Michael Umansky
Michael Umansky (born August 18, 1897 in Alexandrowsk , Ukraine ; died November 23, 1944 in the Hailfingen subcamp of the Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace ) was an actor and victim of the Holocaust .
Life
Michael Umansky was born in 1897 in the Ukrainian city of Alexandrowsk, the son of a wealthy restaurant owner. He sent his son to Switzerland to study medicine . However, Michael Umansky broke off his studies there to attend a Swiss drama school. He eventually worked on various Swiss stages, including at the Zurich City Theater .
It was also in Switzerland that Umansky met the Hanoverian actress Wilma Lassan , who was 13 years his senior (born around 1884 in Hanover; died after 1955). After her marriage, Wilma persuaded her husband to move to her hometown of Hanover with her.
At the time of National Socialism Michael Umansky gave acting lessons to a Gestapo man, despite the state-run persecution of Jews . Umanski - who “tended” towards communism - also discussed politics with him. He was arrested and deported to a concentration camp for the first time , presumably to the Dachau concentration camp . But according to the tape recordings of the contemporary witness Fritz Treu, Umansky was allowed to return to Hanover because he was married to a “non-Jewish woman”.
At the time of the November pogroms , the city of Hanover's address book for 1938 recorded Michael Umansky as a journalist and head of the household in the first floor apartment in Podbielskistraße 113B .
In the spring of 1939 the Gestapo asked the Umansky couple to vacate their shared apartment - today's address at Podbielskistraße 274 in Liststadt . Then Michael Umansky and his wife first moved to Wilma's parents. There, however, was provided by a resident in the same house and the NSDAP , national councilor that had Michael Umansky off. Thereupon a constant move to different places in the city began, before Umansky moved into a room in the “Georgsgasse” after the beginning of the Second World War in October 1939.
In the course of the Lauterbacher campaign , the Umansky couple were admitted to the “ Judenhaus ” on Scholvinstrasse. By 1942 at the latest, the National Socialists had committed the Umanskys and many others to the “Judenhaus” at 31 Herschelstrasse . The actor couple had been assigned a room there; the two shared the same hallway with the Kleeberg family, from whom the future Stolperstein godmother Ruth Gröne also comes.
After the house in Herschelstrasse was destroyed by the air raids on Hanover on the night of bombing from October 9th to 10th, 1943, the Umansky and Kleeberg families were instructed in the former Israelite horticultural school in Ahlem , which had been converted into a "Jewish house" a cold and damp barn was allocated on the site. In Ahlem those interned there had to do forced labor .
In 1944, fellow prisoner Gustav Kahn, who was also Jewish, told a political joke that Michael Umansky then translated to a Ukrainian. He then apparently denounced the two slave laborers. Michael Umansky was subsequently deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp on the collective transport on July 22, 1944 . There he was given the number 139 663. However, he was soon deported to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig , where he was given the number 100 525. At least after the Hitler-Stalin pact and the establishment of the Reich Commissariat Ukraine Umansky was a stateless person out, and in November 1944 in the satellite camp Hailfingen the concentration camp Natzweiler abducted in Alsace. All in all, he endured the system of “ annihilation through work ” for four months before he finally died of exhaustion on November 23, 1944 at the age of only 47. His body was cremated in the crematorium .
Michael Umansky's widow survived the Holocaust. After the war she lived - like Ruth Gröne, née Kleeberg and her mother - for another ten years in the former "Judenhaus" in Ahlem.
Umansky's name can be found on the memorial for the murdered Jews of Hanover , but with the note “ missing ” there.
In 2012 Ruth Gröne, whose father also did not survive the deportation and who died in the Bremervörde concentration camp at the beginning of 1945 , took over the sponsorship of the stumbling block that the artist Gunter Demnig had on December 4, 2012 in front of Umansky's formerly last voluntary residence at the - today - Relocated address Podbielskistraße 274.
See also
literature
- Volker Mall , Harald Roth : "Everyone has a name." Memorial book for the 600 Jewish prisoners of the Hailfingen / Tailfingen subcamp , Berlin. Metropol Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-940938-39-8
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Volker Mall: The inmates of the Hailfingen / Tailfingen satellite camp. Data and portraits of all prisoners , Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7386-0332-3 , p. 363; Preview over google books
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Veronika Thomas: Commemoration of the victims of National Socialism / 21 new stumbling blocks for Hanover , article from the page of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of November 26, 2011, last accessed on June 14, 2020
- ↑ Address book of the city of Hanover for the year 1938 , Part I: Heads of household / companies and businesses registered by commercial court / ordered by name , p. 517; Digitized version of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library - Lower Saxony State Library via the German Research Foundation
- ↑ Gerd Weiß : Liststadt in: Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany , architectural monuments in Lower Saxony, City of Hanover , part 2, vol. 10.2, ed. by Hans-Herbert Möller , Lower Saxony State Administration Office - Institute for Monument Preservation , Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Braunschweig 1985, ISBN 3-528-06208-8 , SS 77 - ( online via Heidelberg University Library) - as well as Groß-Buchholz in the addendum : Directory of architectural monuments acc. § 4 ( NDSchG ) (except for architectural monuments of the archaeological monument preservation), status: July 1, 1985, City of Hanover , Lower Saxony State Administration Office - publications of the Institute for Monument Preservation , pp. 17-19; here: p. 17
- ↑ a b Volker Mall, Harald Roth: "Everyone has a name." Memorial book for the 600 Jewish prisoners of the Hailfingen / Tailfingen subcamp , Berlin. Metropol Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-940938-39-8 , pp. 237, 319 preview of Google books
- ↑ Compare the inscription on the photo from June 14, 2020
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Umansky, Michael |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-Ukrainian actor, victim of the Holocaust |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 18, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Alexandrovsk |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 23, 1944 |
| Place of death | Hailfingen subcamp of the Natzweiler concentration camp , Alsace |