Rolf Weinstock

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Rolf Weinstock (born October 8, 1920 in Emmendingen ; † 1952 ) was a German Jew, writer and survivor of the Holocaust .

Life in the time of National Socialism

Rolf Weinstock grew up in Emmendingen. His brother Fritz Weinstock (1911–1945) was a member of the SPD and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold . After the takeover of the Nazis , he was already in May 1933 in " protective custody taken" and emigrated in May 1933 to France. Rolf Weinstock was arrested in November 1938 after the November pogroms and taken to the Dachau concentration camp . After he was able to return from Dachau on May 1, 1939, he was arrested again on October 17, 1940 with his mother, grandmother and the last Jews from Emmendingen and deported to the Gurs internment camp in southern France . His grandmother died there on August 22, 1941.

After a stopover at the Drancy assembly camp , where he arrived on August 9, 1942, he, like his mother, was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp . In Auschwitz, his mother was murdered in the gas chamber on August 12, 1942 . In the summer of 1942, Weinstock was ordered to work in the coal mines of the Jawischowitz satellite camp as a "civilian worker" , where he performed forced labor until it was closed. Nine days before the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945, he and other concentration camp prisoners had to start the death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he arrived on January 25. On April 11, 1945, he and his fellow prisoners were liberated from American units there.

writer

Weinstock returned to Emmendingen on June 5, 1945 and became head of the care center for the victims of National Socialism and chairman of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime . In his hometown he was ostracized during this time, was rejected and received hateful threatening letters. He began to summarize his memories of the persecution and had already put together a diary-like sketch by July 1945. With this, Weinstock had prepared one of the first books about the extermination of the Jews after the war and had to start looking for a publisher.

His search was only successful in 1948, when the communist Volks-Verlag in Singen am Hohentwiel was ready to publish the book. With the liberal Willi Karl Hebel (1912 to 2005) from Schwenningen, there was also a printer who printed Weinstock's first book with the title “The True Face of Hitler Germany” with an edition of 3000 copies.

Weinstock's report, however, was rarely bought and read. In 1950 his book, revised in line with the GDR ideology, was supposed to appear in the VVN publishing house under the title “Rolf, head up!” , But it also failed there. It was pulped the day it was published. The reason for this procedure was probably in Weinstock's description of the liberation of the Buchenwald camp, which, according to GDR historiography, was a self-liberation by communist prisoners, while Weinstock stated the approach of American tanks as essential for the abandonment of the camp.

The Schwenningen printing company Willi Karl Hebel later had to accept considerable economic disadvantages for its willingness to print the book.

Between 2002 and 2004, the Schwenningen historian Michael JH Zimmermann followed the development and reception of Weinstock's book together with a history teacher and five students from the grammar school at Deutenberg in a project in the subject of history.

Honors

  • In 1991 the city of Emmendingen named a path after the Weinstock family.

literature

  • Rolf Weinstock: The real face of Hitler's Germany. Inmate No. 59000 tells of the fate of 10,000 Jews from Baden, the Palatinate and the Saar region in the hells of Dachau, Gurs - Drancy, Auschwitz, Jawischowitz, Buchenwald 1938–1945. Volksverlag Singen / Htw. 1948
  • Rolf Weinstock: "Rolf, head up!". The story of a young Jew. Edited by Anna von Fischer. VVN-Verlag Berlin-Potsdam 1950.
  • Hans-Jörg Jenne, Gerhard A. Auer (Ed. On behalf of the city of Emmendingen): History of the city of Emmendingen. Vol. 2: From the beginning of the 19th century to 1945. Emmendingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-9811180-1-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jenne and Auer 2011: 465
  2. ↑ The true face of Hitler Germany, pages 7 ff. (Dachau) and 33 ff. (Gurs)
  3. ↑ The true face of Hitler Germany, pages 78 f (Auschwitz), 97 f (Jawischowitz) and 155 f (liberation)
  4. ^ Report in the Badische Zeitung
  5. ↑ The true face of Hitler Germany, page 181 f
  6. ↑ Jenne and Auer 2011: 466
  7. ↑ Michael JH Zimmermann: In the waiting room for Auschwitz. Stuttgarter Nachrichten , October 24, 2010, accessed on March 1, 2014 .
  8. ^ Report in the Südkurier
  9. ^ Report in the Südkurier
  10. ^ Report in the Badische Zeitung
personal data
SURNAME Weinstock, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Nazi persecuted and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Emmendingen
DATE OF DEATH 1952