Rolf Abrahamsohn

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Rolf Abrahamsohn, 2019

Rolf Abrahamsohn (born March 9, 1925 in Marl ; died on December 23, 2021 there ) was a German merchant of Jewish faith from Marl and an important contemporary witness as a survivor of several Nazi camps .

Life

Abrahamsohn was born in 1925 as one of four children to a family of merchants from Marl. His father ran a clothing and shoe store. From 1931 he attended the Protestant Goetheschule in Marl; from 1934 the discrimination became so severe that he left school.

With the November pogrom 1938 , physical attacks and arson in the shop, the expulsion from Marl began; the family moved into a so-called Jewish house in Recklinghausen . His father and eldest brother were imprisoned. After their release from prison, they both fled to Belgium. The parental home was taken over by the local NSDAP and made into the local party headquarters.

At the age of 14, Rolf Abrahamsohn had to do forced labor , including for the Ruhrgas company in Gelsenkirchen. His younger brother died of diphtheria in 1940 .

In January 1942, Rolf Abrahamsohn was deported to Riga with his mother and the Jews who remained in Recklinghausen. He survived the ghetto there , the Kaiserwald concentration camp , in which his mother died of the cruel living conditions, the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig and months of forced labor in the Brüllstrasse concentration camp external command in Bochum. There he was employed in arms production and bomb clearance. In the last weeks of the war he was transported to Theresienstadt via Buchenwald and liberated there by the Red Army.

Abrahamsohn returned to Marl in hopes of finding surviving family members. However, his father and brother were deported from Belgium and murdered. An emigration to the USA failed and he did not want to risk a possible British internment in Palestine. Rolf Abrahamsohn rebuilt his parents' business in Marl and became a successful textile entrepreneur with his own production at times.

From the 1970s he became more involved in the Jewish community of Recklinghausen-Bochum, which he and other survivors established, and was its chairman from 1978 to 1992. At the same time he was active in the Christian-Jewish understanding and in establishing contacts with Israel. As a contemporary witness , he reported on his camp experiences and Jewish life in general in schools and other educational institutions.

The Recklinghausen district honored Abrahamsohn in 2011 with honorary citizenship. In 2020 Abrahamsohn received the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia .

Rolf Abrahamsohn died on December 23, 2021 at the age of 96.

Fonts

  • “What do we do when the war is over?” Stations in life 1925–2010 . Published by the Bochum Center for City History and the Jewish Museum Westphalia. Klartext Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0334-0 .

literature

  • Ulrich Brack (Ed.): Rule and persecution. Marl in National Socialism, Essen 1986 (new edition 2011).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see the account of Abrahamsohn
  2. ↑ see the newspaper report
  3. ↑ Order of Merit for Holocaust survivors from Marl ( Memento from January 6, 2020 in the Internet Archive ), Westdeutscher Rundfunk Cologne , January 6, 2020
  4. ↑ Rolf Abrahamsohn died at the age of 96. Waltroper Zeitung, December 24, 2021, accessed December 24, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Abraham's son, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German merchant and Holocaust survivor
BIRTH DATE March 9, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Marl
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Marl