Sally Epstein

Stolperstein , Max-Beer-Strasse 45, in Berlin-Mitte

Sally Epstein (born February 3, 1907 in Jastrow / West Prussia , † April 10, 1935 in Berlin ) was a Jewish painter's assistant. His conviction in connection with the death of Horst Wessel was overturned in 2009.

Life

Sally Epstein was a son of the tobacco worker Jakob Epstein and his wife Jenny (née Katzenstein). The historian Daniel Siemens was unable to find any survivors of the Holocaust from all of his numerous Jewish relatives . His parents died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp , one sister died in 1941, one brother was "deported to the east", where he perished, and another brother died in Jastrow in early 1939 under unexplained circumstances.

The painter's assistant Sally Epstein and Hans Ziegler were sentenced to death in a second trial in 1934 in connection with the 1930 assassination attempt on the National Socialist Horst Wessel . They are said to have confessed to grease when the perpetrators broke into Wessel's apartment.

The intercession of the Attorney General at the Berlin Court of Appeal and the District Court of Berlin and the oath chamber to the Reich Ministry of Justice , which in a petition for conversion of capital punishment into a lifelong prison sentence pronounced, was in vain; also a letter from the defense attorney in the first Wessel trial in 1930, Alfred Apfel , to Hermann Göring . On March 23, 1935, Adolf Hitler refused a pardon.

Epstein was on 10 April 1935 at the criminal prison Berlin-Plötzensee by ax executed . His grave is in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee . On February 9, 2009, at the request of Daniel Siemens, the Berlin public prosecutor's office conceded the Nazi injustice judgments against Epstein and Ziegler.

In August 2011 , a stumbling block was laid in front of his former residence in Berlin-Mitte , Max-Beer-Straße 45 (see list of stumbling blocks in Berlin-Mitte ).

literature

Heinz Knobloch : Poor Epstein. How death came to Horst Wessel. Christoph-Links-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-86153-048-1 .
- Heinz Knobloch: Poor Epstein. How death came to Horst Wessel. Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-7466-8021-2 (licensed edition).
Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel . Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201111037973 ( limited preview in Google book search [accessed August 30, 2018]).

Web links

Commons : Sally Epstein - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Hans-Joachim Neubauer : Trapped too. History of Justice Murder: the Sally Epstein Case. In: Zeit-Online . October 29, 1993, accessed on May 29, 2016 (review of Heinz Knobloch, 1993, see literature).
Christian Saehrendt : Horst Wessel - Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. In: buecher.hagalil.com. September 15, 2009, accessed on May 29, 2016 (critical review on Daniel Siemens, see literature ).

Individual evidence

^ Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 , pp. 275–277 ( preview in Google book search).
^ Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preview in Google book search).
^ Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preface in the Google book search). - Daniel Siemens also speaks of an "attack on Wessel's apartment by members of the 'Kulturverein Centrum', a unit of the illegal Red Front Fighters Association , on January 14, 1930 and his death as a result of a gunshot wound [...]. The sources suggest a spontaneous act in which political as well as private and financial motives played a role. The Red Front fighters' approach was too amateurish for a planned political murder , as the NSDAP portrayed it. For a quarrel among pimps , according to the version of the KPD , there was too much politics involved ”(Christian Saehrendt, 2009, summary of Siemens' thesis, see web links ).
^ Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preview in Google book search).
^ Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preview in Google book search).
^ Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preview in Google book search).
↑ This shows, according to Siemens, "that the German judiciary is now not only ready to take a more critical view of its own history, but is also capable of factually correcting earlier misjudgments ." Siemens, 1996, p. 277 ; see also Christian Saehrendt, 2009.

personal data
SURNAME	Epstein, Sally
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German painter's assistant, victim of the Nazi justice system
DATE OF BIRTH	February 3, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH	Jastrow / West Prussia
DATE OF DEATH	April 10, 1935
Place of death	Berlin-Plötzensee

[Siemens_S277-1] Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 , pp. 275–277 ( preview in Google book search).

[2] Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preview in Google book search).

[3] Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preface in the Google book search). - Daniel Siemens also speaks of an "attack on Wessel's apartment by members of the 'Kulturverein Centrum', a unit of the illegal Red Front Fighters Association , on January 14, 1930 and his death as a result of a gunshot wound [...]. The sources suggest a spontaneous act in which political as well as private and financial motives played a role. The Red Front fighters' approach was too amateurish for a planned political murder , as the NSDAP portrayed it. For a quarrel among pimps , according to the version of the KPD , there was too much politics involved ”(Christian Saehrendt, 2009, summary of Siemens' thesis, see web links ).

[4] Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preview in Google book search).

[5] Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preview in Google book search).

[6] Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist. Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 ( preview in Google book search).

[7] This shows, according to Siemens, "that the German judiciary is now not only ready to take a more critical view of its own history, but is also capable of factually correcting earlier misjudgments ." Siemens, 1996, p. 277 ; see also Christian Saehrendt, 2009.