Sally Mayer
Sally Mayer (born June 7, 1889 in Mayen , Rhine Province ; † probably October 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp ) was a German doctor of Jewish descent and most recently head of the hospital and retirement home of the "Israelite Hospital and Beneficiary Foundation " in Würzburg . At his own request, he accompanied his last patients to the Theresienstadt ghetto .
Life
Sally Mayer was the son of master butcher Daniel Mayer and Sybilla Gottschalt in Mayen. After attending elementary school and high school, he studied medicine at the University of Würzburg . After the state examination in 1913, he completed a one-year internship in Cologne . During this time he published his dissertation in May 1914 on the subject of "Further contributions to the study of hay fermentation" . After the internship he became an assistant doctor at the municipal hospital in Fürth ( Middle Franconia ).
In October 1914, he enlisted in the First World War as a volunteer for the Bavarian army and was from May 1915 assistant physician in the 2nd Royal Bavarian engineer battalion . In the last year of the war, 1918, he worked as a medical officer. In the second year of the war, 1915, he had already suffered an injury to his thigh and later two more gas poisonings. For his services Mayer received the Iron Cross II. And I. Class, the Bavarian Military Merit Order , the Wound Badge and in 1934 the Cross of Honor of the World War donated by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg , the so-called "Front Fighter Cross " for participants in the First World War.
After the end of the war he lived again in Fürth and took up his position as an assistant doctor again. At the end of 1920 he settled in Fürth as a general practitioner and became a member of the resident armed forces - probably working against the rule of the councils . On March 23, 1923 he moved to Bad Kissingen and married there three days later, on March 26, 1923, Irma Bretzfelder (born October 21, 1895 in Bad Kissingen ; † probably in October 1944 in Auschwitz concentration camp), the daughter of the Jewish City Councilor Nathan Bretzfelder , owner of the “Villa Holländer” health resort in Bismarckstraße 12a (today No. 32), and Klara Goldstein . Since then he has lived and practiced as a general practitioner and spa doctor in the house of his in-laws. The couple remained childless.
From 1927 he was, as one of four Jewish doctors in Bad Kissingen, as a panel doctor approved what was then a special feature in times of doctors surplus. He later moved his practice and residence to today's Kurhausstrasse . His professional qualifications brought him high patient numbers and made him wealthy.
In Bad Kissingen Sally Mayer was a member of the board of directors of the Reichsbund of Jewish Front Soldiers and - like many other Jews - from 1926 to 1928 a member of the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP), which supported the republican form of government . In 1931 he published his scientific work "Paracelsus, the spa doctor and the balneology of his time" .
Despite the official " Ordinance on the Admission of Doctors to Work with the Health Insurance Funds " of April 22, 1933, which amounted to a professional ban for Jewish doctors, Mayer, as a deserved front-line fighter in the First World War, received an exemption. However, the riots against Jews also began in Bad Kissingen and on the evening of January 15, 1935, there were two firings from the street into the living room of the Bretzfelder / Mayer house. After the “ Nuremberg Laws ” came into effect in September 1935, discrimination increased further, Mayer's patient base decreased and his income declined, but he continued to practice under these difficult conditions. Only with the “ Fourth Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law ” of July 25, 1938 did his license to practice medicine expire with effect from September 30 of the same year, which is why he - now almost 50 years old - is only available as a so-called “ medical practitioner ” exclusively for Jewish patients in Bad Kissingen and Environment. From October 26, 1938, he lived with his wife and in-laws at Adolf-Hitler-Strasse 12, today's Kurhausstrasse.
On the night of the pogrom of November 9, 1938 , he was one of the 28 Bad Kissingen Jews who were taken into “ protective custody ”. First he was taken to Würzburg and later to the Dachau concentration camp . While still in Würzburg, on November 14, 1938, during the Gestapo interrogation, he had to undertake to emigrate to the USA as quickly as possible . Until then he wanted to take over the management of an Israelite old people's home in Frankfurt am Main . It was not until four weeks later, on December 10, 1938, that Sally Mayer was released from the Dachau concentration camp, like all the holders of the Front Fighter Cross, on the basis of a Göring decree. He was required to look after the Jewish sick in and around Bad Kissingen until he emigrated. But Mayer's efforts to emigrate to a cousin in the USA were unsuccessful: the passports applied for in February 1939 for himself and his wife did not materialize.
On March 15, 1939 Sally Mayer - after his application to the Gestapo submitted to the Gestapo at the end of February - succeeded Bernhard Gutmann in Würzburg and took over the management of the hospital and retirement home of the Israelite Hospital and Beneficiary Foundation in the Frauenland district Dürerstraße 20. He lived next door in the house at Konradstraße 7, in front of whose entrance there is a stumbling block in his memory. Mayer's remaining assets were " Aryanized ". When the transports to the concentration camps began in 1941, Mayer's tasks also included medical and emotional care at the Würzburg train station and at the deportation collection point for the Jews from Main Franconia .
On September 23, 1942, he and his wife Irma accompanied his remaining group of mostly old and helpless patients to the Theresienstadt ghetto, following their own “application to move their residence”. A week earlier, knowing that he was about to be deported , he asked the official authorities to extend the baggage regulations so that he could take his medical equipment with him to Theresienstadt and continue his medical work in the ghetto. However, all of his equipment and remaining assets were confiscated. Regardless of this, Sally Mayer worked as a doctor in the Theresienstadt ghetto and was supported as a nurse by his wife Irma.
After a two-year stay, Sally and Irma Mayer were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on October 19, 1944 , where both perished - he was 55 years old, she was 49 years old. Dr. Sally Mayer and his wife are officially "missing in Auschwitz" .
On September 22nd, 2010, Gunter Demnig , initiator of the international “ Stolpersteine ” campaign, laid two Stolpersteine in Bad Kissingen in front of the residential building at Kurhausstrasse 12 in memory of the couple Sally and Irma Mayer.
Publications
- Further contributions to the study of hay fermentation. Staudenraus publishing house, Würzburg 1914 (= medical dissertation).
- Paracelsus, the spa doctor and the balneology of his time. Levin publishing house, Bad Kissingen 1931.
See also
literature
- Hans-Jürgen Beck, Rudolf Walter: Jewish life in Bad Kissingen. Rötter Printing and Publishing, Bad Neustadt 1990, p. 178 f.
- Linda Lucia Damskis: National Socialist Persecution of Jewish Doctors in Bavaria. In: Torn Biographies, Jewish Doctors Between National Socialist Persecution, Emigration and Reparation. Allitera Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-86906-053-8 .
Web links
- Sally Mayer . In: Biografisches-Gedenkbuch-BK.de
- Sally Mayer . In: BadKissingen.de
- Sally Mayer . In: Bundesarchiv.de
- Sally Mayer . In: Biographical Database Jewish Lower Franconia
- Sally Mayer . In: Central database of the names of the Holocaust victims
- Sally Mayer . In: Stolpersteine-Wuerzburg.de
- Literature by and about Sally Mayer in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mayer, Sally |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German doctor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 7, 1889 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mayen , Rhine Province |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 1944 |
| Place of death | Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp |