Martin Gerson

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Martin Gerson (born March 15, 1902 in Czarnikau ; † October 1944 in Auschwitz ) was a German pioneer for the Hachschara , which means above all the agricultural training of young Jews for emigration to Palestine in the years after 1933. Temporary coordinated and Martin Gerson advised the centers for Jewish professional redeployment throughout Germany. He and his family fell victim to the Holocaust .

life and work

Martin Max Gerson grew up as the third child of the teacher Adolf (Aharon) Gerson and his wife Emmy, née Meyer, in the (then German) province of Posen with three sisters and two brothers. After attending school in Filehne , Martin did an apprenticeship at the Israelite Horticultural School in Ahlem near Hanover in 1917-20 . In the following time he worked for Salomon Dyk on the agricultural estate of the Hirsch-Kupfer- und Messingwerke in Finow near Eberswalde, which he founded, and from 1924 he was an inspector at the state domain Bärenklau near Oranienburg, which was designed by Franz Oppenheimer as a settlement cooperative. Afterwards he was trained as a qualified farmer at the teaching and research institute (LuFA) in Berlin-Dahlem and the Agricultural University Berlin . 1927-28 he was a specialist teacher himself in Ahlem, where he also met his future wife, the qualified garden architect Bertel Beila Helmenreich (born March 4, 1902 in Krukienice ) (also trained in Ahlem ). At the end of the 1920s he directed the Hauber tree nurseries in Dresden-Tolkewitz ; Between 1926 and 1929, Bertel Helmenreich designed an alpine plant with rare alpine plants in the Saxon Elbe Sandstone Mountains near Rathen , today's Rhododendron Park Kleine Bastei .

Bertel Helmenreich and Martin Gerson married around 1930; the marriage resulted in two children: Ruth Emmy (* 1932) and Mirjam Johanna (* 1934). The children were looked after by Bertel Gerson's foster mother Clara Grunwald (1877–1943), a Montessori teacher, together with other children in the sense of a children's home , since the children's mother worked and taught on an equal basis.

In 1930 Martin Gerson co- founded Jüdische Landarbeit GmbH with the support of the Reich Association of Jewish Front Soldiers , which ran an 820 acre settlement project in Groß Gaglow near Cottbus. Both of them worked as trainers on this training farm. On June 21, 1931 the foundation stone was laid for the first housing estate in Groß Gaglow. The keynote speakers included Leo Löwenstein from the Reich Association of Jewish Front Soldiers and Leo Baeck . The concept envisaged that the Sielung houses should include parcels for horticultural and agricultural use, which the settlers could acquire as property over time. However, this never happened: On September 29, 1933, the Reichserbhofgesetz was passed, which forbade Jewish land ownership with immediate effect. In the same year, this led to the expropriation of the teaching material. In April 1935 the last Jewish settlers left Groß Gaglow.

The Gerson couple took over the management of the Hachschara farm Gut Winkel near Spreenhagen , temporarily also supported by Martin Gerson's brother Manfred, who had gained experience in agriculture in California . Up to around 100 young people at the same time received horticultural and agricultural training at Gut Winkel. Soon afterwards, Martin Gerson was given responsibility for all Hachshara centers by the Reich Representation of German Jews (Department of Vocational Training and Reclassification), which he advised and represented to the authorities. In this way he succeeded in freeing young people from the Groß Breesen estate who had been deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp . After the “professional shift” for the Jewish youth was initially conceived for a future in Germany, Martin Gerson became a staunch Zionist and Gut Winkel accepted more members of the Habonim . In 1935 he visited Palestine for a month in search of a settlement opportunity for his colleagues from Gross-Gaglow. Probably for financial reasons, however, his efforts failed.

One of his friends was the Berlin lawyer and sociologist Georg Lubinski (Giora Lotan) , who made Aliyah in 1938 and later helped set up Israel's state insurance system.

