Lilly Jankelowitz
Lilly Rosa Amalie Jankelowitz , artist name Lilly Jank , later married choice ( 7. May 1907 in Gera - 11. October 1944 in the concentration camp ) was a German actress and singer , after the takeover of the Nazis no longer work on racial grounds first their profession was allowed to, then had to emigrate, was finally arrested in France and ultimately murdered in a concentration camp in 1944.
life and work
Lilly Jankelowitz was the daughter of the physician Adolf Jankelowitz ( September 27, 1869 in Neustadt bei Heydekrug ( East Prussia ) - March 4, 1917 ) and his wife, Emma Blandine née Heilbronner ( March 14, 1879 in Ludwigshafen - 1958 ). Her father was killed in the First World War . A few years after the end of the war, probably in 1925, their daughter and mother moved to Baden-Baden , where they lived at 119 Fremersbergstrasse. There are no sources about Lilly's schooling. From 1927, probably after graduating from high school, she studied singing at the State Music School in Weimar. From 1928 she completed her training as an opera singer and operetta soubrette at the Karlsruhe Theater Academy , a newly founded training facility that sought to combine theory and practice through close cooperation with the Baden State Theater .
Promising career
Lilly Jank, as she called herself as a singer from now on, started the practical training, already from 1928 appearances in the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe . She was able to gain practical experience on stage and familiarize herself with the ensemble. In her first season, she played in an operetta by Ernst Krenek a chambermaid and in the bat of Johann Strauss the dancer Natalie and the spirit of Prince Orlofsky. In her second season - 1929/30 - she was already engaged in 14 productions of operas, operettas and drama. Among other things, she sang smaller roles in Wagner and Weber operas, was Wally in Thousand and One Nights by Johann Strauss and the Spelunken Jenny in the Threepenny Opera by Brecht and Weill .
In 1930 Lilly Jank was permanently employed by the Badisches Staatstheater, with a monthly wage of 350 Reichsmarks, and she was entrusted with increasingly larger roles. She sang and played in three operettas by Ralph Benatzky , took over Hannchen in Künneke's cousin from Dingsda and the court singer Demoiselle Giuditta Grisi in the Schubert collage Das Dreimäderlhaus . The press was full of praise for the “pretty Backfisch”, who “as a lisping Klärchen Heinzelmann was a suitable partner for him [the state actor and audience favorite Hermann Brand]” and “[wh] e more than the role actually required ".
Cornelie Hornung sums it up: “These theater reviews illustrate the talent of the singer and actress Lilly Jank, who was around 25 at the time, at the beginning of her hopeful theater career. The later statements of the Karlsruhe opera singer of about the same age, the chamber singer Emmy Seiberlich , the actress Lola Ervig and the actor Hermann Brand also suggest this. They unanimously call Lilly Jank a very popular colleague. "
Dismissal, emigration, marriage
In March 1933, immediately after the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Lilly Jank was suddenly “banned from the stage”. The social democratic newspaper “Volksfreund” reported on March 16 of the dismissal of the director, conductor, solo coach, head of equipment and seven ensemble members, including Lilly Jank. The National Socialist counterpart “ Führer ” triumphed with a threatening undertone: “This is only the first attempt against the Jewish demon and the huge fees at the Landestheater. Further measures will follow. "
The contract of Emmy Seiberlich, with whom Lilly Jank had lived for a while as a subtenant and who was regarded by the Nazis as a “Jew friend and protégée”, was not extended. Lilly Jankelowitz finally left Karlsruhe and from early 1934 lived in a girls' home in Strasbourg. There she worked as an assistant to the Jewish doctor Viktor Wahl ( 1899 in Worms - 1944 unknown location). According to the reparation files, she was said to have been unemployed in 1935 and 1936. In January 1936 she was in Zurich, where she stated that she was preparing to leave for Palestine. Her friend and former colleague Emmy Seiberlich, who had meanwhile emigrated to Canada, tried to get an entry permit, but Lilly Jankelowitz decided to stay in Europe. On March 19, 1936, she married Viktor Wahl and then lived with him in Strasbourg. On December 31, 1936, the couple's only child, son Joseph Marius Silvio, was born.
After the German invasion of Poland and the start of the Second World War , the couple wanted to get themselves and their young son to safety. The Wahls fled south to the health and bathing resort of Vichy in the Auvergne . Victor Wahl practiced as a specialist in gastrointestinal diseases in Vichy, his wife could not find a job and supported her husband in his practice. Viktor Wahl's mother, Henriette Wahl, nee also fled to Vichy. Baum ( March 2, 1868 - 1944 in the Ravensbrück concentration camp ). Viktor Wahl is said to have been close to the Resistance . Son Silvio later reported that his father had hidden a radio in the attic and was using it to secretly listen to BBC broadcasts.
Deportation and murder
After the victory in the so-called Blitzkrieg in the summer of 1940, the German occupiers established a puppet government in Vichy for the unoccupied parts of France. The Jews living in France were increasingly at risk, including in Vichy France . From July 1942, children and the elderly were also transported to so-called work assignments via the Drancy assembly camp north of Paris in the direction of Auschwitz, and in the following year the Alois Brunner special command systematically combed the unoccupied south of France for hidden Jews. For years the Wahl family lived in constant fear of being caught and abducted.
Emma Jankelowitz, the singer's mother, was abducted by the National Socialists to the Gurs camp on October 22, 1940 from her place of residence in Baden-Baden - together with thousands of Jews from Baden and Saar-Palatinate . Due to her age, however, she was released to a nursing home, finally made her way to Nice and with luck survived the period of deportations to Auschwitz until France was liberated by the Allies.
On June 22, 1944, two weeks after the Allies landed in Normandy and two days after the Vichy collaborators had fled to Sigmaringen in Baden-Württemberg, the Wahl family, together with the now 7-year-old son and the elderly mother Victor Wahls , arrested by French militiamen and taken to Moulins prison. This was followed by deportation to Germany. Viktor Wahl came to Ohrdruf, a branch of the Buchenwald concentration camp , where his trace was lost. He did not survive the Nazi regime. Lilly Wahl, her son and her mother-in-law were first deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and shortly afterwards to Ravensbrück . In October 1944, the two women were killed and the son survived the atrocities of the concentration camp.
Fate of the son
After the collapse of the Nazi regime and the liberation of the survivors from the concentration camps, their son Silvio Wahl, then 9 years old and seriously ill physically and mentally after being imprisoned in the concentration camp, now orphaned, was transferred to his homeland on behalf of the French government. After convalescing in a sanatorium in Adelboden , Switzerland , the boy was able to finish school in a boarding school in Ribeauvillé in Alsace. In the meantime, his maternal grandmother had been able to find his whereabouts from Nice using the Red Cross tracing service . She took an apartment in Ribeauvillé and looked after her grandson. She died in 1958. Silvio Wahl was adopted by the French nation and after graduating from high school, with the support of the French state, studied at the Ecole Nationale d'Optique in Morez in the Jura department. After completing his studies, he emigrated to the United States, where he married Geneviève Wengen on May 20, 1972.
In September 2009 he lived with his retired wife in Paris.
Roles (selection)
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Benatzky :
Package :
Künneke :
Schubert :
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Wagner :
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Commemoration
Stumbling block
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On November 10, 2013, the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling block in memory of Lilly Jankelowitz in front of the Badisches Staatstheater at Baumeisterstraße 11 in Karlsruhe . It bears the following inscription:
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'JANK' |
Stumbling blocks state theater
In 2015, the author and director Hans-Werner Kroesinger , together with Regine Dura , premiered his play Stolpersteine Staatstheater at the Badisches Staatstheater . In this piece, the life of Lilly Jankelowitz plays a central role and is precisely traced using original documents and newspaper clippings. On Deutschlandfunk, Cornelie Ueding described the performance, which was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2016 , as follows:
“The team around director Hans-Werner Kroesinger and Regine Dura reconstructs the further course of events in original quotes with tenacious precision: how someone disappeared from the program, how small harassments became bigger and bigger, finally the non-extension, exile, being 'caught' ... the end of the line at Auschwitz or Ravensbrück. The whole thing in the midst of a frenzy of collective emotion, the will to break new ground, opportunism, inflated self-importance and a block-keeper mentality. Always in the form of bureaucratic binding up to the official letter regarding 'emigration', which contains legally binding demands: You have to take the preparations in peace, take the right things with you and above all shouldn't forget the money for the ticket to the 'destination'. "
Web links
- Stadtarchiv Karlsruhe: Memorial book for the Karlsruhe Jews , imprint
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Cornelie Hornung: Personal data Lilly Jankelowitz (election, married), in: Memorial Book for the Karlsruhe Jews , September 2009, accessed on November 23, 2016.
- ↑ Karlsruher Zeitung , December 8, 1931 on the premiere of the hit operetta Olly-Polly by Walter Kollo , quoted here. According to Cornelie Hornung: Personal data Lilly Jankelowitz (election, married), in: Memorial Book for the Karlsruhe Jews, September 2009, accessed on November 23, 2016.
- ↑ Karlsruher Zeitung, September 21, 1931 on the premiere of the operetta Im Weißen Rößl by Ralph Benatzky , quoted here. According to Cornelie Hornung: Personal data Lilly Jankelowitz (election, married), in: Memorial Book for the Karlsruhe Jews, September 2009, accessed on November 23, 2016.
- ↑ Karlsruher Zeitung, June 5, 1932 on the premiere of Schubert's Das Dreimäderlhaus , quoted here. According to Cornelie Hornung: Personal data Lilly Jankelowitz (election, married), in: Memorial Book for the Karlsruhe Jews, September 2009, accessed on November 23, 2016.
- ↑ SWR2 : Lilly Jank: Banished from the stage, stumbling blocks for hearing, December 18, 2013, accessed on November 23, 2016.
- ↑ a b c Amis de la Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Déportation de l'Allier: WAHL Joseph Marius Silvio (French), with photographs and facsimiles, accessed on November 23, 2016.
- ^ Yad Vashem , Central Data Base of Shoah Victim's Names: Query for Viktor Wahl, accessed November 23, 2016.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jankelowitz, Lilly |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jankelowitz, Lilly Rosa Amalie (full name); Jank, Lilly; Choice, Lilly |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German actress, opera and operetta singer, victim of the Holocaust |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 7, 1907 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gera |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 11, 1944 |
| Place of death | Ravensbrück concentration camp |