Walter Lindenbaum

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Walter Lindenbaum (born December 11, 1907 in Vienna ; † February 20, 1945 in the Ohrdruf forced labor camp ) was an Austrian journalist and author of the Jewish faith . As a Social Democrat and because of his resistance to National Socialism as a writer , he and his family were arrested by the National Socialists.

Live and act

Walter Lindenbaum, who was born in the 10th Viennese district of Favoriten in the Kaiserin Elisabeth Wöchnerinnenheim , grew up in Leopoldstadt .

First he went public with publications in the Arbeiter-Zeitung , Das Kleine Blatt or Arbeiter-Sonntag , which were newspapers of the Social Democrats. The main theme of his texts were the little people in the time of unemployment caused by the global economic crisis . Lindenbaum became known to a group of people beyond the readership of these newspapers through his radio play " Großstadt ", which was broadcast on the radio on January 7, 1932 .

Walter Lindenbaum belonged to the " Association of Socialist Writers ", which publicly opposed the National Socialists in Germany and the growing fascism in Austria. At these events he was one of the speakers and his texts were also printed in foreign social democratic newspapers.

Walter Lindenbaum married his wife Rachel Liebling on December 26, 1933 in the Kluckygasse synagogue . On August 20, 1938 the two parents of their daughter Ruth became.

After the Austrian Civil War in 1934, Lindenbaum stayed in Vienna, unlike many other Social Democrats. Here he tries to secure an income for his family with reports on Viennese topics and texts for the city's cabarets.

After the connection of Austria to the Third Reich Walter Lindenbaum was organized by the Jewish Community of Vienna appointed and acted as a lightning-poet Birthday Feierer and agents of gifts broadcasts in concentration camps . The Judenrat and its employees were blackmailed into participating in the evacuation for the deportations, Lindenbaum himself was one such evacuator. He wrote a couplet about the researchers .

On April 1, 1943, the Lindenbaum family was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Walter Lindenbaum tried on the one hand with his texts presented in the cabarets there to distract fellow prisoners and on the other hand he wanted to document the prevailing living conditions. For example, the poem “ The Song of Theresienstadt ” was written by him.

Walter Lindenbaum was transported to Auschwitz on September 28, 1944 , his wife Rachel and daughter Ruth on October 6, 1944. The two were gassed soon after in Auschwitz-Birkenau . Walter Lindenbaum was later transferred to Buchenwald and then to the Ohrdruf satellite camp in Thuringia . According to the records kept in the concentration camp, he died on February 20, 1945.

Walter-Lindenbaum-Gasse in Vienna-Favoriten has been a reminder of Walter Lindenbaum since 1968 .

Works

  • Herbert Exenberger and Eckart Früh (editors): Walter Lindenbaum: You don't get fat from longing here - texts from a Jewish life , Mandelbaum Verlag M. Baiculescu, Vienna, 1998, ISBN 3-85476-012-4 .

literature

  • Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 401.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ A b Doron Rabinovici : Instances of powerlessness. Vienna 1938-1945. The way to the Judenrat. Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2000, ISBN 3-633-54162-4 , pp. 281-284
  2. ↑ see DÖW Mitteilungen 173, October 2005, p. 3 ( PDF ). Here also a copy of the poem.
personal data
SURNAME Lindenbaum, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian journalist and poet
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 1945
Place of death Ohrdruf Forced Labor Camp