Zvi Aviram
Zvi Aviram (born on 25. January 1927 as Heinz Abraham's son in Berlin ) is a native of Germany Holocaust survivor and author , who during the Nazi era Jewish resistance group Chug Chaluzi belonged.
Childhood and youth in Berlin
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Early childhood
Zvi Aviram was born as Heinz Abrahamsohn in Berlin in 1927 and grew up in the Prenzlauer Berg district . His father Arthur Abrahamsohn (born September 26, 1889 in Berlin, murdered in Auschwitz in 1943) was a former World War I soldier and shoemaker, he had a small shop on Swinemünder Strasse . The mother Margarete Abrahamsohn (née Jacobsohn, born April 9, 1901 in Berlin, murdered in Auschwitz in 1943) was a tailor and housewife. Zvi Aviram has a sister named Betty (born on August 27, 1929 in Berlin). The Abraham's son lived in poor conditions in a one and a half room apartment behind the cobbler's shop.
Aviram describes his childhood before the Nazi era as very beautiful. He and his sister were pampered by the numerous relatives. The children spent relaxing summer days in the weekend house of their "uncle", actually great cousins, Kurt Grünberg and her aunt Marie Grünberg in Blankenburg . Marie was a Christian who, against the resistance of her family, married the Jew Kurt Grünberg in 1930, which later saved him from deportation . Eric Jacobsohn, the younger brother of Aviram's mother, was a communist. The family was deeply concerned that he might be murdered by the SA on the street .
Beginning of the Nazi era
In the seizure of power by the National Socialists Zvi Aviram was six years old. On April 1, 1933, when the boycott of Jewish shops was called for, the family fearfully hid in a corner of the apartment for the whole day. The father suffered a nervous breakdown, was unable to work and had to go out of business. He was involved in the Reich Association of Jewish Front Soldiers until it was banned and regularly went to the Levetzowstrasse synagogue . The mother made a living with tailoring. In October 1933 the family moved into an apartment in the rear building at Zehdenicker Straße 2 in Prenzlauer Berg. Aviram's school was on the same street. Sister Betty started school in 1936 at the Jewish Girls' School on Auguststrasse . Until the club was banned in 1938, Zvi Aviram played for the Jewish sports community handball.
As a Jewish child, Aviram was no longer allowed to attend a state school from November 11, 1938, shortly after the Reichspogromnacht 1938 . He switched to the Jewish school on Rykestrasse . Their pupils were bullied and attacked by Hitler Youth on their way to school and also on a class trip to the Giant Mountains . After the night of the pogrom, Aviram's uncle Kurt Grünberg and communist uncle Erich Jacobsohn were severely mistreated in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , but were allowed to return to Berlin.
The Abrahamsohn family tried unsuccessfully to leave the country early on. With the help of the Jewish Welfare Society of Melbourne, their daughter Betty's school organized a transport for children via England to Australia. In June 1939, with a heavy heart, her parents sent the nine-year-old on a journey that was supposed to save her life, and it really did.
Zvi Aviram stayed in Berlin, where he celebrated his bar mitzvah in February 1940 at the age of 13 , the last family festival together. Aviram's school days ended in April 1941 and he began an apprenticeship as a locksmith in a Jewish retraining camp. Just two months later, he had to drop out of training by being forced to work in the defense industry. At the Deutsche Tachometer-Werke (deuta-Werke), he had to check measuring instruments at night. The mother sewed uniforms as a slave laborer, the father worked part-time in a shoemaker's workshop for the Jewish community.
Aviram befriended a communist at work with whom he first discussed the possibilities of hiding. In his spare time, Aviram avoided wearing the mandatory yellow star and illegally visited cinemas and swimming pools.
On February 27, 1943, when he was just 16 years old, his parents Arthur Abrahamsohn and Margarete Abrahamsohn were imprisoned at their workplaces as part of the so-called factory action and deported to Auschwitz , where they were murdered at an unknown date. Zvi Aviram found the apartment sealed by the Gestapo . Not being home, he had escaped his own planned deportation.
Life underground
Through his former schoolmate Leopold Chones (born 1924, murdered in 1943 in Auschwitz), Zvi Aviram met his future best friend Gad Beck and the teacher Jizchak Schwersenz , who belonged to the Hechaluz , the Zionist pioneer organization in Geneva . The former head of the Youth Alija School went into hiding with the help of his girlfriend Edith “Ewo” Wolff , a half-Jewish woman, at the end of August . Together with former students of the school and other Jewish youth, the two founded the Zionist pioneer group Chug Chaluzi on February 27, 1943. The group, which also included Zvi Aviram, organized hiding places, food and documents for the young people and was an important point of contact for the orphaned and destitute children. Religious festivals and services were celebrated at the Chug Chaluzi meetings. Much of the conversation revolved around Palestine as a place of longing for the persecuted.
In the spring and summer of 1943 Aviram slept in the gazebo of a communist named Wischniewsky (identity unclear) in Karlshorst and sold ration cards on the black market to finance his living and to help other people in hiding. He often stayed in the Grünberg family's weekend house in Blankenburg or in their apartment on the Spandauer Brücke. The Grünbergs housed several people persecuted by the National Socialists until the end of the war. On behalf of Wischniewsky, who is said to have belonged to a communist resistance group, Aviram displayed anti-fascist leaflets in empty suburban trains and train stations. He was carrying a pistol that Wischniewsky had given him.
After eight months in the arbor, Aviram was arrested by the Gestapo on November 17, 1943 and taken to the assembly camp on Grosse Hamburger Strasse in Mitte. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from the former Jewish retirement home, initially to Theresienstadt concentration camp , and later exclusively to Auschwitz. Aviram was severely mistreated and tortured in the assembly camp because the Gestapo wanted to find out everything about his supporters. He lost all of his front teeth from the massive blows. By chance he was in a cell with Abraham Zajdmann and his son Moritz, whom he knew from Chug Chaluzi. They succeeded in stealing tools and secretly detaching a bar from the cell on the first floor. On New Year's Eve 1943/44 a total of seven people managed to escape from the camp during a bomb alarm.
Aviram briefly slipped into his aunt Marie Grünberg's weekend house in Blankenburg and was then able to use various hiding places of Chug Chaluzi founder Jizchak Schwersenz, who had managed to escape to Switzerland in early 1944. An elderly woman housed him for a few weeks and passed him off as her nephew who was visiting her. Then Aviram slept in bombed-out houses or in parks. For a while he stayed with the Berlin black market trader Else Szimke.
With the support of the Hechaluz delegate Nathan Schwalb , Schwersenz had the Chug Chaluzi sent 100,000 Reichsmarks from Switzerland to Berlin. The courier also brought a list of addresses of helpful people in Berlin who had named Jews from all over the world as possible helpers. With the money, the members of the Chug Chaluzi should finance hiding places, documents and food and try to organize an escape to Switzerland. The group's headquarters were located in an apartment at 50 Utrecht Strasse. Zvi Aviram and his friend Gad Beck used the apartment as a place to sleep. The two took over the management of the group. After member Paul Dreyer was arrested, several Chug Chaluzi members were gradually tracked down and captured.
In March 1945, when they got home, Zvi Aviram and Gad Beck were expecting two Jewish informants from the Gestapo, so-called grippers , who they arrested. The two boys were taken to the Schulstrasse assembly camp in Wedding , where they were again severely abused. Gad Beck was also dangerously injured in a bomb attack. On April 22, 1945, SS-Hauptscharführer and Gestapo officer Walter Dobberke resisted the order from the Head of the Department for Jews, Erich Möller, to shoot all Jews who were still in the assembly camps. Zvi Aviram and Gad Beck were officially released from Gestapo custody. Aviram stayed with other Jews in the Jewish hospital until the surrender on May 8, 1945 . Aviram wrote in his autobiography that he could not celebrate the liberation by the Red Army because of sheer exhaustion.
