Marianne Strauss-Elbow

Marianne Strauss-Ellenbogen (born June 7, 1923 in Essen , † December 22, 1996 in Liverpool ) was a German Jew who had to hide underground in Germany from 1943 to 1945. Jewish helpers from the Bund - Community for socialist life helped her to survive. After the Second World War she emigrated to Great Britain. She left behind an extensive collection of personal letters and documents attesting to this period of persecution. Marianne Strauss had a correspondence with her boyfriend at the time, Ernst Krombach, after he was deported to the Izbica ghetto . As a result, detailed details about the conditions prevailing there have been handed down.

family

Marianne Strauss was the only daughter of Siegfried Strauss and Regina (also called Ine) Rosenberg. She also had a brother named Richard. Her father and his brother Richard ran the grain and cattle feed company Strauss OHG in Essen . Your grandfather Dr. Leopold Strauss was teacher and rector of the Jewish school in Dinslaken as well as cantor of the local Jewish community . Her parents and her brother were deported and murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . Her grandmother Anna Rosenberg, née Weyl, who was also deported, died in the Theresienstadt ghetto .

Life

From August 1943, Marianne Strauss had to hide underground. She received help from the Bund - Community for Socialist Life . Again and again, over 30 to 50 times, she changed apartments. Members of the federal government hid them in Essen, Braunschweig , Göttingen , Remscheid , Mühlheim and Burscheid . But among her helpers were also some who had no contact with the federal government.

After the war she married the English officer Basil Ellenbogen in London on December 29, 1946. He was an Orthodox Jew . After completing his military service, he began studying medicine and became a doctor. The couple had two children.

In 1984 she published a small essay in Essen about her experiences underground. In 1989, the Ruhrland Museum in Essen encouraged the British historian Mark Roseman to do research on Marianne Strauss-Ellenbogen. In 2000 he published a book about her and made her internationally known.

Righteous among the peoples

Some Bund members were honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli memorial site Yad Vashem in the embassy of the State of Israel in Berlin on September 15, 2005 for their help to Marianne Strauss-Ellenbogen . The other members were Fritz and Maria Briel, Emilie Busch, Hanni Ganzer, Hedwig Gehrke, Meta Kamp-Steinmann, Karin Morgenstern, Änne Schmitz and Grete Strüter.

Works

• Escape and illegal life during the Nazi persecution years 1943-45 . In: Das Münster am Hellweg 37, Essen 1984, pp. 134–142

literature

• Mark Roseman: The Past in Hiding , London 2000
  • Mark Roseman: In an unguarded moment. A woman survives underground . Development of the Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 2004
• Angela Genger : Two who could save themselves. Help from the federal government for Marianne Strauss and Lisa Jacob from Essen . In: Beate Kosmala, Claudia Schoppmann (ed.): They remained invisible. Testimonials from the years 1941 to 1945, Berlin 2006
• Mark Roseman: Saved history: Der Bund, community for socialist life in the Third Reich , in: " Mittelweg 36 ", magazine of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research , vol. 16, issue 1, 2007
• Mark Roseman: It went on for years and years. Marianne Ellenbogen's request for reparation in Norbert Frei , José Brunner, Constantin Goschlar: The Practice of Reparation: History, Experience and Effect in Germany and Israel , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2009, pp. 51–78
• H. Walter Kern: Silent Heroes from Essen. Resisting in the time of persecution 1933-1945 , Essen 2014

Web links

• Youth in Germany: Marianne Strauss-Ellenbogen
• Frank Friedhelm Homberg: Rescue Resistance in Wuppertal during National Socialism
• Newsletter of the Embassy of the State of Israel in Berlin: Yad Vashem Honors
• The hiding place of the Jewish woman Marianne Strauss during the Nazi era
• "Open Monument Day" Dore Jacobs House