POST 110: DR. WALTER LUSTIG, DIRECTOR OF BERLIN’S “KRANKENHAUS DER JÜDISCHEN GEMEINDE” (HOSPITAL OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY) THAT SURVIVED THE NAZIS

 

Note: The Blog post is about Berlin’s Jewish Community Hospital that inexplicably outlasted the Nazis, and its wartime Director, Dr. Walter Lustig, born in Ratibor, Germany, the same town where my father was born.

Related Posts:

POST 13, POSTSCRIPT: THE FORMER JEWISH CEMETERY IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ)

POST 48: DR. ERNST NEISSER’S FINAL DAYS IN 1942 IN THE WORDS OF HIS DAUGHTER

POST 49: GUIDE TO THE “LANDESARCHIV BERLIN” (BERLIN STATE ARCHIVE) CIVIL REGISTRY RECORDS

POST 107: HARRO WUNDSCH (HARRY POWELL), A “DUNERA BOY” INTERNED IN THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

 

This post has to do with my family only insofar as Dr. Walter Lustig, the man at the center of this story, was born in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town in Upper Silesia where my father and many of his family were born. From around 1942 until shortly after WWII ended in April 1945 Dr. Lustig was the Director of Berlin’s Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community, a Jewish institution that miraculously withstood the Nazi onslaught.

This assault on German Jews left only between 5,000 and 6,000 Jews alive in Germany by the end of the war, compared to 500,000 Jews living there towards the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933 when the Nazis seized power. By the time WWII started in 1939 two-thirds of these Jews had emigrated, though there still remained roughly 167,000 Jews in Germany in 1941, most of whom would be murdered.

Berlin’s Jewish Hospital is 265 years old. It was originally built in 1756 on Oranienburger Strasse near the Jewish cemetery in Berlin. Then, during Berlin’s mid-nineteenth century economic expansion that was due in large measure to its entrepreneurial Jewish population, the Jewish community built the city’s first general hospital, one of the largest of its kind, on Auguststrasse; it was built primarily to serve the needs of the Jewish population. As the years passed, even this structure proved inadequate, so in 1913, the current hospital along Iranischestrasse opened on the site it occupies today (Figure 1); there were seven principal buildings, together with ancillary structures. Presently, the hospital is located in the Wedding locality in the borough of “Berlin-Mitte” (Figure 2), which prior to 2001 was a separate borough in the northwestern part of Berlin.

 

Figure 1. The main building of the “Krankenhaus Der Jüdischen Gemeinde” (Hospital of The Jewish Community) that opened in 1914 along Iranischestrasse

 

Figure 2. Map of Berlin’s 12 existing Boroughs and the neighborhoods in each, with Berlin-Mitte circled including the neighborhood of “Wedding” where Berlin’s Jewish Hospital is situated today

 

I have briefly mentioned Berlin’s Jewish Hospital in connection with three previous Blog posts. In Posts 48 and 49, I related the story of how one of my distant relatives, Dr. Ernst Neisser, was taken there on the morning of October 1, 1942, following his attempted suicide after being told to report to an “old age transport,” a euphemism for deportation to a concentration camp; fortunately, he survived only three days until October 4th before succumbing to his trauma. I say “fortunately” because the fear among Jews who attempted suicide is they would be resuscitated only to then be shipped to a concentration camp and gassed there.

According to a Jerusalem Post article by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, published on June 23, 2007, entitled “A hospital with history,” numerous Berlin Jews, like Dr. Ernst Neisser, who attempted suicide with gas or sleeping pills in the face of deportations ended up in Berlin’s Jewish Hospital for treatment, the only hospital that would still treat Jews during the Nazi era. According to this article, upwards of 7,000 Berlin Jews killed themselves before the Nazi dictatorship fell. Although Jews committed suicide in all sorts of ways, by far the most common method involved the ingestion of a poison such as potassium cyanide or an overdose of an opiate or sedative, usually Veronal.

Then, in Post 107, I mentioned an English lady named Kathy York, whose grandmother Maria Wundsch née Pauly (Figure 3), a distant relative of mine, worked at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital during WWII when Dr. Lustig was the Director there. Kathy tells me letters written about her grandmother’s fraught time working at the hospital exist, but these have yet to surface.

 

Figure 3. Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly with her husband Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch as a young married couple; Maria Wundsch, a full Jew, worked at Berlin’s during the war and likely survived because she was in a mixed marriage (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

I previously also told readers about Daniel B. Silver’s book about the hospital, entitled, “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.” I have relied heavily on this book in describing Dr. Lustig’s tenure as Director of the hospital and the hospital’s situation during the war. It is not my intention here to thoroughly review what interested followers can easily read for themselves, but rather to bring to light a few findings and connections I made on my own that add a little to the story. This said, some background about Dr. Walter Lustig and his wartime administration of the hospital are warranted.

After fierce street-to-street fighting against entrenched remnants of Hitler’s SS, on April 24, 1945, Russian soldiers had finally succeeded in wresting control from the Nazis of a stretch of Iranischestrasse that included the battle-scarred buildings of the “Krankenhaus Der Jüdischen Gemeinde” (Hospital of The Jewish Community). There they found hundreds of people including doctors, nurses, patients, workmen, and others who claimed to be Jewish. The Russians did not initially give credence to their assertions believing Joseph Goebbels’ 1943 declaration, chief propagandist for the Nazi party, that Berlin was “Judenrein,” or “Judenfrei,” meaning “cleansed (or free) of Jews,” according to National Socialist terminology applied in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Eventually the survivors convinced their Russian liberators they were Jews who had inexplicably outlasted the Nazis.

At the time of liberation, three of the hospital’s seven main buildings were no longer a part of the hospital. In late 1942, the German Army, the Wehrmacht, had expropriated the nurses’ residence, the Schwesterheim, as well as buildings that had housed the gynecology and infectious disease departments, for use as a military hospital, the Lazarett. Then, in 1944, the Gestapo appropriated and fenced off the hospital’s pathology laboratory and an adjacent gatehouse to use as a Sammellager, a collection camp for Jewish deportees. By 1944, most of Berlin’s remaining Jews had already been deported so a single, smaller holding facility now sufficed.

According to Daniel B. Silver, several published sources report the hospital’s population at the time of liberation at around 800. However, Hilda Kahan, Dr. Lustig’s secretary throughout his tenure as Director of the Jewish Community Hospital, states in a videotaped interview that the number was closer 500. Regardless of the precise number, they represented a large proportion of Germany’s identifiable Jews as they were defined by the Nazis. Statistics a young Jewish woman was compelled to maintain for the Gestapo on a monthly basis indicate only 6,284 known Jews remained in Berlin on February 28, 1945. (Silver, 2003, p. 2)

Included in the final number of Jews found at the Hospital upon its liberation, according to Daniel Silver “. . .were patients and members of the medical, nursing, and support staff who had taken up residence in the hospital at various times, either because they had been bombed out or evicted as Jews from their former homes or because they were slave laborers assigned to work at the hospital. Also on hand were the remnants of groups of Jews who had been transferred to the hospital when the Nazis closed other Jewish institutions in Germany, such as orphanages and old age homes. Most of these unfortunates had been deported before the war ended, but some remained in April 1945. Among them were a handful of abandoned children who were suspected of being fully Jewish but whose ‘racial’ status had not been definitively determined. The Nazis had used the hospital as a kind of ghetto to which they consigned Jews who had nowhere else to live or whose status was ambiguous. These included Jews of foreign nationality and Jews who were being held there as potential bargaining chips in negotiating exchanges for German nationals captured in Palestine. The authorities also used the hospital to house Jews who had been brought to Berlin from other cities in Germany as part of a Nazi effort to separate them from their Aryan spouses. This was intended as a first step in overcoming the political and legal barriers to the deportation of Jewish men who lived in mixed marriages and whose Aryan spouses refused to divorce them despite Gestapo pressure to do so.” (2003, p. 8) As Winter further notes, “Most of the hospital population were half-Jews or spouses of Aryans. As such, they had been protected by Nazi rules that everyone knew could be changed at any time.” (2003, p. 12)

Also included among the “patients” were several Jews not receiving medical treatment who were protected from deportation by one or another prominent Nazi; this may have included Jews who had illicit affairs with well-placed Nazis, childhood friends of important Nazis who sought to protect them, Jews who had bribed high-ranking Nazis, or other cases whose reasons can only be guessed. A “lucky” group of survivors included Jews who had been incarcerated in the hospital’s auxiliary police ward, the so-called Polizeistation. These were Jews who fell ill while already in the hands of the police, Gestapo, or SS who for unknown reasons the Nazis sought to restore to health before killing them. Unbelievable!

My family’s remote association to Berlin’s Jewish Community Hospital and its miraculous survival through WWII, in addition to the hospital’s wartime Director’s connection to Ratibor, the same town in Upper Silesia where my father was born, drew my interest in writing this Blog post. Hoping I might be able to add a little to what has already been written and is known about Dr. Walter Lustig, I contacted Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 4), my retired lawyer friend from Racibórz who now researches and writes about the history of the town and Silesia and asked whether he could track down a copy of Dr. Walter Lustig’s birth certificate at the archive. Paul graciously agreed to help. He not only was able to locate Dr. Lustig’s birth certificate, but the Racibórz archives also provided a legal document related to Dr. Walter Lustig’s father, Bernhard Lustig, dated the 22nd of March 1939. I will discuss this in further detail below.

 

Figure 4. With my friend Paul Newerla, retired lawyer and Silesian historian, standing by the statue of John of Nepomuk, located in middle of a parking lot in Racibórz

 

First, let me tell readers a little about Walter Lustig. He was born as Walter Simon Lustig on the 10th of August 1891 in Ratibor, the son of the merchant Bernhard Lustig and his wife Regina Lustig née Besser. He graduated from the local gymnasium in March 1910 and enrolled at the University of Breslau in October of the same year. He studied medicine, specializing in surgery, and received his medical degree and license in the spring of 1915. He was drafted during WWI and served as a military doctor. During his wartime stint, he obtained a Ph.D., also in medicine. His military service was performed in Breslau, where he treated casualties from the eastern front. After the war he worked in public administration while maintaining a private medical practice; he spent most of his career as a medical administrator. He wrote prolifically on medical subjects.

Clearly driven to advance professionally, in 1927 he relocated to Berlin. His move there coincided with two changes that had far-reaching consequences. He married a non-Jewish physician, Dr. Annemarie Preuss, and took a job with the Berlin police department where he became acquainted with Fritz Wöhrn and Rolf Günther who eventually became Adolf Eichmann’s key aides in overseeing the hospital. It was Adolf Eichmann’s department in the Reichssicherbeitshauptamt (RSHA), the Reich Security Main Office, that had formal jurisdiction over the Jewish hospital.

According to Daniel Silver, Lustig “. . .advanced within the police hierarchy until in 1929 he was appointed to the position of director of the Police Presidium’s medical affairs department. He held the prestigious bureaucratic titles of Oberregierungsrat (chief administrative counselor) and Obermedizinalrat (chief medical counselor).” (2003, p. 24-25) The police department had broad administrative responsibilities that extended beyond criminal matters, and included overseeing health matters in schools, institutions, and group care facilities, and conducting occupational training for medical personnel; suffice it to say, this brought Lustig into contact with many senior government officials and leaders in the medical community.

In October 1933, Lustig lost his job because of the issuance of the Nazis’ Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (“Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”). This law initially exempted veterans of WWI such as Lustig but because he had been stationed in Breslau and not on the eastern front, the exemption did not apply to him, and he lost his position. At some time, between 1933 and 1935 Lustig was employed by the health department of the Berlin Jewish Gemeinde, or community (more on this below). According to Daniel Silver, when exactly Lustig was employed by the Gemeinde, and what his exact duties were are unknown, though he apparently became active in matters relating to the Jewish hospital around this time. Regardless, Lustig proved as adept at rising in the official Jewish bureaucracy at the Gemeinde as he had rising through the ranks of the Berlin police department.

Without overwhelming readers with the tangled structure of the Jewish community, it is still worth reviewing the hospital’s situation following the events of Kristallnacht that took place on the 9-10 November 1938 to provide context for Dr. Lustig’s powerful administrative position during the war. In a structure that prevailed before the Nazis came to power and still exists today, every religious denomination was organized into a Gemeinde, depending on context, roughly translated as community, municipality, congregation, or parish. Prior to the Nazis seizing power in 1933, the Gemeinde in smaller cities resisted the formation of a central Jewish organization fearing it would be dominated by the Berlin Gemende. Eventually the reality of the Nazi takeover overtook regional concerns, and a central organization called the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, or Central Representation of German Jews, was formed. It was renamed after 1935 to “Jews in Germany,” a significant distinction meant to signal that Jews were no longer to be considered Germans.

As the remaining German Jews became more concentrated in Berlin over time, the distinction between the Berlin Gemeinde and the Reichsvertretung became blurrier with many officials holding parallel positions in both organizations. After Kristallnacht, the Reichsvertretung was dissolved by the Nazis, only to be resurrected when the Nazis realized this organization facilitated emigration, which at the time the Nazis were encouraging. Consequently, a new Jewish central organization was organized, substituting the word Reichsvereinigung (central organization) for Reichsvertretung (central representation). Membership in this organization was compulsory for every Jew, which was created to better discriminate against and control the Jewish population. It was under tight Gestapo supervision.

Daniel Silver summarizes the hospital’s situation by 1941: “So it was that by 1941 the hospital functioned under the organization umbrella of the Reichsvereiningung, although, through the Gemeinde health department, it still maintained a formal relationship to the Berlin Gemeinde. The most important aspect of the new arrangements that began in 1938 was that, through the Reichsvereiningung, the hospital was placed under the direct supervision of Department IV B 4 of the RSHA. Originally this had been the department in charge of ‘Jewish emigration and evacuation.’ By 1941 it had become the department for ‘Jewish affairs and evacuation,’ emigration having been largely abandoned as a Nazi objective. Its head was Adolf Eichmann, the bureaucratic mastermind of the Final Solution.” (2003, p. 40)

Measures taken against Jewish professionals which began in 1933 with passage of the Nuremberg racial laws that pushed Jewish doctors out of jobs in non-Jewish clinics had a profound effect on the makeup of the Jewish hospital’s professional staff as it stood in 1941. Things came to a head with the decree of July 25, 1938, when all Jewish physicians, of which there were about 3,000 at the time in the Reich, were stripped of their medical licenses. By September, a limit of 700 Jewish physicians, referred to by the degrading title of Krankenbehandler, or “carer for the sick,” were restricted to treating Jewish patients or working in Jewish institutions.

Ironically, one of the beneficiaries of this provision was Walter Lustig. While many of Lustig’s contemporaries had by 1938 decided to emigrate, he consciously decided not to do so. Whether this was hubris or his marriage to an Aryan that he thought afforded him some protection or his previous relationship with Nazis during his days in the Berlin police department, Lustig benefited from others’ departures to rise in the Jewish hierarchy. Daniel Silver describes it as follows: “When his boss in the Gemeinde/Reichsvereinigung health department, Erich Seligmann, left Germany for the United States in 1939, Lustig took over his position. In July 1939, the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt (Jewish chronicle) described him as the person who henceforth would be responsible for health matters within the Reichsvereinigung. In that capacity, he played a key role in filling vacancies that opened up at the hospital because of the emigration of members of the medical staff. At some point in 1940 or 1941 (exactly when is unclear), he was appointed as the Gesundheitsdesernent, or chief of the health department (of the Gemeinde), and thus became a member of the governing board of the Reichsvereinigung.” (2003, p. 43)

Eventually in around October 1942, Walter Lustig became the hospital’s director after the previous director Dr. Schoenfeld and his wife killed themselves; they had been among 100 Gemeinde and Reichsvereinigung officials handpicked in the second major deportation of communal officials, a selection Lustig was compelled to participate in after initially demurring. From 1942 onward, he was repeatedly forced to aid in the selection of hospital staff for deportation, and according to Daniel Silver was “. . .arguably the most powerful figure of German Jewry and the absolute master of the hospital.”

Again, quoting Daniel Silver, “For many, Lustig’s name evokes predominantly negative feelings. According to one source, ‘The name Walter Lustig awakens even today vigorous aversion among Jewish witnesses of the events.’ Yet even his detractors give grudging credit to his talents and to his accomplishment in keeping the hospital open through the final years of the Nazi regime. His contemporaries describe him in wildly differing terms—turncoat and Gestapo collaborator; savior of the hospital; the man who sent hundreds of Jews to their death; the man who saved hundreds of Jews from the camps; a protector of children; a lecher.” (2003, p. 26) Further complicating how Lustig is viewed in hindsight is the criticism that he was unsympathetic to the plight of his fellow Jews and that he was a Jewish anti-Semite, and that his mistresses may have influenced the people he selected for deportation. More on his purported anti-Semitism below.

At the time Mr. Winter published his book in 2003, he stated there were no known pictures of Walter Lustig. (2003, p. 26) While writing this Blog post, I was able to establish email contact with Daniel Winter, who formerly served as the general counsel to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Service. He mentioned that following the publication of his book students from the University of Potsdam, outside Berlin, found a picture of Walter Lustig while developing a traveling exhibit about Berlin’s Jewish Hospital. Unable to locate his copy of this image, I have separately contacted the University of Potsdam hoping they might find and send me one. I’m optimistic about sharing it with readers in the future.

Figure 5. Mr. Roger Lustig, expert on Jewish families of Prussian Poland, whose father Ernst Lustig was a distant cousin of Dr. Walter Lustig, the wartime Director of Berlin’s Jewish Hospital

Relatedly, about ten years ago, I attended a talk sponsored by the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society given by a Mr. Roger Lustig (Figure 5), who specializes in research on Jewish families of Prussian Poland, and is a top expert on general German Jewish research. This talk was given just before my planned 13-week trip to Europe to follow in the footsteps of my Jewish family’s diaspora. I contacted Roger asking whether he might be able to refer me to someone in Racibórz who could help me. Because Roger also has ancestors from there, he was happy to assist. Over the years, we’ve periodically stayed in touch. Naturally assuming that Roger might in some way be related to Walter Lustig because of the common surname and their respective connections to Ratibor, while writing this Blog post, I asked him whether he might have Walter’s photograph. He was unable to help explaining that because Dr. Lustig was a short man, about 5’2”, he was self-conscious about being photographed. This comports with how informants described Lustig to Daniel Silver, namely, that he was small. (2003, p. 26) Others added that he was a “small, delicate person” and that he had “cold stabbing eyes—terrible eyes.” Another informant reported that Lustig was very Germanic in appearance, a man who “‘looked like a major from the First World War,’ with spectacles and a big moustache.” (2003, p. 26)

Roger Lustig pointed out something interesting to me during our recent exchange that speaks to whether Walter was anti-Semite. While writing his book, Silver coincidentally interviewed Roger Lustig’s father, Ernst Lustig, who addressed this question (i.e., Ernst Lustig’s great-great-grandfather was the brother of Walter Lustig’s great-grandfather (2003, p. 176)): “The characterization of Lustig as a Jewish anti-Semite is at odds with the reaction of his distant cousin Ernst Lustig. In a brief and anguished commentary on the judgment in the Wöhrn trial, Ernst Lustig expresses surprise and shock at the unfavorable way Walter Lustig is described. ‘What is difficult for me to comprehend,’ he writes, ‘is how this man could develop such a horrible attitude toward Jews when he himself was a flawless Jew.’ He remembers his cousin as a man who maintained friendly relations with his Jewish relatives, a man whom he knew as ‘Uncle Walter,’ and a man who once provided Ernst’s father with a genealogical sketch of the family that descended from Dr. Lustig’s great-grandfather Abraham, who had lived in the town of Adamowitz. This seems out of character with the picture of Walter Lustig as a man who took no interest in his Jewish roots, although it is true that the time in question, 1937-38, was already after the date when Walter Lustig decided to throw his lot in with the Jewish community to which the Nazis in any event had irrevocably assigned him.” (2003, p. 215)

It is difficult to reconcile the differing judgements of Walter Lustig. On the one hand, there is the man who selected colleagues and fellow employees for deportation, while on the other was a man who occasionally came to the rescue of assistants who’d been arrested by the Nazis. Then, in March 1943, the Gestapo showed up with trucks in front of the administrative building prepared to deport the entire establishment, patients, doctors, nurses, and all other employees; it was only Lustig’s call to Adolf Eichmann that forced the Gestapo to stand down, though it resulted in fully half of Lustig’s workmates being arrested. As Silver asks, “Did Lustig originate this Faustian bargain, offering up fully half of the total number of his professional colleagues and employees as the price for saving the hospital, and thereby himself and his job? Or was this decision imposed on him in circumstances over he which he had no control whatsoever? It is unlikely that anyone will ever know.” (2003, p. 143)

It is worth noting that while the RSHA and the Gestapo were technically part of the same organization and under the authority of the same leader, SS Führer Heinrich Himmler, the German bureaucracy was teeming with internal rivalries and tensions (2003, p. 141), a situation which may partially explain why the Jewish hospital survived the war. For all of Lustig’s purported influence with the Gestapo, he was unable to save his own father from being deported to Theresienstadt in 1943. (2003, p. 173 & p. 221)

Longtime followers of my Blog may recall the postscript to Post 13 about the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor. In that post, I explained the role a Polish gentleman named Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński played in photographing all the headstones of the graves before the cemetery was demolished during Poland’s Communist Era. At a time when purchasing film and processing black-and-white negatives cost a lot, Kazimierz photographed, developed, created a portfolio with a site plan, and donated all his work to the Muzeum Raciborzu to be archived. After learning about these images, I arranged to photograph all the images in 2015. Recalling these and the accompanying Excel database, I scrolled through them and discovered they include a photo of Walter Lustig’s mother’s headstone, Regina Lustig née Besser. (Figure 6) As mentioned above, Walter’s father, Bernhard Lustig, was deported to Theresienstadt where he died, so obviously no picture of his gravestone exists.

 

Figure 6. The headstone of Dr. Walter Lustig’s mother, Regina Lustig née Besser (1866-1914), interred in the former Jewish Cemetery in Racibórz (photo courtesy of Kazimierz Świetliński)

 

Walter’s birth certificate, which my dear friend Mr. Paul Newerla was able to obtain from the Racibórz archives confirmed Walter’s date of birth, the 10th of August 1891, and his parentage. (Figures 7a-b) As I mentioned above, while Paul was searching for Walter Lustig’s birth certificate, the archives stumbled upon a legal document related to Bernhard Lustig dated the 22nd of March 1939. (Figures 8a-g) At the time Bernhard was 82 years of age indicating he’d been born in 1857; I would later learn he was born on the 6th of February 1857. Because he was in frail health at the time, Bernhard Lustig had requested that a Mr. Arthur “Israel” Stein be appointed as his guardian, which the courts granted. Despite his failing health, four years later the Nazis deported him to Theresienstadt, where he perished. One can only imagine the cruel circumstances under which Bernhard died.

 

Figure 7a. Copy of Walter Simon Lustig’s Ratibor birth certificate, Certificate No. 391, showing he was born on the 10th of August 1891 to Bernhard Lustig and Regina Besser née Besser, and that he was given the added name “Israel” on the 1st of January 1939

 

Figure 7b. Transcription & translation of Walter Lustig’s birth certificate

 

Figure 8a. Page 1 of a legal document dated the 22nd of March 1939 regarding Dr. Walter Lustig’s father, the merchant Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8b. Page 2 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8c. Page 3 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8d. Page 4 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8e. Page 5 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8f. Transcription of the first two pages of the legal document regarding Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8g. Translation of the first two pages of the legal document regarding Bernhard Lustig

 

Interestingly, the legal document Bernhard submitted to the court also requested that he be allowed to submit a corrected declaration of value for assets he’d mistakenly overvalued; this resulted in overpayment of the “Jewish expiation tax,” for which he sought reimbursement. It seems unlikely the courts ever acted upon this request.

From 1945 to the present, most people have expressed incredulity that the Nazis permitted an identifiable Jewish institution to continue to exist in Berlin, a city Goebbels had declared in 1943 “cleansed of Jews.” Mr. Silver offers possible explanations: 1) the Nazis saw the hospital as playing a useful role in the large-scale deportations during a time when all other Jewish organizations and institutions had been eliminated (2003, p. 62); 2) earlier in the war, before the large-scale deportation of most Jews, it is possible the Nazis allowed the hospital to survive to provide for the treatment of Jews who could spread epidemics to the general Aryan population (2003, p. 235-6); 3) for bureaucratic convenience, that’s to say, as a place in which the Gestapo could establish a kind of ghetto (2003, p. 237); and 4) for reasons of ambition, Adolf Eichmann may have stage-managed the transfer of the land and buildings the hospital occupied to a small powerless agency, the Academy of Youth Medicine, which he could easily control and thereby preserve the hospital and the site he coveted. (2003, p. 238)

Let me end this lengthy post by briefly discussing what is known about Walter Lustig’s fate. Following the war, the hospital fell into the Soviet-administered zone of Berlin. By then, Lustig had been appointed by the occupation-controlled local government as the director of health services for the Wedding district and had turned over the administration of the hospital to his aide Ehrich Zwilsky. Incredibly, Lustig had remained head of the Reichsvereinigung and had even petitioned the Soviet authorities to have it converted to the new Jewish Gemeinde, with himself as the head. His ambition clearly clouded his judgement; a more prudent course might have compelled him to flee, given the overall negative verdict by many who worked with him and thought he was a turncoat and Gestapo collaborator. Regardless, in June 1945, according to Ruth Bileski, a young Jewish woman sent in 1943 as a forced laborer to work in Lustig’s office, he was taken away accompanied by two uniformed Soviet officers, never to be seen again. Some claim he may have stage-managed his own disappearance to avoid being tried, although the likelier outcome is that he was killed by the Soviets.

REFERENCES

Siegel-Itzkovich, Judy. “A hospital with history.” Jerusalem Post, June 23, 2007, https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=Siegel-Itzkovich%2c+Judy.+%e2%80%9cA+hospital+with+history&d=4898311699633967&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=KvOBC3e8wZezfu1SQux0Q8WOOLP6t1uU

Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

 

POST 107: HARRO WUNDSCH (HAROLD POWELL), A “DUNERA BOY” INTERNED IN THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

 

Note: In this post, I examine a previously unknown to me episode of English “enemy aliens” interned in the Australian Outback during WWII. The principal character of this post was born Harro Hans Carl Paul Wundsch, who following his release from detention and his return to England changed his name to Harold John Powell. He is a distant ancestor related by marriage through the Pauly branch of my family. Under the Nuremberg Laws Harro was considered a mischling of the second degree because one of his grandparents was Jewish; his mother, who has appeared in two earlier Blog posts, was half-Jewish. This publication allows me to bring together various strands of family history to make what I consider some fascinating connections that span several continents.

 

Related Posts:

POST 25: DEATH IN THE SHANGHAI GHETTO

POST 48: DR. ERNST NEISSER’S FINAL DAYS IN 1942 IN THE WORDS OF HIS DAUGHTER

POST 49: GUIDE TO THE “LANDESARCHIV BERLIN” (BERLIN STATE ARCHIVE) CIVIL REGISTRY RECORDS

POST 50: DR. ADOLF GUTTENTAG’S 1942 DIARY

 

 

Figure 1. Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch and Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly as a young married couple (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

This story is inspired by a reader of my Blog, an English lady by the name of Katherine “Kathy” York née Powell, granddaughter of Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly (1891-1978) and Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch (1887-1972). (Figure 1) Kathy stumbled on my Blog when she found reference to her grandmother. Maria’s name has appeared in two previous Blog posts, Posts 48 and 50, and she is someone I hold in high regard because of her courage during WWII. There are several threads I will follow as I relate a story about Kathy’s father, born Harro Wundsch (1920-2006) (Figure 2), who changed his name to Harold Powell when he returned to England following his internment in Australia. He apparently selected the name Powell because it was easy to remember and sounded like “Pauly,” his mother’s maiden name. Maria Wundsch is the person that links much of the following story together.

 

 

Figure 2. Harro Wundsch, later Harold Powell (1920-2006), on his 85th birthday

 

Let me begin this account on the 22nd of August 1942 in Berlin.

