Robert Mandler

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Robert Mandler (born May 4, 1896 in Vienna ; died October 30, 1944 in Auschwitz concentration camp ) was an Austrian businessman, a functionary in the Jewish community in Prague and a prisoner in the Theresienstadt ghetto who was a victim of the Holocaust .

biography

Robert Mandler lived with his wife Martha, (born Fischer, 1896 Prague - murdered January 30, 1943 in Theresienstadt) and their daughters Rita (born in Vienna 1923, murdered on October 30, 1944 in Auschwitz) and Hertha L. (born Vienna 1921 - died London 2009) in Vienna's Keilgasse 9.

Because of the persecution of Jews in Vienna, which began immediately with the German invasion of Austria , Mandler had to emigrate to Prague in Czechoslovakia in 1938 . Mandler was in charge of the Jewish Emigration Aid transport office founded in March 1939 on Wenceslas Square . From 1939/1940 he worked in the emigration office as a liaison to the SS .

He was the head of the transport department of the Prague Jewish Religious Community (JKG). According to HG Adler , he and his colleagues were hated by those deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto and were called The Circus . However, the sharpness of the criticism of Adler's portrayals of the negative role of Jewish self-government is often questioned today. Doron Rabinovici wrote in 2000 that the leading functionaries of the Jewish community were nothing but "hostages", "who were liable with their lives for the other persecuted". Anna Hájková , a historian at the University of Warwick, wrote about Mandler:

“Robert Mandler, who emigrated to Czechoslovakia in 1938, worked in the emigration office as a liaison to the SS from around 1939/40. He organized illegal transports and demanded large sums of money for help with emigration. Later, as a representative of the Jewish side, he managed the collection camp in the Prague exhibition halls - with the help of his brother-in-law Fischer. When he arrived in Theresienstadt in 1943, he was mistreated by the prisoners. He later headed a section of the ghetto watch for a while, and according to some reports, he worked as a confederate. His wife Martha Mandler died of pneumonia in June 1943. Mandler and his daughter Rita were sent with the last transport to Auschwitz for liquidation on the basis of an "instruction". "

Mistreatment Mandlers are recorded in a diary of Gonda Redlich, who refused with the words: "who is without blemish, that he cast the first stone." Later headed Mandler a department of the ghetto police and became the deputy head of the Security Forces Karl Loewenstein appointed .

Mandler played a role in counting the approximately 40,000 inmates of the Theresienstadt ghetto in the nearby Bauschowitzer Kessel on November 11, 1943, because he miscounted, just like the camp commandant. This meant additional agony for the inmates, who had to endure the whole day under machine gun guard in the valley basin. In August / September 1944 he worked on the film Theresienstadt .

Mandler's daughter Hertha Lowy was the only survivor of the family. She and her boyfriend had planned to emigrate to England from Austria as early as 1937. She obtained her exit permit in Prague on her own and emigrated to England in 1939.

literature

  • William R. Perl : Operation action: rescue from the Holocaust , Frederick Ungar Publishing Corporation, New York 1983.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.lettertothestars.at/liste_ermordete.php?numrowbegin=0&id=53851&action=search&searchterm=Martha+Mandler
  2. ^ Escape from the Nazis: From the shame of loving Vienna
  3. ↑ The life story of Hertha Lowy ( Memento from March 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Peter Heumos: The emigration from Czechoslovakia to Western Europe and the Middle East 1938-1945
  5. ↑ "because of the" traveling show "it helped put in motion"
  6. ^ HG Adler: Theresienstadt 1941-1945. The face of a coercive community . Mohr, Tübingen 1955; Reprint: Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 3-89244-694-6 , partly online HG Adler: Theresienstadt: the face of a forced community ; P. 70
  7. ^ Jiří Kosta: HG Adler's magnum opus on the Theresienstadt ghetto. Critique of a standard work . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , 58, 2010, no. 2, pp. 105-133.
  8. ↑ Doron Rabinovici : Instances of powerlessness. Vienna 1938-1945. The way to the Judenrat. Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2000, ISBN 3-633-54162-4 , p. 147.
  9. ↑ The Austrian database on the persecution of Jews letters to the stars http://www.lettertothestars.at/liste_ermordete.php?searchterm=Robert+Mandler&action=search&x=27&y=10
  10. ↑ Egon Redlich; Saul S. Friedman : The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington-Kentucky, USA 1992, ISBN 9780813118048 , p. 101. Can be viewed online partly via google books [1]
  11. ↑ The historian Jakov Tsur on the homepage H-net - H -holocaust Discussions logs, October 4, 1999 here
  12. ↑ http://www.lettertothestars.at/lastwitnesses_pers.php?ctype=1&uid=1087&from=
personal data
SURNAME Mandler, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian businessman
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp