Walter Lustig

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Walter Lustig (born August 10, 1891 in Ratibor ; died 1945 in Berlin ) was a German physician who headed the Jewish Hospital in Berlin during the Nazi era and was a leader in the Reich Association of Jews in Germany .

Life

Walter Lustig was the son of the Jewish businessman Bernhard Lustig and his wife Regine, née Besser. He first attended the municipal elementary school in Ratibor and then the royal high school there, where he finished his school career in March 1910 with the Abitur . He then completed a degree in medicine with a focus on surgery and natural sciences at the University of Breslau , which he graduated with the state examination at the end of February 1915. Lustig received his license to practice medicine a month later . Lustig, from 1913 a member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory , became a volunteer assistant at the Anthropological Institute of the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University in Breslau in early 1914. Lustig converted from Judaism to Christianity as a young man and belonged to the Baptist religious community .

After the beginning of the First World War , Lustig was deployed as a volunteer with the German Army in Breslau as a military doctor in a hospital. While working as a military doctor , he received his doctorate in 1915 in Breslau with the dissertation "The skeletal remains of the lower extremity from the late diluvial site of Hohlerfels and their racial morphological position" med. and in 1916 Dr. phil. with the dissertation "A new Neanderthal find".

After the end of the war, Lustig worked as a Prussian medical officer in Koblenz from 1920 . In this function he collected information on public health and passed it on to the Prussian Ministry for Public Welfare . He also ran his private practice.

Lustig moved to Berlin in 1927. At the end of January 1927 Lustig married the non-Jewish doctor Annemarie Preuss (born June 4, 1897 in Breslau). The marriage remained childless. At the beginning of February 1927, Lustig joined the administration of the Berlin police. Lustig finally made a career within the Berlin police administration. From 1929 to 1933 he headed the medical department at the Berlin police headquarters and was promoted to senior medical officer and senior government councilor. In this role he was responsible for health care in schools and homes. Furthermore, his field of activity also included the training of medical staff. Lustig was the author of several books, including the standard work "The doctor as a public health officer, health politician and judicial expert" (1926), which became known under the name "Der Kleine Lustig".

time of the nationalsocialism

After the National Socialists came to power , Lustig was deposed and, in October 1933, dismissed from the police force due to the Law on Civil Servants. His request to be allowed to remain in the civil service as a war veteran through the " front fighter privilege " was rejected because his work as a military doctor in Wroclaw was not recognized as a frontline deployment. He then lived on a pension of RM 500 .

From 1936 at the latest he was employed by the administration of the Jewish community in Berlin . His license to practice medicine was revoked in 1938. Lustig became a victim of anti-Jewish measures, so he had to pay a Jewish property tax of RM 21,400 and hand over valuables.

After the establishment of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany , from July 1939 Lustig headed the health care division of the welfare department under Conrad Cohn .

Medical director of the Jewish Hospital Berlin

In December 1941, the Nazi regime set up an “Investigation Department for Transport Complaints” at the Jewish Hospital Berlin , where the transportability of Jews was to be determined. Lustig had to head this department. By order of the Nazi authorities, Lustig was forced to select 91 hospital employees for deportation to concentration camps in October 1942 . On the other hand, in several cases he was able to obtain provisions for medical reasons for people threatened with deportation, as long as this was possible.

On October 20, 1942, Lustig became the medical director of the Jewish Hospital in Berlin . When the Gestapo and Kripo wanted to close the Jewish hospital after the factory action on February 27, 1943, Lustig managed to avert this project by pointing out that there was no approval. Thereupon 300 hospital employees were selected, who were taken to concentration camps with their families. In June and November 1943 patients were deported from the Jewish hospital. Lustig had to create deportation lists several times. From the beginning of March 1944, the hospital's pathology building served as a collection point for Jews, some of whom were deported from there to concentration camps.

Head of the Rest of the Reich Association

From the end of 1942 he was also a member of the board of the Reichsvereinigung, to whose board meetings he had previously been invited several times as an expert on health care. After the offices of the Reichsvereinigung closed on June 10, 1943 and the last representatives of this organization were subsequently deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto , Lustig was head of the so-called Rest-Reichsvereinigung from June 1943 until the end of the Second World War . With the exception of Lustig, no leading employees of the former Reich Association belonged to this much smaller and less influential organization. Lustig was exempted from deportation because he lived in mixed marriage . However, his father was taken to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Lustig's wife was obliged to work at the Traunstein Municipal Hospital , where she worked as an assistant doctor. The remainder of the Reichsvereinigung had its official seat in the premises of the Jewish Hospital at Iranische Strasse 2. This organization was responsible for the social welfare of Jews in mixed marriages as well as the "full Jews" who were spared from deportation and the compulsory asset transaction to the German Reich . In addition, Lustig kept in contact with the 41 shop stewards appointed in the Reich who were responsible for Jewish “mixed spouses” and their children and who were subordinate to the rest of the Reich Association. Lustig was repeatedly by the authorities responsible for residual Reich Association and the Jewish Hospital employees due to its leading positions Eichmann Unit Fritz Wöhrn heard.

After the end of the war

After the end of the Second World War , Lustig remained head of the Jewish Hospital, which immediately resumed regular operations. He also offered to act as a medical officer in the Berlin district of Wedding and to take over the management of the local health department. Together with his colleagues from the remaining Reichsvereinigung, he tried unsuccessfully from May 25, 1945 to have this organization recognized as the legitimate representative of the surviving Jews and as the new Jewish community in Berlin.

Finally, Lustig was confronted by Auschwitz survivor Bully Salmen Schott in the Jewish hospital, who blamed Lustig for the deportation of his mother and her death. After a verbal battle in the presence of Soviet officers, Schott struck down Lustig. At the end of June 1945, Lustig was arrested by members of the NKVD after a complaint from surviving Jews from the assembly camp for cooperation with the Gestapo . He was then imprisoned and sentenced to death by a Soviet military tribunal. At the end of December 1945 he is said to have been executed in the Rummelsburg prison. According to other sources, he is said to have committed suicide in the winter of 1945 in the special prison No. 6 of the NKVD in Berlin-Lichtenberg. The Amtsgericht Berlin-Wedding put on 19 October 1954 as the official date of death to December 31, 1945 established.

Lustig is portrayed as an ambivalent personality: on the one hand, he is said to have cooperated very closely with the Nazi authorities and implemented their requirements; on the other hand, he is said to have saved Jews from being transported to the extermination camps through hospitalization or other interventions .

Works

  • The skeletal remains of the lower extremity from the late diluvial site of Hohlerfels and their racial morphological position . Braunschweig 1915
  • A new Neanderthal find . Wroclaw 1916
  • The ratio of the collo-diaphyseal angle to the neck and shaft of the thigh . Wiesbaden 1916
  • Forensic medicine guide including d. judicial Psychiatry: For students, doctors, etc. Lawyers . Berlin 1925
  • The fight against bungling . Berlin 1926
  • Forced examination and treatment . Munich 1926
  • The doctor as a public health officer, health politician and judicial expert . Berlin, around 1926
  • Law and Justice in the Hospital . Berlin 1930
  • Anatomy and Physiology e. Leipzig 1931
  • Laboratory and X-ray institute in law and law, including d. official examination u. Training regulations f. techn. Assistants in Prussia and other German countries . Leipzig 1931
  • Law and jurisprudence for nurses, nurses for babies and nurses, social workers, masseurs, midwives and care-givers: Ein Lehrb. in question u. Answer . Berlin 1931; Berlin 1935
  • Employing untrained technical assistants . In: Reveta 1932, p. 138 ff.
  • The theoretical foundations of practical nursing: Ein Lehrb. in question u. Answer . Leipzig 1933; Berlin 1936

literature

  • Volker Klimpel: Doctors Death: Unnatural and Violent Death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-2769-8 .
  • Beate Meyer: Walking a tightrope between responsibility and entanglement - The Reich Association of Jews in Germany and the Jewish Community of Berlin 1938–1945. In: Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon (ed.): Jews in Berlin 1938–1945. Accompanying volume to the exhibition of the same name in the "New Synagogue Berlin-Centrum Judaicum Foundation". Philio Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-8257-0168-9 .
  • Gudrun Maierhof: Assertion in Chaos: Women in Jewish Self-Help 1933–1943 . Campus Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-593-37042-5 .
  • Daniel B. Silver: Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. 2004, ISBN 0-618-48540-6 . (German: Survival in Hell. The Berlin Jewish Hospital in the “Third Reich”. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86650-580-9 )
  • Lustig, Walter , in: Joseph Walk (Ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 249

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ With Volker Klimpel: Doctors Death: Unnatural and violent death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix. Würzburg 2005, p. 135 and Walter Lustig: A new Neanderthal find . Inaugural dissertation at the University of Breslau, Breslau 1916, p. 47 (curriculum vitae) is given as the date of birth August 10, 1891, for Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon (ed.): Juden in Berlin 1938–1945. Berlin 2000, p. 325 on August 19, 1891.
  2. ↑ a b Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon (ed.): Jews in Berlin 1938–1945. Berlin 2000, p. 325.
  3. ↑ Walter Lustig: A new Neanderthal find (PDF; 1.9 MB). Inaugural dissertation at the University of Breslau, Breslau 1916, p. 47 (curriculum vitae)
  4. ^ Daniel B. Silver: Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. 2004, p. 27.
  5. ^ Daniel B. Silver: Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. 2004, p. 23.
  6. ↑ a b c Volker Klimpel: Doctors Death: Unnatural and violent death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix. Würzburg 2005, p. 135.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon (ed.): Jews in Berlin 1938–1945. Berlin 2000, p. 326.
  8. ^ A b Dagmar Hartung-von Doetinchem, Rolf Winau: Destroyed Progress: The Jewish Hospital in Berlin, 1756, 1861, 1914, 1989. Hentrich, 1989, p. 222.
  9. ↑ a b c Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon (ed.): Jews in Berlin 1938–1945. Berlin 2000, p. 327.
  10. ↑ Reveta: Association Journal of the Technical assistants Germany, 13 (1933) 4, p 98
  11. ^ Daniel B. Silver: Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. 2004, p. 25.
  12. ^ Gudrun Maierhof: Self-Assertion in Chaos: Women in Jewish Self-Help 1933–1943. Campus Verlag, 2002, p. 358.
  13. ↑ a b Gerhild HM Komander: The Wedding - On the way from red to colored. Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-929829-38-X , p. 201.
  14. ^ A b c Esriel Hildesheimer: Jewish self-government under the Nazi regime. Tübingen 1994, p. 125.
  15. ^ A b c Gudrun Maierhof: Self-Assertion in Chaos: Women in Jewish Self-Help 1933–1943. Campus Verlag, 2002, p. 294f.
  16. ^ Esriel Hildesheimer: Jewish self-administration under the Nazi regime ; Tübingen 1994, p. 234.
  17. ↑ Monica Kingreen (Ed.): "After the Kristallnacht": Jewish life and anti-Jewish politics in Frankfurt am Main 1938–1945 . Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-593-36310-0 , p. 385.
  18. ^ Avraham Barkai , Paul Mendes-Flohr , Steven M. Lowenstein: German-Jewish history in modern times. Volume IV: 1918-1945 . Munich 1997, p. 360.
  19. ^ Esriel Hildesheimer: Jewish self-government under the Nazi regime. Tübingen 1994, p. 119.
  20. ^ A b Andreas Weigelt, Hermann Simon: Between Staying and Going: Jews in East Germany 1945 to 1956; ten biographies. Text.Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938414-48-4 , p. 59.
  21. ↑ Konrad Kwiet : “I boxed my way through life!” The unbelievable story of the Bully Salmen Schott. In: Marion Kaplan, Beate Meyer: Jüdische Welten. Jews from the 18th century to the present day. Institute for the History of the German Jews. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, p. 241.
  22. ↑ cf. Esriel Hildesheimer: Jewish self-government under the Nazi regime. Tübingen 1994, p. 125.
  23. ↑ Andreas Weigelt, Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner (eds.): Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947). A historical-biographical study. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , p. 428f.
  24. ↑ Ulrike Offenberg: Be careful against those in power. The Jewish communities in the Soviet Zone and the GDR 1945–1990. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1998, p. 292.
  25. ↑ Sarah Ross: Book Review Survival in Hell. November 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Funny, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician and Jewish association official
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Ratibor
DATE OF DEATH 1945
Place of death Berlin