post war period
Aviram worked for a short time in the summer of 1945 in his aunt Marie Grünberg's soap shop. He helped the Soviet soldiers arrest one of the Jewish Gestapo informers who had betrayed numerous Jews. In June Aviram went west with some friends to the American zone of occupation and came to Munich. On the trip, the young people met severely ill former concentration camp inmates in Blankenhain, Thuringia . They organized a transport to a Munich hospital. The Jewish Committee in Munich found a small apartment for Aviram and Beck. On behalf of the Jewish Agency , Aviram organized meetings of the so-called Displaced Persons in the numerous camps , which served to prepare for emigration to Palestine. The situation of the former concentration camp prisoners from all over Europe was precarious, many Jews could not imagine staying in Germany or anywhere else in Europe. In May 1946 Aviram and Beck were both senior staff at the Jewish Agency and the UNRRA (United Nations Emergency Relief and Reconstruction Administration, or UNRRA for short, from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration). Aviram was responsible for contacts with German authorities, while Beck headed the certification department for Palestine.
Apart from his aunt Marie Grünberg, sister Betty in Australia and his uncle Erich Jacobsohn, who had emigrated to Argentina, Aviram was no longer closely related. He decided to go to Palestine with the Beck family, whom he considered his surrogate family. Since the British Mandate Government refused the 100,000 certificates required by the Jewish Agency for entry into Palestine, the organization organized illegal transports. Aviram took part in the actions of the Bricha , the illegal aliyah , and procured trains, trucks and ships. He himself traveled to Palestine in January 1948, shortly before the founding of the state of Israel.
Life in Israel
Zvi Aviram opened a joinery in Israel. He has been married to his wife Esther since 1968, has three children and nine grandchildren and lives in Ra'anana , a suburb of Tel Aviv in Israel. At his wedding, he changed his name from Heinz Abrahamsohn to Zvi Aviram in order to close symbolically with his past. Only in old age did Aviram manage to speak openly about his experiences in Germany after receiving psychological help. In October 2013 the exhibition “Children in Hiding - Persecuted. Submerged. Saved? ”In the Berlin House of Representatives remembers his story. As part of witnesses talks Aviram reported, schoolchildren in Germany about his experiences. In May 2015 he published his autobiography “With the Courage of Despair. My resistance in the Berlin underground 1943–1945 ”. The television journalist Markus Lanz shot a report about him for ZDF .
Remembering family and helpers
In Zehdenicker Straße 2 in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, where the Abrahamsohn family lived until the deportation and Zvi Aviram went into hiding, two stumbling blocks were laid in memory of the parents murdered in Auschwitz. Marie Grünberg, Aviram's aunt, was honored as “ Righteous Among the Nations ” at the Yad Vashem memorial after the Second World War .
literature
- Zvi Aviram: With the courage of despair. My resistance in the Berlin underground 1943–1945 . Volume 6 of the series publications of the Silent Heroes Memorial Center , edited by Beate Kosmala and Patrick Siegele , Metropol Verlag Berlin, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-237-4 .
Web links
- Zvi Aviram, contemporary witness , podcast of the broadcast Eins zu Eins from July 12, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Zvi Aviram: With the courage of despair. My resistance in the Berlin underground 1943–1945 . Volume 6 of the series Publications of the Silent Heroes Memorial Center , edited by Beate Kosmala and Patrick Siegele, Metropol-Verlag Berlin, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-237-4 .
- ↑ Survival in Hiding , Article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of October 31, 2013, accessed on November 11, 2016
- ^ Event information of the Anne Frank Center , accessed on November 11, 2016.
- ↑ “You should live!” - Holocaust survivor in conversation with Markus Lanz (ZDF documentation) ( Memento of the original from May 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 8, 2015
- ↑ Blankenburg recalls the “Righteous Among the Nations” Marie Grünberg , article in the Berliner Woche on April 29, 2015, accessed on May 10, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Aviram, Zvi |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Abrahamsohn, Heinz (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Israeli Holocaust survivor and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 25, 1927 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |