Selma Zwienicki

Selma Zwienicki , also Zelma Swinitzki , (born June 8, 1882 in Hamburg ; † November 10, 1938 in Bremen ) was a German woman and one of the five Jewish victims who were murdered by the National Socialists in Bremen during the Night of the Pogroms.

biography

Zwienicki was the youngest daughter of the schumacher Koppel Stiefel and his wife Elise. She trained as a kindergarten teacher and as a commercial secretary and was employed as an accountant in Hamburg. In 1916 she married the Ukrainian locksmith Joseph (Josef) Zwienicki, who had lived in Bremen since 1914. Both opened a bicycle and motorcycle shop with a workshop at Hohentorstrasse 49/53 in Neustadt . She ran the commercial part in the shop. Both had four children: Gerd (* 1917), Benno (* 1918), Liesel (* 1921) and Alfred (* 1925). Gerd graduated from high school in 1936 and studied at the Torah Academy Yeshiva in Frankfurt am Main and at the Jewish teachers' college in Würzburg.

On the night of the Reichspogrom, the family heard the noise of the SA men in front of the house and Joseph Zwienicki fled over the roofs. The SA men broke into the house and met Selma Zwienicki in the bedroom. When she was unable to answer the question about her husband's whereabouts, she was shot. The son Benno ran away to fetch a doctor, who did not come. The son Alfred was taken into “ protective custody ” and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and imprisoned for six weeks. The son Gerd Zwienicki returned to Bremen; On behalf of the Israelite Community, he prepared the construction of a school for the Jewish children and negotiated this with the Gestapo . Due to the boycott, the shop was closed in 1938 and the house was foreclosed. The surviving family immigrated to Montreal , Canada. Son Gerd (1917–2011) moved to the United States, took the name Jacob G. Wiener, completed his training as a rabbi , received his doctorate and became a social worker in New York .

Commemoration

Memorial to the victims

OUR JEWISH CITIZENS MARTHA GOLDBERG DR. ADOLF GOLDBERG HEINRICH ROSENBLUM LEOPOLD SINASOHN SELMA SWINITZKI WERE MURDERED IN THIS CITY ON THE NIGHT OF November 9-10, 1938

A process of coming to terms with the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era did not begin in Bremen until the late 1970s.

• Not far from the main synagogue of the Jewish community in Bremen , which was set on fire and destroyed in 1938, the memorial for the victims of the “Reichskristallnacht” with the above inscription was erected in 1982 in front of the Landherrn-Amt house on Dechanatstrasse in the Schnoorviertel .
• On November 9, 2005, the son Gerd spoke at the memorial for the murdered victims of the pogrom night in Bremen and was the guest of honor at the “Night of Youth” in Bremen's town hall .
• A stumbling block in memory of Selma Zwienicki is located in Bremer Neustadt, Hohentorstr./Ecke Gr. Sortillienstraße. See also: List of stumbling blocks in Bremen

Literature, sources

• Edith Laudowicz : Zwienicki, Selma (Zelma), b. Boots . In: Women's history (s) , Bremer Frauenmuseum (ed.). Edition Falkenberg, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95494-095-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ According to the memorial plaque and inscription on the house, Hohentorstraße 49/53
2. ↑ see the American links to Jacob G. Wiener
3. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Bremen: Selma Zwienicki, b. Stiefel, * 1882 victim of a pogrom, shot dead November 10, 1938

Web links

• Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener, A student in a Nazi School (American)
• Gerd Jacob Zwienicki on the website of the Holocaust Encyclopia (American)
• Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener (Gerd Zwienicki) (American)
• Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener: Arrest on Kristallnacht (American)