 

Figure 3. Helene & Adolf Guttentag, Christmas 1938, at their apartment on Kaiser Wilhelmstraße 9 in Stettin

 

In Post 50, I chronicled in his own words Dr. Adolf Guttentag’s (1868-1942) and his wife Helene Guttentag née Pauly’s (1873-1942) (Figure 3) final few months in Berlin before they committed suicide together on the 16th of October 1942 after being told by the Nazis to report to an “old age transport,” effectively, a concentration camp. For context, Helene Pauly was my first cousin twice removed. Having seen many of their friends and family deported or commit suicide, there was no doubt what fate awaited them as the Nazis accelerated their pace of deportation of Jews to extermination camps in 1942. As detailed in Post 50, Dr. Guttentag decided to document those final months and reflect on his life. Beginning on the 22nd of August 1942, Dr. Guttentag recorded the following: 

. . . Rather large transports now occur at a rapid pace. A farewell letter to Otto and Dorothee [NOTE: his son and daughter-in-law], which I have deposited with Maria Wundsch, describes in two notebooks, the general development of my family.  In addition, I have decided to start making diary-type entries which show how we are, i.e., how our health is, how we spend our time, what else is going on, what we must expect, and what our plans are.

It is clear from this opening paragraph that Dr. Guttentag trusted Dr. Maria Wundsch to do what she could to ensure that his diary got into the hands of his son in America, Otto Guttentag (Figure 4), after he and his wife died. Maria is mentioned several times in Adolf’s diary, as is her husband, Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch, though he is never identified by name. Because Maria Wundsch’s father, Carl Pauly (1854-1918), was from a Jewish family, according to the Nuremberg Laws Maria was considered a mischling of the first degree (i.e., half-Jewish), though there is no evidence she was raised Jewish. Her husband was not Jewish, and this may have afforded her some level of “protection.” More on this later.

 

Figure 4. Dr. Otto Ernst Guttentag in April 1935 from his U.S. Naturalization Petition

 

On the 23rd of August 1942, Dr. Guttentag noted the following about Hans Helmut Wundsch: 

Maria Wundsch’s husband had sent us a number of papers concerning his fishery work. They are of zoological as well as economic importance. I have read them carefully because I had no idea what there is in the world outside of medicine. We have sent those papers to Mutti’s brother [NOTE: Helene Guttentag’s brother, Wilhelm Pauly] who, like another friend, is very much interested in the development and utilization of fish in the lakes of the Havel River in the province of Brandenburg. A few days from now Maria’s husband will inspect a lake there. As for us, we cannot initiate any such contacts because they would endanger others and ourselves.

Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch was a German fisheries scientist and professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin and director at the Prussian State Institute for Fisheries in Berlin-Friedrichshagen from 1925 until 1937; from 1947 to 1958, he was director at predecessor institutes to today’s Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB), Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. (Figure 5)

 

Figure 5. Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch in 1956 at the “Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB),” Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries

 

It so happens that my uncle Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) (Figure 6), married to my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck (1904-1942) (Figure 7) who was murdered in Auschwitz, was also a professor at Humboldt University at the same time as Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch. My uncle, who converted to Christianity on the 25th of November 1901, nonetheless was fired from the university in 1933 because of his Jewish ancestry. Though Franz and Hans Helmut worked in different departments, Kathy and I surmise they may have known one another. According to Kathy, her grandfather lost his job at Humboldt University in 1937 for making jokes about Hitler to his students.

 

Figure 6. My uncle Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) as a young professor at Humboldt University in Berlin
Figure 7. My aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck (1904-1942) who was murdered in Auschwitz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the 22nd of September 1942, Dr. Guttentag again mentions Maria Wundsch giving us some slight insight into her religious convictions: 

Yesterday Maria Wundsch was here for almost the entire day in order to help Mutti [NOTE: Helene Guttentag] She is the only person who has been of help and assistance to Mutti in our many moves: 1. From Stettin to Hirschberg; 2. H(irschberg) move from No. 70 to No. 32; 3. From H. to Berlin-Kurfürstendamm; 4. from there to here; and 5. now for the evacuation. What a person! Other friends or relatives had failed us. Her convictions are strange, but one must respect her. Details of her religious point of view perhaps at some later time. Incomprehensible to me: even though she cannot adopt the Christian dogma, she nevertheless does not have to conform to certain rules of the Jewish religion, as for instance the total, 24-hour fasting on their highest holiday, Yom Kippur. So, she had come to discuss with Mutti how best to pack the modest number of authorized articles for the transport.

It is clear from this entry that while other of Adolf and Helene Guttentag’s friends and family had largely abandoned them during the Nazi era, Maria Wundsch continued to stand by them, probably at great personal risk. Her religious views, though not altogether clear to me, seem to meld Christian and Jewish values.

Respectively, on the 1st through the 3rd of October, then again on the 10th of October, Dr. Guttentag noted his brother-in-law Dr. Adolf Neisser’s (Figure 8) suicide attempt, eventual death, and memorial service:

 

 

Figure 8. Dr. Ernst Neisser (1863-1942) towards the end of his life

 

October 1: 

Now fate has caught up with Uncle Ernst [Ernst Neisser]. Yesterday afternoon he was informed that he was to be ready tomorrow morning from 8:00 a.m. on; he would be picked up and evacuated, together with his relative, Miss. Lise Neisser (who has kept house for him). It is never divulged where they are going, probably somewhere in Bohemia. He had always been determined not to go; he wanted to end his life because of his more and more frequent and painful heart troubles that can only be interpreted as angina pectoris. 

October 2-3: 

“Miss Neisser had already died last night, but Uncle Ernst had not. He was taken to the hospital (we may be taken only to the Jewish Hospital) and was still alive this morning. He had injected himself with 2% morphine and taken 5 tablets of Veronal. . . He died on October 3, 1942. 

