Otto Josef Schlein

Otto Josef Schlein (born June 19, 1895 in Laurahütte ( Upper Silesia ), † October 3, 1944 in Auschwitz ) was a German doctor and communist .

Life

Schlein, the oldest son of a Jewish businessman wondered 1914 at Wettiner school in Dresden his Abitur from. He then began to study medicine in Berlin in 1914 . After completing the Physikum , he was deployed as a field doctor on the Western Front in 1917, where he was wounded on November 7, 1918. He was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class. From February 1919 to October 1920 he continued his medical studies, which he finished with a doctorate in 1921 . His dissertation , defended in 1921, is entitled "About X-ray Treatment of Pruritus Vulvae".

He specialized as a dermatologist . On October 15, 1922, he received a job as an assistant doctor without a salary, including with Carl Lennhoff at the Magdeburg Municipal Dermatology Clinic , which was converted into a paid position in April 1923. In the following May he married Anni Pieck (1903–1944) , a Jew, and in December he opened his own practice in Magdeburg. Since he often treated poor patients for free, he was called a doctor of the poor .

Otto Schlein became a member of the KPD around 1924 and was there for a time in the KPD district leadership and teacher at the MASCH ( Marxist Workers' School ). Through his teaching in Hebrew , he supported the immigration movement in Palestine . Schlein was also a member of the Association of Socialist Doctors and the local chairman of the Friends of the New Russia .

In 1933 he was imprisoned in Dornburg after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists . From 1935 he was only allowed to treat Jewish citizens as a result of the racial laws . This was followed by the withdrawal of his license to practice medicine and his doctoral degree. In 1936 he and his family fled to the Netherlands . After the occupation of the Netherlands by German troops, the entire family was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Theresienstadt ghetto - with the well-known "Magdeburg barracks", where u. a. housed the Jewish self-government of the ghetto - deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . There he worked as a prisoner doctor.

In 1944, the Schlein family were killed in the gas chamber in Auschwitz .

A street and the vocational schools IV “Dr. Otto Schlein ” in Magdeburg bear his name, and there are stumbling blocks in memory of him and his family.

literature

• Non-profit society for training, qualification and employment (Hrsg.): Historisches aus der Medizin in Magdeburg. , 1997, Magdeburg
• Martin Wiehle : Magdeburg personalities. Published by the Magistrate of the City of Magdeburg, Department of Culture. imPuls Verlag, Magdeburg 1993, ISBN 3-910146-06-6 .
• Hans-Peter Wolff: Schlein, Joseph Otto. In: Guido Heinrich, Gunter Schandera (ed.): Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon 19th and 20th centuries. Biographical lexicon for the state capital Magdeburg and the districts of Bördekreis, Jerichower Land, Ohrekreis and Schönebeck. Scriptum, Magdeburg 2002, ISBN 3-933046-49-1 .