Rudolf Neumann (resistance fighter)

Rudolf Neumann (born August 7, 1908 in Hamburg ; † February 23, 1999 there ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Street sign in memory of Flora Neumann and her husband Rudolf Neumann in Hamburg's Schanzenviertel

Rudolf Neumann came from a humble background. He attended the Talmud Torah School and then worked as an electrician. He met his wife Flora Andrade while he was active in the youth community of Jewish workers . The wedding took place in 1931 in the Bornplatz synagogue . After the National Socialists came to power , Neumann worked actively in the resistance of the KPD . A short time later he was arrested for the first time. He then spent eight months in protective custody in 1933/34 and was then called in to do “compulsory work” in Hamburg-Waltershof . In 1934/35 he was imprisoned for one year.

In 1937 the National Socialists ordered the evacuation of the Jewish cemetery on Grindel , while Neumann had to help relocate the graves. In 1938 he managed to escape to Belgium , followed by his wife and son Bernd. When German troops took Belgium during the western campaign in 1940, Neumann and his family were forced to part ways. Rudolf Neumann was housed in the Camp de Gurs and in an internment camp in Saint-Cyprien . He was then deported to Auschwitz and from there to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he witnessed the liberation of the camp. His wife Flora Neumann also survived the Holocaust in Auschwitz and the subsequent death marches by concentration camp inmates . Bernd Neumann spent the years of the Second World War in a Belgian monastery where his mother had hidden him.

After the war ended, the family members met again in Belgium. In 1951 Rudolf and Flora Neumann moved back to Hamburg. Here they opened a laundry. In the following decades Rudolf Neumann became involved as one of the most active members of the local Jewish community. He belonged to the Chewra Kadisha and washed deceased parishioners to commemorate his murdered parents and siblings.

Neumann never published himself, but spoke about his memories of the Buchenwald concentration camp. This resulted in the book The Child in a Suitcase in 1987 . A story from the Buchenwald concentration camp. the author Sylvia Hebisch.

Appreciation

In Hamburg's Schanzenviertel, near her former laundry , a street was named after Flora Neumann, a niece of Peggy Parnass , in 2010. Her husband Rudolf is also remembered in the text.

literature

• Wilfried Weinke: Neumann, Rudolf . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 2 . Christians, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-7672-1366-4 , pp. 298 .