October 10: 

Yesterday was the memorial service for Uncle Ernst. As Mutti reported it was very dignified through the music of a quartet, which at first . . .[sentence not finished]. We stayed together for a while: Susel and Hans [NOTE: Dr. Ernst Neisser’s daughter and son-in-law], Uncle Willi [NOTE: Willy Pauly, Dr. Ernst Neisser’s brother-in-law], Maria Wundsch, Mutti and I. . . .(whom the family reached?).” 

Adolf and Helene Guttentag too committed suicide barely two weeks later, on October 16th.

In Post 48, I discussed the final days of Dr. Ernst Neisser (1863-1942). As noted in Dr. Guttentag’s diary, Luise Neisser died immediately, but Ernst Neisser lingered in a coma for three or four days before succumbing to his trauma.

Because Luise died immediately her death was recorded in the Charlottenburg borough of Berlin (Figures 9a-b) where she lived with her cousin. Ernst Neisser, however, was taken to the Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community, the only hospital in Berlin where Jews could be admitted and cured, if possible, during WWII, before once again being thrown into the maws of death. For the Nazis, it was not enough for Jews to die but they had to die on Nazi terms, in extermination camps. Regardless, Ernst Neisser denied the Nazis this satisfaction and he passed away on the 3rd or 4th of October 1942 at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, located in Wedding, a neighborhood in the borough of Berlin-Mitte. His death was therefore recorded here. (Figures 10a-b)

 

Figure 9a. Cover of Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Charlottenburg Nr. 713 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” with Luise “Sara” Neisser’s death recorded in October 1942
Figure 9b. Luise “Sara” Neisser’s name circled in Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Charlottenburg Nr. 713 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” listing her death in October and the death certificate number as 4325

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 10a. Cover of Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Wedding Nr. 5 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” with Richard Ernst “Israel” Neißer’s death recorded in October 1942
Figure 10b. Richard Ernst “Israel” Neißer’s name circled in Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Wedding Nr. 5 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” listing his death in October and the death certificate number illegible

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much for the lengthy background which partly covers material discussed in earlier posts.

Kathy York initially contacted me through my Blog on the 26th of August 2021, and between this email and ensuing ones, several things she said grabbed my attention. The first was that, according to Kathy, throughout the war, her grandmother Dr. Maria Wundsch worked as a chemist at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, the Jewish Community Hospital, where Dr. Ernst Neisser died. As a related aside, Maria studied for her PhD. in Berlin at the “Royal Friedrich-Wilhelms University” from 1910 to 1914,  and was awarded her PhD. in 1915. The title of her thesis “Der Mundwerkzeuge der Caraboidea,” that’s to say, the working mouthparts of caraboides, a group of ground beetles.

The concern among family of Jews who attempted suicide and didn’t immediately succumb was that they would be revived only later to be deported to a concentration camp. Dr. Guttentag’s diary entry recorded on the 1st of October 1942 voices this concern: 

Since it has been 15 hours since he [NOTE: Dr. Ernst Neisser] took the medicines, it can be assumed the result will be absolutely fatal, and any revival, which everybody fears, is impossible.

The unanswerable question I have is whether Dr. Maria Wundsch, by dint of working at the Jewish Hospital where Dr. Neisser was a dying patient, made sure he was never revived following his suicide attempt since, clearly, they knew one another?

Kathy York assures me a letter exists among the family papers in which Maria Wundsch describes her time working at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, and her efforts trying to protect fellow Jews during WWII. If Kathy can locate this item of family memorabilia, I hope to discuss it in a future post.

Kathy theorizes that because her grandfather’s family included Prussian military men this may have saved her grandmother from the fate of some of her relatives. A much more controversial explanation may be that because Maria was married to a non-Jew, this may have contributed to her survival during the Holocaust.

The story of how the Jüdische Krankenhaus survived relatively unscathed during the entire war is compelling and fascinating. It has been the subject of a book by Daniel B. Silver, the former general counsel to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, entitled “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.” I refer any readers interested in the topic to this book.

Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch and Maria Wundsch had four children born between 1919 and 1929, Renate (1919-1997), Harro (1920-2006), Josef (1922-1989) (Figures 11-12), and Stefan (1929-1967). Not wanting the children to grow up under the Nazi regime, and likely also fearing their children’s status as mischlinge of the second degree (i.e., one-quarter Jewish) would endanger them, they sent the three oldest ones to the United Kingdom, respectively, in 1933, 1935, and 1937; the youngest one, Stefan, was sent to Switzerland but sent back to Germany at the outbreak of hostilities. This was a fateful decision. Harro Wundsch, Kathy York’s father, would see his father at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, then not again until 1958 (Figure 13), since his parents were stuck in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) following the war and were unable to emigrate. And, sadly, Stefan, the youngest of Hans Helmut and Maria Wundsch’s children, was never able to join his siblings in the United Kingdom, so grew up apart from them and died relatively young. Maria Wundsch was only able to rejoin her surviving children in England following her husband’s death in 1972 when she was allowed to emigrate from the GDR; Maria died on the 14th of January 1978 and is buried in Leicester, England. (Figure 14)

 

Figure 11. Kathy York’s father, Harro Wundsch (left), with his older sister Renate (center), and younger brother Josef (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

Figure 12. Kathy’s grandfather and father, Hans and Harro Wundsch (photo courtesy of Kathy York)
Figure 13. From left to right, Kathy’s half-brother Thomas Waugh (1943-2015), her uncle Stefan Wundsch (1929-1967), and her grandfather Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch (1887-1972) in 1958 (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 14. Maria Wundsch née Pauly’s (1891-1978) headstone in Leicester, England (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

Almost as an afterthought, Kathy mentioned that her father Harro Wundsch had been a “Dunera Boy.” This was the second thing that caught my attention during my conversations with Kathy. Having no idea what Dunera Boys were, I did a Google query, which I will briefly summarize for readers as it represented to me an entirely unknown episode of WWII history.

At the time Britain declared war on Germany on the 3rd of September 1939, more than 70,000 Germans and Austrians living there became “enemy aliens.” According to tribunals established to determine the threat these people posed to Britain three classifications of aliens were decided on: “Class C” consisted of approximately 66,000 people who were deemed to pose the least danger and were exempt from internment or restrictions; “Class B” included about 6,600 people, and these people were carefully monitored by the police; and “Class A” was made up of 569 people classified and interned as enemy aliens.

By May 1940, with Germany advancing through Belgium and France and the increasing possibility that Britain would be invaded, the British Government reassessed the enemy alien population and incarcerated an additional 12,000 Germans, Austrians, and Italians.

The dramatic increase in the number of detainees led to severe overcrowding causing the British Government to ship 7,500 internees to Australia and Canada between the 24th of June and the 10th of July 1940. Tragically, the transport bound for Canada, the Arandora Star, carrying more than 1,000 internees and 300 crew, was torpedoed and sunk, resulting in the death of 835 people.

The detainees bound for Australia left England on the 10th of July 1940 aboard the Hired Military Transport (HMT) Dunera; they consisted of 2,542 internees, including Harro Wundsch. While the group included about 450 German and Italian prisoners of war and a few dozen fascist sympathizers, most of the deportees were anti-fascist and two-thirds were Jewish; it also included some survivors from the Arandora Star. Conditions and treatment of the deportees aboard the Dunera were appalling, so much so that that the British Government eventually agreed to pay £35,000 to the group.

Harro Wundsch would occasionally joke to his family that he was on the last convict ship to Australia without ever mentioning that it was the Dunera.

After a 57-day journey under ghastly conditions, on the 3rd of September, the Dunera docked in Port Melbourne where 344 internees disembarked. The remainder of the detainees were taken to Sydney, arriving there on the 6th of September. (Figure 15) From there they boarded trains bound for the central New South Wales town of Hay, in the Australian Outback.  The Hay camp held most of the internees. As many of them consisted of Jewish inmates who’d been forced to leave successful careers in Germany, Austria, and England, the group included a high percentage of professionals, tradesmen, and artists. Remarkably, the internees established an unofficial university, library, and orchestra, and even minted a currency for use inside the camp.

 

Figure 15. The HMT Dunera at the Sydney Wharf with the train for Hay, New South Wales train (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

Within weeks of the Dunera’s departure, the British Government altered their alien classification system once again. They acknowledged that under the revised system, most of the Dunera deportees would not have been interned. In early 1941, the British Home Office sent Major Julian Layton to Australia to investigate the situation and study possible repatriation; he recommended the internees be reclassified as “refugee aliens,” so that by the end of 1941 most of them had been released. About 900 of the original “Dunera Boys” remained in Australia, many joining the Australian army’s 8th Employment Company. Those who stayed in Australia wound up making enormous contributions to the cultural, academic, and economic life of the country. (Figure 16)

 

Figure 16. The Dunera Boys reunion in Melbourne, Australia in 1963 (National Museum of Australia)

 

Harro Wundsch was among the group of Dunera Boys who decided to return to England. He arrived in the United Kingdom two days before his 21st birthday and was allowed to enlist in the British Army. He had intended to join the Parachute Regiment but broke his ankle so wound up in the Royal Engineers. He was involved in the D-Day landings and spent some time in Japan. According to his wife’s niece, Harold Powell, as he was by then known, was enroute to Japan when the war in the Pacific ended. It turns out he was aboard the SS Missouri in Tokyo Bay with the British Army on the 2nd of September 1945, when Emperor Hirohito signed the peace treaty. Following the war, Harold Powell went on to obtain a degree in Civil Engineering.

The final thing Kathy mentioned that attracted my attention was that her grandmother’s sister and brother-in-law, Elisabeth “Lily” Kretschmer née Pauly and Fritz Kretschmer (Figures 17-18), escaped to the Shanghai Ghetto, living in the Jewish community there. (Figures 19a-b, 20-22) Unlike my father’s first cousin, Fritz Goldenring, subject of Post 25, who also escaped to Shanghai but perished there, Kathy’s great-aunt and -uncle survived and wound up in San Francisco after the war.

 

Figure 17. Elisabeth Kretschmer née Pauly (1889-1984) (photo courtesy of Kathy York)
Figure 18. Fritz & Elisabeth Kretschmer with Friedrich Seidel in Kleinmachnow, Berlin in 1939 soon before the Kretschmers emigrated to Shanghai (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 19a. Cover of “Emigranten Adressbuch,” Emigrants Address Book, for Shanghai containing Fritz Kretschmer’s name and address (photo courtesy of Kathy York)
Figure 19b. Page from “Emigranten Adressbuch” for Shanghai listing Fritz Kretschmer’s name and address (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 20. The Jewish Shanghai Ghetto (photo courtesy of Kathy York)
Figure 21. The house in the Shanghai Ghetto where Fritz & Elisabeth Kretschmer lived (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 22. The interpretive sign for the Shanghai Ghetto, euphemistically referred to as “The Designated Area for Stateless Refugees” (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

So, it can be no accident that Kathy discovered my family Blog, and we find that our family’s histories overlap across the European, Asian, Australian, and North American continents.

REFERENCES

National Museum of Australia. “Dunera Boys.” 2006, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/dunera-boys

Sherman, Suzan. “How a Jewish Hospital Survived the Holocaust.” The Forward, October 31, 2003, https://forward.com/articles/6972/how-a-jewish-hospital-survived-the-holocaust/

Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

York, Katherine. “Harro Wundsch – Harry Powell.” Dunera News, No. 106, p. 12-15, July 2019.