Otto Schiff

Otto Moritz Schiff (born May 8, 1875 in Frankfurt am Main , † November 15, 1952 in London ) was a British banker and Jewish activist from Germany.

Life and activity

Schiff was the son of a banker and a nephew of Jakob Heinrich Schiff (1847–1920), a leading New York investment banker. After attending school and serving in the Prussian army, Schiff moved to London, where he became head of the commercial bank Bourke, Schiff & Co.

In London, Schiff soon attained a leading position in the local Jewish community, in which he was Assistant Treasurer of the Jewish College and Overseer for the poor relief of the city's United Synagogue.

During the First World War, Schiff took part as a gunner in the British Army.

From 1927 to 1948 Schiff was President of the Jewish Temprary Shelter of the City of London , established in the 1880s . This originally served as the first port of call for Jews from Eastern Europe who had fled from there to Great Britain in order to avoid political persecution by the Russian Tsarist regime and later by the Bolsheviks.

Schiff became known because from 1933 he acted as chairman of the Jewish Refugees Aid Committee created in March of this year (from 1938 German-Jewish Aid Committee, from 1939 operating again under the original name), which was responsible for the admission of numerous Jews who, as a result of the establishment the sharply anti-Semitic National Socialist dictatorship in Germany had fled from this country to Great Britain, organized in Great Britain. He helped numerous Jewish refugees to settle in Great Britain. In this context, it was particularly important that he convinced the British government to allow the entry of Jewish refugees in return for the assurance that the costs they would cause would not be borne by the state, but would be borne by the Jewish communities and organizations.

The National Socialist police officers classified Schiff as an enemy of the state because of his activities: In the spring of 1940 the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin placed him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who would be succeeded by the occupation troops in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Special SS commandos were to be identified and arrested with special priority.

In 1924 he became Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his war refugee work. 1939 Commander of the Order.

family

Schiff's brother Ernst Heinrich Schiff (1881–1931) was the founder of the hotel opened in 1914 for Belgian refugees in Poland Street in London. He also served as Warden of the Great Synagogue of London and President of the Jewish Religious Education Board.

literature

• AJ Sherman, P. Shatzkes: Otto M. Schiff (1875–1952) Unsung Rescuer . In: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book , Vol. 54, 2009, pp. 243-271.
• William D. Rubinstein, Michael Jolles, Hilary L. Rubinstein (Eds.): The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2011, ISBN 978-1-4039-3910-4 , p. 872.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on the ship on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .