Otto clouds

Otto Wolken (born April 27, 1903 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † February 1, 1975 in Vienna) was an Austrian doctor and socialist who had to work as a prisoner doctor in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and documented illnesses and causes of death of his fellow prisoners. The Auschwitz survivor later testified as a witness about the Nazi crimes and camp conditions in the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial.

Life

Otto Wolken was the son of Jewish immigrants from Lemberg and grew up in Vienna. His father was deputy head of the Vienna Photographers' Cooperative. He completed a medical degree at the University of Vienna and was awarded a doctorate there in February 1931. med. PhD . From the beginning of March 1931 he worked in Lower Austria for two years at the hospital in Sankt Pölten and then from March 1933 as a general practitioner in Pyhra and from the beginning of November 1933 in Traisen .

Wolken was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria and was involved as a Schutzbund doctor . A few weeks after Austria's "annexation" to the National Socialist German Reich , Wolken was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo . In 1940 the University of Vienna withdrew his doctoral degree for political reasons , and in 2008 it was awarded posthumously or the withdrawal was declared null and void.

After camp and prison visits, including two years in a concentration camp Two bridges, clouds has been in the on 9 July 1943 Auschwitz-Birkenau deported . Just by chance, and because of his medical profession clouds escaped in the input selection of gasification . After receiving the prisoner number 128.828, he was soon employed as a prisoner doctor in the men's quarantine camp of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Without adequate medication, with insufficiently qualified prison nurses and under the most difficult hygienic conditions, he worked in the prisoner infirmary there. He made records of the living and illness conditions of the prisoners, who, despite being cared for after selections by SS members, were often gassed, and thus created a documentation of their mortality and morbidity . This conspiratorial "Chronicle of the Birkenau Quarantine Camp" was later an important piece of evidence for the concentration camp crimes. After the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 17, 1945, clouds were able to hide in the camp under difficult circumstances and thus avoid the death marches . He looked after the prisoners left behind in his block, provided them with medical care and organized food to ensure the survival of as many as possible. In Auschwitz-Birkenau he finally witnessed the liberation of the camp by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. After the liberation of the camp, Wolken immediately cooperated with the Polish main commission for the investigation of German crimes based in Kraków . His chronicle and statements formed the basis for the prosecution in several Auschwitz trials. His reports were also used in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals .

After the end of the war

Wolken returned to Vienna in 1945, was a member of the International Committee for Jewish Concentration Camps and Refugees (IK) set up in August that year with the participation of the City of Vienna . Cloud was involved in the second Engerau trial through his work for the Provincial Welfare Committee for Hungarian Deportees (seat: Palais Strudelhof ) . Furthermore, Wolken was actively involved in the reconstruction of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (IKG). For the IKG in Vienna he acted as health advisor and for many years as a board member. He was also vice president of the IKG in 1958/59. After the end of the war he was temporarily chief physician at the Rothschild Hospital. Finally he resumed his work as a doctor in Vienna. He acted as a member of the federal board of the SPÖ victims' organization “Association of Socialist Freedom Fighters and Victims of Fascism”. Wolken was the first of 357 witnesses to be heard at the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt . Wolken died in February 1975.

Fonts

• Otto Wolken: The Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau . Hamburg Institute for Social Research (Ed.): Die Auschwitz-Hefte, 2; Hamburg 1994 ISBN 3-8077-0282-2
• OW: Chronicle of the Birkenau quarantine camp, in Hans Günther Adler , Hermann Langbein, Ella Lingens-Reiner Ed .: Auschwitz. Certificates and reports. 2nd rev. Ed. European publishing house EVA, Cologne 1979 (Erstaufl .: 1962) ISBN 3434004114
  • 6th edition, with a foreword to the history of the edition by Katharina Stengel: Series 1520. Federal Agency for Civic Education BpB, Bonn 2014 ISBN 9783838905204 pp. 111–123

literature

• Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz. Ullstein, Frankfurt 1980 ISBN 3-548-33014-2
• Brigitte Bailer-Galanda : The Origin of Restitution and Compensation Legislation: The Republic of Austria and the Assets Stolen During the Nazi Era. Oldenbourg, Munich 2003 ISBN 3-486-56690-3
• Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2013 ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3
• Edith Kirsch: Dr. Otto Wolken - selfless helper in Auschwitz ; in: The Social Democratic Fighter - Numbers 1 to 3, 2005
• Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century . Volume 3: S – Z, Register. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 1501.

Web links

• Photo and short biography of Otto Wolken at www.auschwitz-prozess-frankfurt.de
• Testimony in the Auschwitz Trial: Dr. Otto clouds

Individual evidence

1. ↑ From specialist circles. (...) PhD. In:  General photographic newspaper. Commercial journal for Austrian photographers. Official organ of the “Fachverband der Photographengenossenschaften Österreichs” (Austrian Association of Photographers) (…) , year 1931, March 15, No. 3/1931 (XIII. Year), p. 10, column 1. (online at ANNO ). .
2. ↑ Berthold Weinrich. Among the employees by Erwin Plöckinger. Lower Austrian Medical Chronicle: History of Medicine and the Doctors of Lower Austria , Möbius, Vienna 1990, p. 804
3. ↑ Katharina Kniefacz, Herbert Posch (Red.): Otto Wolken . In: gedenkbuch.univie.ac.at , Memorial Book for the Victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938 , April 7, 2015, accessed on April 8, 2018.
4. ^ Witness statements in the Auschwitz trial: Dr. Otto clouds
5. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2013, p. 443
6. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz ; Frankfurt am Main, 1980; P. 235 ff.
7. ↑ Otto Wolken: The Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau ; in Hamburg Institute for Social Research (Ed.): The Auschwitz Hefte , Volume 2; Hamburg 1994; P. 261 ff.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Edith Kirsch: Dr. Otto Wolken - selfless helper in Auschwitz . In: The Social Democratic Fighter - Numbers 1 to 3, 2005
9. ↑ ^{a b} Susanne Blume Berger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Manual Austrian authors of Jewish origin 18th to 20th century. Volume 3: S – Z, Register. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 1501.
10. ^ The first wave of refugees: autumn 1945 to early summer 1946 . In: Fritz Bauer Institute (ed.); Survived and on the way. Jewish Displaced Persons in post-war Germany . Series title: Yearbook (...) on the history and effects of the Holocaust , year 1997. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main (among others) 1997, ISBN 3593358433 , p. 210.
11. ↑ The second trial against the murderers of Engerau. New bestialities of the SA men revealed. In:  Austrian Volksstimme. Central organ of the Communist Party of Austria , No. 85/1945, November 14, 1945, p. 3, column 2 f. (Online at ANNO ). .
12. ^ The first investigations into violent National Socialist crimes . From: Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider: " Keeping things tidy in your  own house". The Engerau crimes in court - the largest Austrian trial for violent National Socialist crimes against Hungarian-Jewish slave labor. In:  Zeitgeschichte , Volume 2007, Issue No. 6/2007: Post-War Justice and Nazi Crimes (XXXIV. Volume), p. 329 f. (Online at ANNO ). .