Pauline Maier (nurse)

Israelite hospital and beneficiary house in Mannheim (from 1877)

Monument in Baiertal

Pauline Maier ( October 21, 1877 in Baiertal - 1942 in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp ) was a German nurse.

Life and memory

Pauline Maier was the daughter of the cattle dealer Raphael Maier and Hannchen nee Marx, who were members of the Jewish community in Baiertal . Around 170 people belonged to the community around 1850. Pauline Maier grew up in Hauptstraße 8, next to the town hall, with two older sisters and attended elementary school in Baiertal .

After training as a nurse in Berlin and Breslau , she moved to the Jewish hospital in Mannheim in 1913 . During the First World War , she volunteered in military hospitals and transports the wounded. After the end of the war she returned to Mannheim, where in 1922 she was transferred to the position of superior at the Jewish hospital . On October 22, 1940, Maier voluntarily accompanied the people from the hospital during the deportation ( Wagner-Bürckel action ) to the Camp de Gurs . In the camp there she cared for the people. In August 1942, most of the camp's Jewish prisoners were transported to Auschwitz and murdered. Pauline Maier joined the transport of her protégés as a volunteer and was also killed in Auschwitz.

The municipal retirement and nursing home in Mannheim has been named after her since 1964. A street and a nursing home in Baiertal were named after her.

literature

• Maier, Pauline. In: Karl Otto Watzinger : History of the Jews in Mannheim 1650-1945. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-17-008696-0 , pp. 125-126.
• Susanne Schlösser: Pauline Maier . In: Jüdisches Leben in Baden 1809 to 2009. 200 years Oberrat der Israeliten Baden , Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0827-8 , pp. 251-252.