Sprache:
Englisch
Erscheinungsjahr:
2010
Titel der Quelle:
Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung
Angaben zur Quelle:
19 (2010) 331-362
Schlagwort(e):
Heckendorf, Franz,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Rescue
Kurzfassung:
Discusses German painter Franz Heckendorf's rescue of ca. 15 Jews during the Shoah, and his fate after his arrest in 1943. The impoverished, once lauded painter of the Weimar Republic began to smuggle Jewish friends to Switzerland in 1942. Initially, he provided his help for free, but when more and more Jews began to seek his assistance, he started charging for his services. In 1943 he and his four helpers were arrested; they were not condemned to death, but to slave labor. Ascribes this fact to the Nazis' desire to maintain the image that all Germans were intent on wiping out the racially inferior Jews. Heckendorf and his helpers were thus accused of helping the Jews out of "greed", not for political, "un-German" motives. They were sent to slave labor in the mines near Ensisheim, where the mortality rate was high. Heckendorf fell ill and was transferred, in fall 1944, to a prison in Vaihingen; in 1945 he survived a death march to Mauthausen. His aid to the Jews remained unacknowledged after the war, and long after his death in 1962. Only in 2013, in connection with an exhibition of his art in Berlin, was his role in rescuing Jews recognized.
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