Marga Spiegel

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Marga Spiegel in November 2009

Marga Spiegel (born June 21, 1912 in Oberaula as Marga Rothschild ; † March 11, 2014 in Münster ) was a German survivor of the Holocaust . The Jew went into hiding with her husband and daughter from 1943 to 1945 with Catholic farmers in the Münsterland and thus escaped deportation . During this time, Spiegel published a book in 1969 that was made into a film in 2009 .

Life

childhood and education

Marga Spiegel was born as the daughter of Siegmund Rothschild (1882–1938) and his wife Cilly (1888–1937; maiden name: Rosenstock) and came from a Jewish family from the country in Northern Hesse. She spent her childhood with her parents and her eight years younger sister Inge Johanna (* 1921; also just called Johanna) in the Hessian village of Oberaula , where her grandparents owned a dye works and she attended school. From 1920 to 1922 Marga Rothschild went to Adele Dippel's private school in Oberaula and in 1924 moved to a lyceum in Hersfeld .

In the year the National Socialists " seized power " , Rothschild passed her Abitur at a grammar school in Frankfurt am Main . Then she began studying physics and mathematics at the University of Marburg . As the daughter of a Jewish participant in the war, she was able to matriculate, but due to her Jewish origins, she had to drop out after the second semester. Her family was increasingly exposed to anti-Semitic discrimination. At the beginning of the 1930s Oberaula had around 1200 residents, including 21 Jewish families. In 1936 she was arrested on the basis of a trumped-up charge of a fellow Oberaulaner citizen and imprisoned for several days in prison.

Starting a Family and Anti-Semitic Persecution

In January 1937 Rothschild married the horse trader Siegmund Spiegel, who was 13 years his senior, took his name and moved to live with him in Ahlen . Siegmund Spiegel's Jewish family belonged to the bourgeoisie and had lived in Ahlen since the middle of the 18th century. In March of the same year Spiegel's mother died of heart disease, whereupon her father, who had been taken into “ protective custody ” several times in the past , moved to live with his daughter in Ahlen. In 1938 Marga gave birth to their daughter Karin. In Ahlen, too, Marga Spiegel's family was exposed to discrimination; According to her own admission, her daughter's pram was thrown with stones. Two of her husband's sisters emigrated to the United States during this time . In June 1938 Spiegel's father was arrested and deported to the Oranienburg or Sachsenhausen concentration camps after he had sought a guarantee to leave Germany. He died in the concentration camp a month later.

During the November pogroms , the Spiegel were attacked and mistreated in their apartment by five SA men from Ahlen . In 1940 Marga Spiegel fled with her family to Dortmund , where they moved with several other Jewish families to a Jewish house and later from there to a barrack in Ahlen. In October 1941 her sister Inge Johanna, married to Leo Spiegel from Ahlen, was deported from Essen to the east . She is said to have been brought to Auschwitz via Łódź , where she was murdered, according to Auschwitz survivor Josef Ryback. Marga Spiegel's husband had meanwhile got a job at the Dortmund company Sommer, which derusted mining towers. He used his old contacts as a horse dealer and borrowed a bicycle from a farmer friend. With it he drove to nearby farms and organized additional food for his family. Spiegel's husband is said to have learned of massacres of Jews in Poland from a local farmer , whereupon he tried to get promises of hiding places.

Time underground and publishing their survival story

In February 1943, Spiegel's husband received a call-up to check his working papers, whereupon the family feared deportation. The Spiegels then fled to Catholic farmers in southern Münsterland , where the couple were given shelter separately from each other. Marga Spiegel and her daughter spent several months as bombed out Dortmunders “Margarete Krone” and “Karin Krone” in various hiding places near Ascheberg . There were occasional family meetings. In October 1944, Marga Spiegel went to Münster and, against her husband's wishes, obtained false papers there. The farmers, including Heinrich Aschoff , managed to save the Jewish family from deportation for 27 months before the Allies reached the Münsterland in April 1945 .

After the end of the war, Marga Spiegel returned to Ahlen with her family. From the extended Rothschild and Spiegel families, 37 members did not survive the Holocaust. A total of 550 to 600 Westphalian Jews survived the Holocaust, after 18,819 “religious Jews” had been counted in 1933. Of the deportees from Ahlen, only three men ( Imo Moszkowicz and Josef and Hermann Ryback) had survived. Siegmund Spiegel, who refused to emigrate abroad, set up a new horse trade and a son, Daniel, was born. Both children later moved to the United States.

In September 1945 criminal charges were brought against six main participants in the Ahlen November pogroms. After several days of negotiations, however, the former members of the Ahlen SA were acquitted in October 1949 and only one was sentenced to several months' imprisonment for simple breach of the peace , against which an appeal was successfully appealed. In 1964/65, Spiegel recorded her memories of going into hiding; they were first published between January and May 1965 in 17 episodes in the Münster diocese newspaper Church and Life . In 1969 her report appeared in book form under the title Savior in the Night . Today it is considered an important source for the history of the Westphalian Jews at the time of the Holocaust. In the same year, the farming families who had hidden the mirrors were honored by the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Asher Ben-Natan , as Righteous Among the Nations .

Filming and honors

Grave of Marga and Siegmund Spiegel

After the death of her husband in 1982, Marga Spiegel, the aunt of Paul Spiegel , President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany , who died in 2006 , moved to Münster , where she spent the last years of her life. Her book Saviors in the Night was published several times and subsequently supplemented with her time in Oberaula and Hersfeld and reflections on her fate and the Holocaust. In 2009 the autobiographical novel by Ludi Boeken was made into a film under the title Unter Bauern - Retter im Nacht with Veronica Ferres and Armin Rohde in the leading roles. The feature film, which celebrated its successful world premiere in early August 2009 at the Locarno Film Festival , was released in German cinemas in early October 2009.

Together with Jenny Aloni , Benno Elkan , Benno Jacob , Imo Moszkowicz and Jeanette Wolff , among others , Spiegel has been devoting the permanent exhibition Jewish Paths of Life in the Jewish Museum Westphalia since 2004 , in which Judaism in Westphalia from the early Middle Ages to the present day is traced using biographies becomes. Since 2005 she has been an honorary member of the German-Israeli Society .

On July 19, 2010, Spiegel received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her “tireless commitment as a contemporary witness” .

In 2012, a secondary school in Werne (North Rhine-Westphalia) was named after Marga Spiegel, which she attended in July 2013 in the presence of the then Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft.

On November 7, 2013 she was awarded the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia .

Marga Spiegel died on March 11, 2014 at the age of 101 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ahlen , where her husband had previously been buried.

Publications

Movies

Web links

Commons : Marga Spiegel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holocaust survivor Marga Spiegel died in Münster
  2. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 181.
  3. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 61.
  4. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 46.
  5. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . Pp. 36-37.
  6. ↑ a b c cf. Interview ( memento of October 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) at wdr.de, October 1, 2009 (accessed on October 4, 2009).
  7. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 86.
  8. ↑ a b Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 90.
  9. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 206.
  10. ↑ a b Westfälische Nachrichten : Spiegel estate is auctioned: auction with furniture and art from Holocaust survivors on April 2 , Münsterischer Anzeiger, Münster, da March 10, 2016
  11. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . Pp. 4-5.
  12. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 39.
  13. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 10.
  14. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 16.
  15. ↑ Marga Spiegel: Savior in the night: how a Jewish family survived in the Münsterland . Münster [u. a.]: Lit, 1999 (History and Life of the Jews in Westphalia; 3). - ISBN 3-8258-3595-2 . P. 204.
  16. ^ Peter Claus: German cinema shines on Lake Maggiore . In: Die Welt , August 10, 2009, p. 25.
  17. ↑ “Jewish Paths of Life” trace 1000 years of history . In: Saarbrücker Zeitung , January 9, 2004 (accessed October 4 via Wiso praxis ).
  18. ↑ a b cf. ddp basic service: Author Marga Spiegel honored with the Federal Cross of Merit . July 19, 2010 at 4:32 PM GMT.
  19. ^ First secondary school in Werne: First day of school for the Marga Spiegel School at wa.de, August 22, 2012 (accessed on August 23, 2012).
  20. ↑ Moving moments with 101-year-old Marga Spiegel at wa.de with video, July 4, 2013
  21. ↑ Westdeutsche Zeitung of November 7, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Spiegel, Marga
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rothschild, Marga (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Holocaust survivors
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Upper auditorium
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 2014
Place of death Muenster