Lola Potok

Lola Potok (born March 20, 1921 in Będzin ) was a director of the prison in Gliwice .

Life

Occupation time

Potok lived in Silesia under German occupation after the invasion of Poland in 1939. She married Schlomo Ackerfeld in August 1941 and gave birth to a daughter in April 1942. After staying in the ghetto from autumn 1942, the family was deported to Auschwitz on August 1, 1943 , where their child was taken away. Potok manufactured ammunition there in an armaments factory. On January 18, 1945, the SS evacuated the camp; she managed to escape on the death march . Ten of her relatives died in the concentration camp, including her mother.

UB

Four weeks later, on February 13, 1945, she was appointed prison commandant in Gliwice by the Polish UB (Ministry of Public Security) to which she had applied. The prison had around 50 guards, mostly of Jewish descent, who guarded 500 to 1000 mostly Germans or Polish Germans . It was used by the secret service to investigate Nazi collaboration. The suspects were tortured, raped and exposed to the aggression of the former concentration camp prisoners and partisans, which Potok, who carried out interrogations herself, forced for several months. About 15 percent died of typhoid. After signing the requested confessions, the suspects were transferred to the Zgoda Salomon Morels labor camp , and a few were released. In autumn 1945 Potok left the People's Republic of Poland , like most of the UB's Jewish employees .

emigration

Lola Potok got into the western occupation zones via the Soviet occupation zone and went to Paris, where she met Michal Blatt, who later married her in Germany. Both moved to the USA in 1948. She learned English in New York and worked in her husband's doctor's office. She bought a bankrupt Chapter 11 aircraft supplier for $ 25,000 ( Aircraft supplies ), ( Clifton, New Jersey) , signed a supply deal with the U.S. Air Force, and grew the company in the 1980s for annual sales of $ 10 million . After their divorce in 1986, she moved to California to be near their four daughters. Potok last lived in Australia.

literature

• John Sack: An eye for an eye. The story of Jews seeking revenge for the Holocaust. Kabel, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-8225-0339-8 .
• Alfred de Zayas : The Anglo-Americans and the expulsion of the Germans. Ullstein, 1988, ISBN 3-548-33099-1 .

Web links

• I am a reporter and a Jew | ZEIT ONLINE , accessed on June 1, 2018.