Menachem Birnbaum

Last updated

Menachem Birnbaum (born 1893 in Vienna, died probably 1944), was an Austrian Jewish book illustrator and portrait painter.

Contents

Life

Birnbaum was the second son of the Jewish philosopher Nathan Birnbaum and his wife Rosa Korngut. Birnbaum married Ernestine (Tina) Esther Helfmann, with whom he had two children: Rafael Zwi and Hana. Birnbaum lived in Berlin from 1911 until 1914, and again from 1919 until 1933.

Exile, deportation and death

In 1933 he emigrated to the Netherlands. In the spring of 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo along with his relatives and transported on 10 March 1943 to a Nazi concentration camp, presumably Auschwitz. Menachem was seen alive and spoken to in Auschwitz in October 1944 by a Dutch Jewish survivor, who told about it to his brother Uriel Birnbaum in Holland after WW2. He must therefore have died between October 1944 and January 27, 1945, when Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets. His family - Tina, Rafael Zwi, and Hana Birnbaum - were killed earlier, probably in Auschwitz as well. [1] It is likely that he died during or just before the Death March from Auschwitz in mid-January, 1945. This would mean that the theory of him dying in March 1943 in the Sobibor extermination camp is incorrect, a theory based solely on an unconfirmed assumption by the Red Cross that the trains from the German holding camp at Westerbork, Holland were sent to Sobibor on the day of his arrest and deportation. [2]

Works

Literature

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Westerbork transit camp</span> Nazi transit camp for Jews in the occupied Netherlands

Camp Westerbork, also known as Westerbork transit camp, was a Nazi transit camp in the province of Drenthe in the Northeastern Netherlands, during World War II. It was located in the municipality of Westerbork, current-day Midden-Drenthe. Camp Westerbork was used as a staging location for sending Jews to concentration camps elsewhere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathan Birnbaum</span> Austrian philosopher (1864–1937)

Nathan Birnbaum was an Austrian writer and journalist, Jewish thinker and nationalist. His life had three main phases, representing a progression in his thinking: a Zionist phase ; a Jewish cultural autonomy phase, which included the promotion of the Yiddish language; and a religious phase, when he turned to Orthodox Judaism and became staunchly anti-Zionist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luise Danz</span> Nazi concentration camp guard

Luise Danz was a Nazi concentration camp guard in World War II. Danz was captured in 1945 and put on trial for crimes against humanity at the Auschwitz trial in Kraków, Poland. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, but released due to general amnesty on 20 August 1957.

<i>Sonderaktion 1005</i> 1942–44 Nazi project to destroy evidence of war crimes in Poland

Sonderaktion1005, also called Aktion1005 or Enterdungsaktion, was a top-secret Nazi operation conducted from June 1942 to late 1944. The goal of the project was to hide or destroy any evidence of the mass murder that had taken place under Operation Reinhard, the attempted extermination of all Jews in the General Government occupied zone of Poland. Groups of Sonderkommando prisoners, officially called Leichenkommandos, were forced to exhume mass graves and burn the bodies; inmates were often put in chains to prevent them from escaping.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe</span> Various forms of resistance conducted by Jews against Nazi occupation regimes

Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henryk Mandelbaum</span> Holocaust survivor

Henryk Mandelbaum was a Polish Holocaust survivor. He was one of the prisoners in the Sonderkommando KL Auschwitz-Birkenau in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp who worked in the crematory. Only 110 out of 2,000 Sonderkommandos in Auschwitz-Birkenau survived the war. As of the death of Dario Gabbai in 2020, no former Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommandos are known to be alive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uriel Birnbaum</span> Austrian artist (1894–1956)

Uriel Birnbaum was an Austrian painter, caricaturist, writer and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herzogenbusch concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp in the Netherlands

Herzogenbusch was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught near the city of 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. The camp was opened in 1943 and held 31,000 prisoners. 749 prisoners died in the camp, and the others were transferred to other camps shortly before Herzogenbusch was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1944. After the war, the camp was used as a prison for Germans and for Dutch collaborators. Today there is a visitors' center which includes exhibitions and a memorial remembering the camp and its victims.

Norbert Wollheim was a chartered accountant, tax advisor, previously a board member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and a functionary of other Jewish organisations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holocaust trains</span> Railway transports used in Nazi Germany

Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn and other European railways under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocaust, to the Nazi concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fabrikaktion</span>

Fabrikaktion is the term for the last major roundup of Jews for deportation from Berlin, which began on 27 February 1943, and ended about a week later. Most of the remaining Jews were working at Berlin plants or for the Jewish welfare organization. The term Fabrikaktion was coined by survivors after World War II; the Gestapo had designated the plan Große Fabrik-Aktion. While the plan was not restricted to Berlin, it later became most notable for catalyzing the Rosenstrasse protest, the only mass public demonstration of German citizens which contested the Nazi government's deportation of the Jews.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Dresden-Polak</span> Dutch gymnast

Anna "Ans" Dresden-Polak was a Jewish Dutch gymnast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hélène Berr</span> French note writer

Hélène Berr was a French woman of Jewish ancestry and faith, who documented her life in a diary during the time of Nazi occupation of France. In France she is considered to be a "French Anne Frank". She died from typhus during an epidemic of the disease in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp that also killed Anne Frank and her sister Margot.

Max Michaelis Ehrlich was a German Jewish actor, screenwriter, and director on the German theater, comedy and cabaret scene of the 1930s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish skull collection</span> Attempted Nazi anthropological display

The Jewish skull collection was an attempt by the Nazis to create an anthropological display to showcase the alleged racial inferiority of the "Jewish race" and to emphasize the Jews' status as Untermenschen ("subhumans"), in contrast to the German race, which the Nazis considered to be Aryan Übermenschen ("superhumans"). The collection was to be housed at the Anatomy Institute at the Reich University of Strasbourg in the annexed region of Alsace, where the initial preparation of the corpses was performed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arno Nadel</span> German painter

Arno Nadel was a Lithuanian musicologist, composer, playwright, poet, and painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup</span> Nazi arrest of Jews in Lyon

The rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup was a Nazi raid and mass arrest of Jews in Lyon's Sainte-Catherine street by the Gestapo. The raid, ordered and personally overseen by Klaus Barbie, took place on 9 February 1943 at the Fédération des sociétés juives de France, then located at the number 12 of this street. To catch as many people as possible, the Nazis not only chose the day the Federation normally gave free medical treatment and food to poor Jewish refugees, but they also set up a trap by forcing arrested Federation employees to encourage further people to come to the 12 rue Sainte Catherine.

References

  1. Cite for the three previous sentences: letter from Uriel Birnbaum to Regina Weinreich dated 6 January 1946, in the Beatrice Weinreich collection, University of Michigan library. Also letter dated 6 August 1945 from Henri van Leeuwen to S.A. Birnbaum in the Nathan and Solomon Birnbaum Archives Toronto.
  2. "German Bundesarchiv Memorial Book for Austrian Holocaust Victims" . Retrieved 26 April 2015.