After the Nazi authorities forced the abandonment of Gut Winkel on June 19, 1941, the Gerson family moved to the Neuendorf farm in Neuendorf im Sande near Fürstenwalde / Spree , where they were able to continue the youth courses for the Alija . When two Jewish women from the Gerson family came to Palestine in exchange for Templars in 1942 , they brought his sister Wally a photo with Martin's portrait dedicated to her. On June 6, 1943, he wrote his sister the last few lines stating that her brother Alfons was still alive. Shortly afterwards the Gestapo had the farm cleared.

Martin, Bertel, Ruth and Mirjam Gerson were brought to Berlin to the Grosse Hamburger Strasse assembly camp, from where Martin was able to return briefly to Neuendorf; on the 15th he wrote from there to say goodbye a. a. to Salman Schocken. On June 17, the Gerson family was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto (Terezín) by transport I / 96 . Martin Gerson was responsible for the maintenance of the green areas and gardens, the income of which was mainly appropriated by the German camp authorities. When he received the order to select people from his brigade for a “work assignment”, that is, for deportation , he refused. When some of his former students met this fate in the autumn of 1944, Martin Gerson voluntarily joined them out of solidarity with the people entrusted to him, as can be seen from his last letter to the then Theresienstadt elder of the Judenrat , Paul Eppstein . Separated from his family, Martin Gerson was "transported" to Auschwitz-Birkenau and was murdered immediately upon arrival. Two of his sisters, Margarete and Renata, also perished there.

Bertel Gerson and their two daughters were also deported there and killed on October 23, 1944.

More than 50 former students from Gut Winkel came to Palestine - some of them to Kibbutz Hasorea - and helped build the State of Israel. Without the horticultural, economic, linguistic and ideal preparation of these Chaluzim organized by Martin Gerson, this would have been hardly conceivable.

In the memorial Ahlem on the site of the former Jewish horticultural school Ahlem a space after Martin Gerson is named.

Literature (selection)

  • Friedel Homeyer, Gabriele Lehmberg: Martin Gerson - murdered in Auschwitz (= Ahlem Memorial and Memorial. Information sheet 12). Hanover 1993.
  • EG Lowenthal (Hrsg.): Probation in the downfall. A memorial book. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1965, pp. 58–60.
  • Ilana Michaeli, Irmgard Klönne (ed.): Gut Winkel - the protective island. Hachschara 1933 - 1941 (= German-Israeli Library 3). LIT-Verlag, Berlin et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-0441-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. In Hebrew script ( Memento of the original from August 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / memorial.hazorea.org.il
  2. ^ A Jewish settlement in Germany , Leipziger Jüdische Wochenschau, 4th year, No. 25–26, June 26, 1931, p. 1.
  3. ↑ Groß Glagow settlement project
  4. ↑ Horst Helas: A Fürstenwald story. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation - Social Analysis and Political Education - Seminar materials. Online version (PDF file; 38 kB)
  5. ^ With Transport Em on October 1, 1944 from Terezin to Auschwitz-Birkenau, source: Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
  6. ↑ Information from M. Gerson's niece Judith Vaadi (Ein Harod), cited above. after Kamarad , No. July 23, 2003
  7. ↑ Information from Wally Seeligmann geb. Gerson (Givat Brenner), cit. According to Homeyer / Lehmberg, information sheet of the Ahlem Memorial No. 13
  8. ↑ Margarete Gerson * 11.18.1900, transportation from Berlin to Auschwitz on 12.09.1942; Renata Alexander, b. Gerson, * 30/03/1904, Transport from Berlin to Auschwitz on 12/03/1943; Source: Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
  9. ^ With Transport Et from Terezín to Auschwitz-Birkenau, source: Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
personal data
SURNAME Gerson, Martin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gerson, Martin Max (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pioneer for the retraining of Jewish youth to emigrate to Palestine
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Czarnikau
DATE OF DEATH October 1944
Place of death Auschwitz