Renate Lasker-Harpprecht

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Renate Lasker-Harpprecht (June 2020)

Renate Lasker-Harpprecht (born January 14, 1924 in Breslau ; died January 3, 2021 in La Croix-Valmer ) was an author and journalist . She survived imprisonment in the concentration camps Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and reported about it. She was one of the few contemporary witnesses to the persecution of Jews by the National Socialists who lived after 2010 .

Life

Renate Lasker was one of three daughters of the Jewish lawyer Alfons Lasker (a brother of the American chess master Edward Lasker ) and his wife Edith (née Hamburger), a violinist. At the end of 1939, the parents managed to get their eldest sister Marianne to safety in England. However, the two younger sisters Renate and Anita had to stay in Breslau. In 1942 the parents were deported and murdered. The daughters were sent to an orphanage and had to work in a paper mill. The two young girls tried to escape to France with the help of forged passports and the support of Werner Krumme and his wife Ruth, who was related to them, but were arrested at the train station and on June 5, 1943 for forging documents (also in favor of French prisoners of war; for this they were awarded the “Médaille de la Reconnaissance Française” after the war) and sentenced to prison terms. Instead of imprisonment, they were finally deported to concentration camps (to Auschwitz from December 1943 until the evacuation in October 1944 and to Bergen-Belsen until April 1945). As a member of a camp orchestra , her sister had special conditions of detention.

Both sisters survived imprisonment. On April 15, 1945, Patrick Gordon Walker interviewed the sisters amidst the mountains of corpses at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. While the sound document with her description has probably been lost, the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation found a recording of Anita Lasker's report at the same time in the German Broadcasting Archive. It is most likely the first recorded and preserved testimony of a survivor of the Shoah .

Immediately after the war and imprisonment, Renate Lasker became an interpreter for the British Army. She later worked for the BBC in London, then also for the WDR in Cologne and for the ZDF in the USA. For many years she was not asked about her concentration camp experiences. In 1972 she published the novel Family Games . In 2014, the cover story of a German newspaper published a detailed interview with the then ninety-year-old on the anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945.

From 1982 she lived as a French woman in La Croix-Valmer on the Côte d'Azur ; until his death in September 2016 together with her husband, the author and journalist Klaus Harpprecht .

In 2016 she received the Prize for Understanding and Tolerance ; The award is given by the Jewish Museum Berlin . She died in early January 2021 shortly before her 97th birthday.

Publications

  • Renate Lasker-Harpprecht: Family games. Ullstein , Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1972, ISBN 3-550-06223-0 .
  • Renate Harpprecht: It was the day when life began all over again. In: Frankfurter Rundschau of April 13, 2002 (memories of the liberation from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945; the article is available online at www.imdialog.com).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Auschwitz does not allow any emotion." , Renate Lasker-Harpprecht, interviewed by Giovanni di Lorenzo , Die Zeit , No. 19 of April 30, 2014, pp. 11-14
  2. ↑ Stefan Meining : The story of a radio address from the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. ( Memento from May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: BR.de from May 6, 2014
  3. ↑ Cultivated Boldness . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1972, p. 180 ( Online - Mar. 13, 1972 ).
  4. ↑ Peter-Philipp Schmidt: Renate Lasker-Happrecht: One of the last witnesses , faz.net , January 5, 2021
personal data
SURNAME Lasker-Harpprecht, Renate
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Auschwitz survivor, author, journalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 2021
Place of death La Croix Valmer