dal mondo per Primo Levi. In memoria, per la memoria . Firenze University Press, Florence 2007, pp. 101-111.
  • Scarpa, Domenico / Levi, Fabio (eds., Photo documentation, comments on the texts): Primo Levi: Cosi fu Auschwitz. Testimonianze 1945–1986 , 2015 (German. That was Auschwitz. Testimonies 1945–1986. With Leonardo De Benedetti, trans. By Barbara Kleiner. Hanser, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-446-25449-7 ).
  • Anna Segre: Un coraggio silenzioso. Leonardo De Benedetti, medico, sopravvissuto ad Auschwitz . Zamorani, Turin 2008.
  • Ian Thomson: Primo Levi. A life . Henry Holt, New York 2002.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Primo Levi: Remembering a good person (1983), in: Primo Levi: So war Auschwitz. Certificates 1945–1986. With Leonardo De Benedetti , trans. v. Barbara Kleiner. Hanser, Munich 2017, pp. 167–170.
  2. ↑ Leonardo De Benedetti et al. Primo Levi: Rapporto sulla organizzazione igienico-sanitaria del campo di concentramento per Ebrei di Monowitz (Auschwitz-Alta Slesia) . In: Minerva Medica XXXVII (July-December 1946), pp. 535-544. In German as a report on the hygienic-medical organization of the concentration camp for Jews in Monowitz (Auschwitz) (1945/46), newly published in: Primo Levi, So war Auschwitz , trans. v. Barbara Kleiner, pp. 13-47; see. Philippe Mesnard (ed.): Primo Levi: Report on Auschwitz . BasisDruck, Berlin 2006, pp. 57–96.
  3. ↑ The testimony first published in: Primo Levi, So war Auschwitz , here: Leonardo De Benedetti: Testimony for the Höß trial , pp. 65–69.
  4. ↑ First printed in full in: Primo Levi, So war Auschwitz , here: Leonardo De Benedetti: Indictment against Dr. Josef Mengele , pp. 77–81.
  5. ^ De Benedetti, Indictment , p. 80.
  6. ↑ Cf. Leonardo De Benedetti: Questionnaire for the Boßhammer trial (1970), first published in: Primo Levi, So war Auschwitz , pp. 119–124.
personal data
SURNAME De Benedetti, Leonardo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Debenedetti, Leonardo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian doctor and Auschwitz survivor
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Turin
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1983
Place of death Turin