Max Markreich

Max Markreich (born October 11, 1881 in Weener (East Friesland), † November 27, 1962 in San Francisco (USA)), was the chairman of the Jewish community in Bremen .

biography

Markreich was the son of a cattle dealer. He attended grammar school in Leer and Hamburg and obtained secondary school leaving certificate. He completed a commercial apprenticeship in Bremen. In 1902, after the father's death, the family moved to Bremen. In 1909 he opened in the street in front of the stone gate a commission business . In 1912 he bought a sack wholesaler. In 1912 he married Johanne Behrens. Both had two daughters and a son. He was a soldier in the First World War . From 1918 he lived at Kohlhöcker Strasse 66.

In 1916 Markreich became a member of the municipal council of the Jewish community in Bremen and in 1924 he was chairman of the municipal council. In 1928 he retired from his business while maintaining the partnership. He devoted himself more and more to the tasks of his community and wrote articles about the meaning and history of Judaism in Bremen. He fought against increasing anti-Semitism . When the National Socialist era began in 1933 , there were 1,314 members in the Jewish community in Bremen. In 1933 several members of his family emigrated. After the “Reichskristallnacht” of 1938, he and 160 other Jews were sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . They only had to stay for a short time, but were advised to emigrate abroad with their families as soon as possible.

He was able to emigrate to Trinidad at the end of 1938 . When he was interned there in 1940 after the outbreak of World War II , he moved to California in the United States in early 1941 . He changed his name to Markrich. At the same time in 1942 in Germany 114 Bremer Jews in the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Theresienstadt were deported and murdered .

After the war he finished his books on the history of the Jews in and around Bremen. The original is in the Leo Baeck Institute in New York .

Works

• History of the Jews in Bremen and the surrounding area ; Edited by Helge-Baruch Barach-Burwitz. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-692-1 .
• The memory book of the Jewish community in Emden. In: Yearbook for the Jewish communities of Schleswig-Holstein 5, 1933/1934
• The Jews in East Frisia, branches of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Judaism 1378-1945 (typescript, East Frisian landscape)

See also

• Bremen at the time of National Socialism

literature

• Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
• Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .