Rudolf Beck (community leader)

Rudolf Beck (born November 6, 1900 in Hohenelbe , Austro-Hungarian Monarchy , † October 16, 1988 in Náchod , Czechoslovakia ) was a survivor of the Holocaust . From 1947 he was chairman of the re-established Jewish community in Náchod , which was dissolved during communist rule in the late 1960s.

Life

Rudolf Beck's parents were Josef Beck and Marie Beck, nee Aron. In 1902 the family from Hohenelbe moved to Náchod, where their father took up a position as an employee at the Jakob / Jakub Pick textile factory. Rudolf Beck attended grammar school there, which he interrupted at the age of 17 to volunteer in the Austrian army and take part in the First World War. After the war he continued his high school education and passed his Abitur in 1920. From 1922 to 1928 he worked in Bulgaria, where he represented several Czech textile companies, for which he was also to open up sales markets in the Balkans . He then joined the former textile dye works Ludvík / Ludwig Pick in Náchod, which at that time operated as "Přadelna a barevna as" and whose director was Mořic / Moritz Loew. He married his daughter Vilma in 1930. In 1932 their son Tomáš was born. As part of the mobilization in Czechoslovakia in 1938 , he joined the Czechoslovak Army as an officer . During the general mobilization in September 1938, he was called to military service, but this was repealed by the Munich Agreement .

After the fire in the Welzel warehouse in Náchod (požar Welzelova skladiště) in the night of August 30th to 31st, 1941, Rudolf Beck was arrested on the orders of the Gestapo for no reason and taken to the Small Fortress Theresienstadt on September 9th, 1941 . He was released on November 1, 1941. Like almost all Jews in Náchod, he and his family were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on December 17, 1942 . From there he was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp on September 29, 1944 (prisoner number B 1-1414). His wife and her son were also deported to Auschwitz on October 4, 1944, on one of the last transports, where they were immediately separated from their 12-year-old son. A short time later she was taken to the Flossenbürg labor camp in Freiberg in Saxony, where she had to do heavy work in an aircraft factory.

As in Theresienstadt, Rudolf Beck reported to Auschwitz as a carpenter. He was assigned to the Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp , a labor camp of the Buna-Werke of the IG Farben AG . Together with the other prisoners, Josef Beck was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945 . Due to total exhaustion, he was only able to return to Náchod on May 23, 1945. There he met his mother, who had escaped the Holocaust, and his wife, who had also survived the Holocaust. When the labor camp in Freiberg was dissolved in April 1944, the prisoners, including Vilma Beck, were transported to Mauthausen concentration camp in an open railroad car. During a stop in Ceske Budejovice , she jumped out of the car with a Prague cousin and hid in the next village of Včelná . From there they went to Prague on foot. Her son, who died in Auschwitz, did not return.

Rudolf Beck soon got a managerial position in the Pick textile factory in Velké Poříčí . In addition, over the next two years, together with Egon Pick, he earned services to thousands of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe as well as women from the nearby satellite camp of the Groß Rosen concentration camp in Sackisch , which had belonged to the Prussian district of Glatz until the end of the war . They all came to Nachod via the nearby, now Polish-Czech border crossing, Běloves, and wanted to continue on to the American Zone and Palestine . In Náchod they received food and accommodation, and they were given health care and were given basic clothing. On individual days, trains with up to 600 refugees were put together. The action was organized by the Czech Red Cross and financially supported by the American Joint Distribution Committee .

After the February revolution in 1948, with which the Communist Party came to power, Rudolf Beck lost his position in the textile factory for political reasons and was only allowed to do subordinate work. Until 1957 he worked as an unskilled worker in the Rubena textile association in Náchod, after which he had to unload goods from wagons at the train station. In the 1960s he worked as a warehouse clerk in a car repair shop.

Rudolf Beck, who had dedicated his memoirs "Vzpomínky pro moji dceru" ( Memories for my daughter ) to his daughter Marie Beck-Talafantová (1947-2006) , died on October 16, 1988. His ashes were in the deer park according to his wishes of the Ratibořice chateau . The memoirs were published posthumously by his daughter in 1995 . The foreword comes from the Náchod writer Josef Škvorecký .

literature

• Alena Čtvrtečková: Osudy židovských rodin z Náchodska 1938–1945 . Nakladatelství Bor, Liberec 2010, ISBN 978-80-86807-82-9 , pp. 194-204
• Lydia Baštecká, Ivana Ebelová: Náchod . Náchod 2004, ISBN 80-7106-674-5 , pp. 245–248
• Aleš Fetters, Eva Koudelkova: Zanechali stopu ... osobnosti kultury v Náchodě . Liberec 2013, ISBN 978-80-87607-23-7 , pp. 25f.
• Oldřich Šafář: Rudolf Beck - narodil se před 100 léty . In: Náš čas, year 2000, No. 43, p. 5

Individual evidence

1. ↑ * December 17, 1867 in Holofaus ; † April 18, 1939 in Náchod
2. ↑ * November 7, 1874 in Königinhof ; † December 1963 in Náchod
3. ↑ * August 16, 1867 in Prostějov ; † September 5, 1939 in Náchod; ∞ in mixed marriage with Růžena Hornerová, born December 11, 1875 in Kolín , † March 7, 1928 in Náchod
4. ↑ * February 7, 1908 in Náchod; † December 20, 1982 in Náchod; Anniversary of Michael Kraus' death: Drawing the Holocaust , ISBN 978-0-9229-4455-3 , p. 123.
5. ↑ * August 23, 1932 in Trutnov . Was baptized Catholic on December 23, 1938 at the request of his parents. † 1944/45 in Auschwitz concentration camp.