Orli Reichert-Wald

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Orli Wald as prisoner 502, Auschwitz concentration camp on March 26, 1942
Orli-Wald-Allee in Hanover

Orli Reichert-Wald , born Aurelia Torgau , divorced Reichert , married Wald (born July 1, 1914 in Bérelles near Maubeuge ; † January 1, 1962 in Ilten near Hanover ) was a German resistance fighter and prisoner of Nazi persecution from 1936 to 1945 in prison and concentration camps . She was the elder in the prisoner infirmary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and was referred to as the "Angel of Auschwitz" because of her willingness to help.

Life

Origin, Communist Activity, Resistance and Imprisonment

She was born in France as the sixth child of the German machinist August Torgau and his French wife Maria . The First World War began shortly after she was born . As a result, the family was interned and then initially the mother and children were deported to Trier and, after the end of the war, the father too. The father and two older brothers later became involved in Trier for the KPD , whose local group they founded there. After finishing school, she completed an apprenticeship as a saleswoman in Trier and became a member of the Communist Youth Association (KJVD) in the 1920s . After the " seizure of power " she became involved in the political resistance and was therefore briefly arrested by the Gestapo for the first time in 1934 , but released again for lack of evidence. Her marriage to construction worker Fritz Reichert was closed in 1935, but he filed for divorce in 1936. Her husband was a former KJVD comrade, but his political views changed under the new rulers. In June 1936 members of her communist resistance group were arrested and charged with preparation for high treason . She had worked as a courier in Luxembourg for the resistance organization and surrendered to the Gestapo in Trier after she was threatened with arresting her parents if she did not show up. During the interrogation she was tortured by Gestapo officers. On December 21, 1936, at the age of 22, she was sentenced to four years and six months in prison by the Hamm Higher Regional Court. The arrest was probably also based on incriminating statements from her husband. Finally the divorce took place in 1939, also on the grounds that Reichert was a member of the SA and committed himself to National Socialism . As a result of her detention, she was unable to change the name Reichert, which she used during her sentencing and detention.

Concentration camp prisoner in Ravensbrück and Auschwitz

Despite having served her sentence in the Ziegenhain women's penitentiary near Kassel , she was immediately taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp after her release at the end of December 1940 , where she became friends with Margarete Buber-Neumann . Although she was promised impunity in the trial against the Luxembourg communist Zenon Bernard as a key witness in the case of incriminating statements, she exonerated the accused during the trial.

In March 1942 she was sent to Auschwitz with 998 female prisoners from Ravensbrück , where she was given prisoner number 502. She was employed in the notorious prisoner infirmary, where she became camp elder in March 1943 after falling ill with typhus in the winter of 1942/43. In the summer of 1943 she tried to suicide, but was rescued by befriended inmate women. She then stated that “she could no longer watch death constantly”. In the prisoner infirmary she experienced incredible atrocities: Concentration camp doctors who killed infants with phenol syringes , carried out human experiments and, instead of caring for them, selected the sick for gassing . In the camp, too, she was a member of the German resistance group. At risk of death, she helped and rescued Jewish and other prisoners. In appreciation, they called fellow prisoners the angel of Auschwitz .

In January 1945 she survived the death march from Auschwitz to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and the Malchow satellite camp . There she met inmate women whom she already knew from Auschwitz. The Auschwitz survivor Jeanne Juda reports the following about the reunion: “The girls were enthusiastic and cheered: Our Orli is with us again! ". Judah judges Reichert-Wald: "I don't know any prisoner functionary who has remained as human as she". In April 1945 she managed to escape from the Malchow subcamp, ill and weakened. She was raped by Red Army soldiers .

After the liberation from National Socialism

After the end of the war she lived in Berlin and joined the SED and the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN). From May 1946, she was physically weakened and spent almost two years in the Soviet occupation zone in the sanatorium for Nazi persecuted people in Sülzhayn in the Harz Mountains, where she was treated for her tuberculosis and depression that broke out again. In November 1947 she married Eduard Wald , whom she met during her stay in a sanatorium , Otto Brenner's brother-in-law , resistance fighter and Nazi persecuted like her. In the same year she moved to Hanover with her husband . Contrary to other representations, this marriage with the leading social democratic trade unionist lasted until the end of her life. Both had taken an offensive against Stalinist persecution and machinations of the SED and joined the SPD . With autobiographical short stories she tried to cope with the traumatic experiences of the concentration camp imprisonment and to argue for the recognition of her resistance activities.

Wald suffered from the consequences of her imprisonment until her death and was a patient in psychiatry for nine months in 1954, after which there were repeated lengthy psychiatric hospital stays. She tried to kill herself several times and was given electric shocks. The Auschwitz survivor Hermann Langbein visited her in 1960 to win the former prisoner functionary as a witness for the planned first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. In his presence, Wald worked through a list of names he had submitted to the end and gave detailed information about her memories. Langbein reported that Wald's hands were shaking due to the nervous strain and that he wanted to take the list from her again. However, Wald insisted on holding the conversation to the end. With the beginning of the Eichmann trial , she suffered a nervous breakdown. She died on January 1, 1962 in the Wahrendorff Institute in Ilten. The concentration camp survivor and friend of Walds Jeanne Juda stated that she had suicide: “She always suffered from not having done more for the prisoners.” According to another account, she had administered a high dose of medication due to considerable internal unrest got and died the same day due to years of mental and physical hardship.

Adélaïde Hautval , inmate doctor in Auschwitz, said about Wald as follows: "All in all a good comrade, but very unbalanced behavior, understandable [after so many years of concentration camp]". According to Langbein, there was hardly anyone “who performed his function in Auschwitz as unselfishly as Orli”.

Honors

In 1984, in the Wettbergen district of the city of Hanover, the street "Reicherthof" was named after Reichert-Wald. Relatives did not understand this ambiguous name as an honor. Therefore, in 2007 a street in the southern part of the city along the Engesohde cemetery , where she was buried, was renamed "Orli-Wald-Allee". A stumbling block was laid in Trier in 2007 to commemorate her , and Orli-Torgau-Strasse has existed in Trier since 2013. Since February 2016 the integrated comprehensive school in Uetze has been called “Aurelia-Wald-Gesamtschule”.

Letter to Ester Yofe-Schkurmann in Israel

Works

literature

Name of Orli-Wald-Allee at Engesohder Friedhof in the southern part of Hanover
  • Peter Wald: Messages from father and mother. Eine Jugend in Zwiespalt 1936 - 1948. Original edition, 1st edition, first printing, Schardt, Oldenburg 2003, ISBN 3-89841-085-4 .
  • Hiltrud Schroeder (Ed.): Sophie & Co. Important women of Hanover. Biographical portraits. Fackelträger-Verlag, Hannover 1991, ISBN 3-7716-1521-6 , pp. 259f.
  • Klaus Mlynek : WALD-REICHERT, Orly. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . P. 374.
  • Klaus Mlynek: Forest, (2) Orli. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 652.
  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e Once upon a time ... Aurelia Reichert-Wald on http://www.wochenspiegellive.de
  2. a b c d e Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons , Frankfurt / M. 2013, p. 330
  3. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt 1980, p. 148
  4. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt 1980, p. 248
  5. ^ A b c Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt 1980, p. 536
  6. Quoted from Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons , Frankfurt / M. 2013, p. 330
  7. Entry on Stolperstein for Aurelia Torgau-Wald in the database of cultural assets in the Trier region ; accessed on March 21, 2016.
  8. http://www.peter-wald.de Lecture by Peter Wald on March 1, 2016 in Uetze
  9. an experience report about the murder of a blind girl with a poison syringe by the SS, the daughter of a German officer, according to the statements of the Polish mother. First: the newspaper “Thüringer Volk,” April 10, 1948. The murderer with the syringe was SS medical officer Hans Nierzwicki , who went unpunished after 1945
  10. in the spelling Orly Reichert . Baum was later an SED functionary loyal to the line.