http://www.nordbayern.de/region/erlangen/lewin-poeschke-anlage-erinnert-an-mordopfer-1.383868
Rabbi Levin was a man who worked for the ideal of reconciliation between Christians and Jews. Frida Poeschke, a Christian, was his companion. In 1980, they were murdered in Erlangen. It has always been suspected that they were killed by members of an extreme rightist group. Frida was also the widow of Michael Poeschke, who was a Social Democrat imprisoned during the Nazi years. In 1933, shortly after Hitler took power, Poeschke and other Social Democrats in Erlangen were arrested, beaten and shipped off to Dachau. Later released, Poeschke was banned to another city (Gleiwitz) until the end of the war. Subsequently, he became Lord Mayor of Erlangen. He died in the 1950s and is considered one of the city's heroes. Rabbi Levin was buried in Haifa, while Frida was laid next to her husband, Michael, in the Central Cemetery.
In the same article, I sadly learned of the death of Ilse Sponsel at 86. Ilse was the widow of Friedrich Sponsel, a former mayor of the city. She was highly active in the city's affairs regarding the former Jewish residents who had fled before the Holocaust. Erlangen, like many other German cities, began a program to reach out and invite surviving Jewish former residents to return for a visit hosted by the city. Sponsel was not only active in that program, but also became a researcher and writer of books and articles documenting the fate of the city's Jews.
While I was researching my book on Erlangen in 2004, Ms Sponsel was helpful in putting me in contact with the city's new Jewish community and their community center. That led to me being able to visit the city's Jewish cemetery. Unfortunately, I was not able to meet her face to face because she was having health problems. Today I learned that she passed away in November.
Gary, it seems that you care more about Erlangen's nazi past than the people from Erlangen. No one from there I talked to even knew about those events, including the lighting of the menorah you mentioned before. And being sad that someone at age 86 died is sad.
ReplyDeleteIngrid,
ReplyDeleteC'mon. I took it out of the ER. Ilse Sponsel was an important person in Erlangen who did a lot of good works. Her last years were spent in ill health.
Its a good post Gary. Thanks for lighting up a significant piece of history. I also admire that you could speak respectfully of an episode of Jewish history without once pointing a finger at Muslims.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Ingrid often offers sensible counter-points, I must say that if someone lives until 86, the time they die is an appropriate time to mourn them. If she had died thirty years earlier, we could have mourned her at 56, but not, of course, on the internet.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteI was only paying tribute to a woman who did many good things and helped me on my research trip.
Maybe I do highlight the anti-semitism coming from Muslims. There are also a lot of so-called Christian folks who are re-buying into it. In Europe, they are neo-Nazis and skin heads.
As for anti-semitism coming from Muslims, it is many times worse in Europe than here. It is a huge problem in Europe and must be pointed out.
Maybe I do highlight the anti-semitism coming from Muslims. There are also a lot of so-called Christian folks who are re-buying into it. In Europe, they are neo-Nazis and skin heads.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I doubt that the neo-Nazis and skin heads are fans of Islam. I think that the similarity begins and ends with the anti-Semitism.
Actually Lance, I recall in the 1960s that a neo-Nazi couple in Pennsylvania named their new-born son "Yasser Arafat," purely because of a shared anti-Semitism. That's an old, isolated, incident, but politics does make strange bedfellows. It wouldn't be the first time that two enemies got together to exterminate a common enemy, each plotting to them bury the hatchet in each other. Look at the U.S. and the Soviet Union during WW II. Look at how fast we became good buddies with Germany and Japan.
ReplyDeleteHere's another scenario: neo-Nazis and skinheads could be perpetrating anti-Semitic violence, then palming it off as the work of Muslim immigrants, so that both inferior racial groups would be weakened...