Tana Berghausen and Ruben Baer

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Ruben Baer with his family at the memorial for deported Jews at Bielefeld main station

Tana Berghausen (born October 28, 1942 in Bielefeld ; † March 4, 1943 in Auschwitz ) and Ruben Baer (born February 5, 1939 in Bielefeld; † October 12, 1944 in Auschwitz) were two Jewish children from Bielefeld who during the time of National Socialism in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . Two streets in their hometown were named after them to represent the names of all murdered children.

Biographies

Tana Berghausen

The road sign for Tana-Berghausen-Strasse in Bielefeld.

Tana Berghausen was born in 1942 as the first child of the Jewish businessman Julius Berghausen and his wife Ursula, nee. Ardel, born in Bielefeld . Julius Berghausen was only transferred from the retraining camp on Grünen Weg in Paderborn to the Bielefeld labor camp on Schloßhofstrasse 73a on July 4, 1941 . During a work assignment in Leipzig , he married Ursula Ardel on December 12, 1941. From January 10, 1942, she also lived in the Bielefeld labor camp, where her daughter Tana was born on October 28, 1942. Along with about 230 Jewish citizens from Bielefeld and the surrounding area has been the family the morning of March 2 1943 by Bielefeld in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau deported .

All 76 inmates of the Schloßhofstrasse camp were driven through the city to the freight yard by Gestapo officers. Among them were about 28 women and five small children under two years of age. Loaded with makeshift luggage, this degrading expulsion took place in front of the Bielefeld population.

After a 40-hour journey in closed goods wagons, little Tana was brutally beaten to death by an SS man on arrival in Auschwitz on the selection ramp in front of her parents. The death dates of the parents who were also murdered in Auschwitz are unknown. There is only a brief note about the family in the house book of the Bielefeld residents' registration office: Date of withdrawal: 2.3.43 - new apartment: unknown, eastern insert.

Ruben Baer

The street sign for Ruben-Baer-Straße in Bielefeld.

Ruben Baer was born in 1939 as the second son of the Jewish couple Richard and Irmgard Baer, ​​nee. Ostwald, born in Bielefeld. The parents married on December 29, 1933 in Bielefeld. His father worked as a raw material dealer in his father-in-law Louis Ostwald's shop. Even before Rubens was born, Richard and Irmgard Baer had attempted to leave the German Reich. His father was no longer alive at the time of birth. After the November pogroms , he was imprisoned with around 40–50 Bielefeld Jewish businessmen in the police prison on Turnerstrasse and deported on November 12, 1938 to the Buchenwald concentration camp . He and the Jewish merchants Alfred Levi and Julius Goldschmidt did not return alive to Bielefeld as action Jews . A few days later, on November 19, 1938, they were forcibly put to death in Buchenwald concentration camp. The sealed coffin of Richard Baer, ​​who, according to official reports, had allegedly divorced through suicide , had to be buried unopened under the supervision of the Bielefeld Gestapo.

His mother raised him and his four and a half year older brother Heinz in their grandparents' house on the corner of Werner-Bock-Strasse and Markgrafenstrasse under difficult conditions. The young widow's accounts were blocked in 1939. Only gradually did she manage to collect the numerous documents that the Nazi administration required for emigration. On August 31, 1939, the foreign exchange office of the regional tax office in Münster approved the departure - too late, as the attack on Poland began the next day and Jews were no longer allowed to leave.

In 1942 the family first moved to the so-called Judenhaus at Detmolder Strasse 4. On July 31, 1942, Ruben Baer was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto with his mother, brother and grandparents . From there, they maintained written contact with the relatives. In the spring of 1943, Ruben Baer's tonsil removal was documented. After two years and two months in Theresienstadt, the family was taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on October 9, 1944 - Ruben was given transport number Ep1318. Immediately after his arrival in Auschwitz, he was taken to one of the gas chambers marked with the inscription Brausebad and murdered.

memory

The fate of Jewish people in Bielefeld was first documented in 1961/62 at the suggestion of the German Association of Cities by Ursula Niemann in the list of Jews who lived in Bielefeld around 1933 and their fate (s) . This list, produced only as a typescript, was expanded in 1972. On this basis, in 1985 the historians Monika Minninger, Joachim Meynert and Friedhelm Schäffer, in collaboration with the Bielefeld City Archives in the course of oral history research, created a comprehensive documentation that also included the memories of surviving victims and people from the immediate social environment of the persecuted . It also describes the fate of the Berghausen and Baer families.

Irmgard and Ruben Baer are also the focus of some detailed studies by the historian Alfons Kenkmann . Using her example, this shows the role of the tax authorities in the persecution and plundering of the Jews.

