Lucille Eichengreen

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Lucille Eichengreen signs one of her books (2012) Signature Lucille Eichengreen.jpg

Lucille Eichengreen (born on February 1, 1925 in Hamburg as Cecilie Landau ; died on February 7, 2020 in Oakland , California ) was a survivor of the Holocaust and a contemporary witness . In several autobiographical books she described her deportation to the Łódź ghetto , to Auschwitz , the Neuengamme subcamps and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp .

Life

Youth and Deportation

Memorial and plaque for the deported Hamburg Jews (2007)
Deportation of the children from the Łódź ghetto to the Chelmno extermination camp, September 1942

Lucille Eichengreen, actually Cecilie, was the elder of two daughters of the Polish wine wholesaler Benjamin Landau and his wife Sala (Sara), nee. Cotton spinner. After an initially carefree childhood in Hamburg, during which she was increasingly exposed to the reprisals of the Nazi regime against the Jews, her father was deported to Poland in October 1938 . He initially returned and was arrested by the Gestapo as an enemy foreigner during the attack on Poland on September 1, 1939 , and imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison and in the Oranienburg concentration camp . On December 31, 1940, he was murdered in the Dachau concentration camp . As a young girl, she saw Gestapo men bringing ashes from Dachau in a cigar box closed with a rubber band in February 1941. Until she was deported, she attended the Israelitische Töchterschule at Karolinenstrasse 35, where she was able to complete her secondary school diploma.

On October 25, 1941, 16-year-old Cecilie was deported to the Łódź ghetto with her mother and younger sister Karin . Cecilie found a job and was able to survive under inhumane conditions, which she also described in her book about the Jewish elder Chaim Rumkowski . Her mother starved to death and died on July 13, 1942. Her twelve-year-old sister Karin, whose care she had taken over, was forcibly separated from her in September 1942, deported to the Kulmhof extermination camp and murdered. She herself worked temporarily in the ghetto administration as a typist for the journalist and writer Oskar Singer . In 1943, after a denunciation during an "interrogation" by the German " criminal police " , she was deafened in the left ear. In August 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and survived the selection at the ramp. A few weeks later, after another selection by the concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele , she was taken to a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp on Dessauer Ufer , where she had to do forced labor to repair bomb damage and to build panel houses for bombed-out Hamburgers. Due to temporary office work, she was exposed to the brutality of the guards, but less physically demanding conditions. In March 1945 she was deported to Bergen-Belsen , where she had to witness the starvation and mass deaths of epidemics.

Time after the liberation

Cecilie was the only one of her immediate family to survive the Holocaust . After the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by the British Army in April 1945, she spent a few months in the camp for displaced persons in Bergen-Belsen and worked as a translator for the British. In cooperation with the British military government they could in Hamburg 40 SS - perpetrators identify from the Neuengamme concentration camp, arrest and allow them to justice. Following death threats, she left Germany and emigrated via Paris to the USA , where on November 7, 1946 she married the Jewish emigrant Dan Eichengreen, also from Hamburg . It was not until 1947 that she was certain of her sister's death.

Lucille Eichengreen says she was unable to overcome her traumatic experiences during the Nazi era for a long time, was full of hatred for the Germans and suffered constantly from nightmares.

In 1991 she traveled to Germany and Poland for the first time, where she also visited her hometown Hamburg at the invitation of the Hamburg Senate . Under the impression of this trip, which also took her to Auschwitz and the former Łódź ghetto, she wrote: “ I cannot understand how it is possible for people to question the actual events of the Holocaust, the extent of the torment, the suffering and doubt the number of the maimed and murdered. "

Activity as an author

Lucille Eichengreen at an event in the Lawaetz-Haus in Hamburg-Neumühlen (2012)

In the 1990s, Lucille Eichengreen began to process and publish her memories. Her memoirs, written in English, were translated into German by Ursula Wamser and appeared in 1992 under the title Von Asche zum Leben. Memories . It wasn't until two years later that the book was titled From Ashes to Life. My Memories of the Holocaust published on the American book market.

Since her first visit to Germany, Lucille Eichengreen has given lectures in schools, universities and at memorial events. In addition, she worked with the Holocaust Literature Unit on the research and processing of the chronicle of the Lodz / Litzmannstadt ghetto , where she worked as a typist for Oskar Singer in 1943. In May 2007 she was awarded an honorary doctorate in the language, culture and literature department of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen for her commitment .

Sent to death on the occasion of the exhibition . The deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti from Hamburg from 1940 to 1945 Lucille Eichengreen was awarded the Hamburg Medal of Honor in gold by the First Mayor Ole von Beust in 2009, whereby the Hamburg Senate showed its merits in coming to terms with the history of the Nazi persecution of Jews Hometown Hamburg.

Lucille Eichengreen lived in Oakland , California until her death . She died a few days after her 95th birthday. One of her two sons is the American economist Barry Eichengreen .

reception

Memorial plaque at the Lawaetzhaus in Neumühlen with the picture Lucille Eichengreens (2010)

Ralph Giordano wrote in the foreword to the new edition of Lucille Eichengreen's 2009 memoir From Ashes to Life : “Your fate cannot leave any sympathetic and thinking person untouched. Nowadays, when intellectual arsonists think they are allowed to speak of the "Auschwitz Club" in order to free the Berlin Republic from the legacy of National Socialism and to return to political normality with the old, yesterday's demand for the final line, books are like that of Lucille Eichengreen of immense importance. "

Works

  • Lucille Eichengreen with Harriet Chamberlain: From Ashes to Life. My Memories of the Holocaust . Mercury House, San Francisco 1994, ISBN 1-56279-052-8 .
    • From ashes to life. Memories , from the American by Ursula Wamser. Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-926174-39-0 . (1st edition in German)
    • From ashes to life. Memories , from the American by Ursula Wamser. Konkret-Literatur-Verlag, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89458-268-5 . (New edition with a foreword by Ralph Giordano.)
  • Lucille Eichengreen with Rebecca Fromer: Rumkowski and the orphans of Lodz . Mercury House, San Francisco 2000, ISBN 1-56279-115-X .
    • Rumkowski, the Jewish elder from Lodz. Autobiographical report , from the American by Thomas Bertram. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-434-50458-3 .
  • Women and the Holocaust. Experiences, memories and stories from the American by Sascha Feuchert and Claire Annesley. Donat, Bremen 2004 ISBN 3-934836-77-1 .
  • Haunted Memories: Portraits of Women in the Holocaust , Tiffin Press, Exeter NH 2011

Audio

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Foreword by Ralph Giordano to From Ashes to Life , 2009 edition, p. 9.
  2. ^ Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial : Lucille Eichengreen on her 95th birthday, addendum dated February 8, 2020 with the news of her death
  3. ↑ Eichengreen: From Ashes to Life 2009, pp. 36–37, p. 43.
  4. ↑ Eichengreen: From Ashes to Life 2009, p. 149.
  5. ↑ a b Lucille Eichengreen: "I cannot forget and cannot forgive". In: Spiegel Online . August 31, 2006, accessed May 2, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Lucille Eichengreen: "I cannot forget and I cannot forgive". In: Spiegel Online . August 31, 2006, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  7. ↑ The memories of Lucille Eichengreen: From Hamburg to Hamburg. In: zeit.de . September 10, 1993, accessed May 2, 2020 . see also Eichengreen: Von Asche zum Leben 2009, pp. 89–91, where the translator Ursula Wamser writes “Kripo” instead of SD .
  8. ↑ Data from Eichengreen: Von Asche zum Leben 2009, p. 174.
  9. ↑ Eichengreen: From Ashes to Life 2009, pp. 174–175, p. 185. There were 42 names in total.
  10. ↑ Eichengreen: From Ashes to Life 2009, p. 190 and p. 207.
  11. ↑ Quote Eichengreen: From Ashes to Life 2009, p. 244.
  12. ↑ ThB: SCHATTENBLICK - RESEARCH / 112: Lucille Eichengreen - Speech for the presentation of the chronicle (Spiegel der Forschung - Uni Gießen). In: schattenblick.de. May 7, 2007, accessed May 2, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Charlotte Brückner-Ihl: Honorary doctorate for Lucille Eichengreen. Justus Liebig University Giessen, press release of May 8, 2007 from the Science Information Service (idw-online.de), accessed on May 2, 2020.
  14. ↑ Uniforum Gießen, May 2007, p. 8 (PDF; 2.6 MB).
  15. ^ Hamburg Service District Assembly Eimsbüttel. Printed matter - 20-0788
  16. ↑ I cannot forget and I cannot forgive. A commemorative publication for Lucille Eichengreen books at haGalil.com
  17. ↑ Quotation from: From Ashes to Life , Konkret Literatur Verlag 2009, p. 11.
  18. ↑ Booklet of 19 p .; Arendt read by Brauner, Sow and the contemporary witness Uwe Storjohann ; Victim reports read by Westlake, Mündl. Texts by Masha Rolnikaite, Eichengreen, b. Cecilie Landau, Ruth Bondy , Martha Glass and Silvia Grohs-Martin; Speaker of the introduction Julia Putfarcken
personal data
SURNAME Eichengreen, Lucille
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Landau, Cecilie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American survivor of the Holocaust, contemporary witness and author
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 2020
Place of death Oakland , California