Karl Loewenstein collection

Karl Loewenstein collection 

Karl Loewenstein was born on 2 May 1887 in Siegen. Though he claimed to be half-Jewish, possibly as a way of effecting his exit from the Minsk ghetto and thereby escaping certain death, it has been confirmed that both of his parents were in fact Jewish. (This and the following biographical information is gleaned from Lampert, Tom, One Life, Harcourt 2004).

His claims to be a decorated WWI Naval officer and to have a doctorate in political economy can not be verified- nor indeed disproved since the relevant archives have been destroyed.

In the 1920s he became a banker and from 1924 to 1941 he was the director of Bankhaus Busse and Co.

As a member of the Confessing Church (Bekennenden Kirche) he came into conflict with the Gestapo, was arrested in November 1941 and deported to Minsk. After half a year of unimaginable cruelty he was allowed to leave the Ghetto and was sent to Vienna and shortly thereafter to Theresienstadt. This fortuitous circumstance apparently came about through a case of mistaken identity. The unprecedented nature of his rescue from Minsk as a German Jew and his subsequent apparent preferential treatment received at Theresienstadt gave rise to negative rumours about him.

He was made chief of the ghetto police and, as such, the second most important member of the camp inmate hierarchy. He campaigned tirelessly against corruption amongst inmates such was his desire to see scarce resources fairly distributed. His methods created more enemies.

After a change of commandant- Seidl was replaced by Anton Burgher- Loewenstein was soon deposed from his position and subsequently tried and found guilty by an inmates' court of a number of relatively minor offences. After serving out his sentence of several months he spent the remainder of his time in Theresienstadt in relative anonymity.

At the end of the war, after the liberation of Theresienstadt, he was arrested by Russian soldiers and eventually handed over to the Czech authorities and spent several years in a number of prisons before he was finally released without charge.

After several years in Australia he returned to Germany but was unable to obtain work on account of his age and for many years lived in relative poverty. It took many years for the German authorities to award him restitution money. Despite being effectively exonerated by the Czech authorities for any alleged crimes in Theresienstadt, former inmates continued to be critical of him. He changed his name to Karl Loesten partly as a consequence. He died in Germany on 9 August 1975.

He only ever managed to get the first chapter of his report published, which pertained to his time in Minsk:"Minsk: Im Lager der deutschen Juden from Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, supplement to the weekly newspaper Das Parlament, 11.7.1956. 

Karl Loewenstein collection