In February 2004, the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation submitted an application to the mayor of Bielefeld, based on the word “they were sentenced to death because they were born” , based on the word coined by the Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer , in place of the names of the murdered children Street to be named after Ruben Baer. When the peace group of the old town Nicolaigemeinde / Initiative Mahnmal, as well as the class 9c of the Brodhagenschule with their teacher at the time, Dana Kuhlmann, had suggested naming streets after Jewish children, Mayor Eberhard David brought the proposal to the city council. The final decision on this was made on December 2, 2004 by the Jöllenbeck district council . Finally, on October 2, 2007, David inaugurated two streets named after Tana Berghausen and Ruben Baer in the district of Theesen in the Mühlenkamp development area.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Isermann: Memory of Jewish Children. Two streets are named after children who were murdered in Auschwitz. In: Bielefelder Tageblatt, Neue Westfälische, April 27, 2005 [with a photo of Tana Berghausen in a pram]
  2. ↑ Kurt Ehmke: The murdered children / Two street names remind us that the Nazis even killed babies . In: Bielefelder Tageblatt, Neue Westfälische, 3./4. October 2007 | Digitized at www.unglaublich-weiblich.de | Digitized at www.hiergeblieben.de
  3. ^ Monika Minninger, Joachim Meyer, Friedhelm Schäfer: Anti-Semitic persecuted people registered in Bielefeld. 1933-45. A documentation of individual Jewish fates. Bielefeld Contributions to Urban and Regional History , Vol. 4, Bielefeld 1985, pp. 15, 20.
  4. ↑ Dagmar Buchwald, Martin Decker: New homes as cheaply as possible based on the Bielefeld model - The Jewish camp Schloßhof 1940 to 1943 In: Bärbel Sunderbrink (Ed.): Der Schloßhof. Gutshof - Gasthaus - Jewish camp , Bielefeld tpk-Verlag 2012, pp. 114–145.
  5. ↑ Bernd Wagner: March 2, 1943: 75 years ago, Jewish people were deported from Bielefeld to Auschwitz. In: Historical "RückKlick". Bielefeld City Archives , 2018, accessed on July 22, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Bernd J. Wagner: Deportations in Bielefeld and East Westphalia 1941–1945 . In: Jupp Asdonk, Dagmar Buchwald, Lutz Havemann, Uwe Horst, Bernd J. Wagner: It was our neighbors! Deportations in Ostwestfalen-Lippe 1941–1945 . Bielefeld Contributions to Urban and Regional History Volume 24. Bielefeld 2012 (1st edition) Bielefeld 2014 (2nd edition), pp. 103-107.
  7. ↑ Here you can find a “moving goods directory” for the belongings of Ruben's not yet one year old, which his mother had to submit and have approved: [1] (PDF file; 274 kB).
  8. ^ Transport file Theresienstadt in Arolsen Archives : Index card Ruben Baer. https://collections.arolsen-archives.org Arolsen Archives International Center on Nazi Persecution , accessed on February 22, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Bernd J. Wagner: July 31, 1942: Deportation of Jews to Theresienstadt. In: Historical "RückKlick". Bielefeld City Archives , 2012, accessed on July 22, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Bernd J. Wagner: Deportations in Bielefeld and East Westphalia 1941–1945 . In: Jupp Asdonk u. a .: They were our neighbors! Deportations in Ostwestfalen-Lippe 1941–1945 . Pp. 94-102.

literature

  • Joachim Meynert, Friedhelm Schäffer: The Jews in the city of Bielefeld during the time of National Socialism. Bielefeld Contributions to Urban and Regional History Vol. 3, Bielefeld 1983, pp. 107–129.
  • Jupp Asdonk, Dagmar Buchwald, Lutz Havemann, Uwe Horst, Bernd J. Wagner: They were our neighbors! Deportations in Ostwestfalen-Lippe 1941–1945. Bielefeld Contributions to Urban and Regional History Volume 24. Bielefeld 2012 (1st edition) Bielefeld 2014 (2nd edition), pp. 94–107.
  • Brigitte Decker (Ed.): Homesick for Bielefeld? Displaced or deported: children from Jewish families remember. Bielefeld Contributions to Urban and Regional History, Vol. 22, Bielefeld 2007, pp. 142 ff.
  • Sabine Mecking : Didactic portfolio: tracking and administration. The economic plunder of the Jews and the Westphalian financial authorities. Münster 2001, pp. 21-28. Here: Seminar Session 2: Tracking Network. Work-sharing cooperation between tax, customs, police authorities and private companies. Online at www.lwl.org Portal Westphalian History . Retrieved July 19, 2019
  • Alfons Kenkmann : Confrontations: Biographical Approaches to Persecutors and Persecuted Between Robbery and Restitution. In: Hans Günter Hockerts ; Christiane Kuller (ed.): After the persecution: reparation for National Socialist injustice in Germany . Dachau symposia. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2003. Digitized Google Book Retrieved on July 26, 2019 | Book review in English on www.h-net.org . Retrieved July 19, 2019
  • Alfons Kenkmann : The Supervision and Plunder of Jewish Finances by the Regional Financial Administration: The Example of Westphalia. In: United States Holocaust Museum (Symposium): Confiscation of Jewish Property in Europe, 1933–1945. New Sources and Perspectives. Washington DC 2003. Online at www.archive.org . Retrieved July 19, 2019
  • Alfons Kenkmann : The Looting of Jewish Property an the German Financial Administration . In: Gerald D. Feldman, Wolfgang Seibelber (eds.): Networks of Nazi persecution: bureaucracy, business, and the organization of the Holocaust , Berghahn Books New York 2005, ISBN 3-923830-25-4 , pp. 148-167 ; Digitized Google Book Retrieved July 27, 2019