us-005578-irn14026
type: RecordSet
archival history: The directory was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1994 by Alice and John Fink.
biographical history: The Jewish Community of Berlin-According to a census of June 16, 1933, the Jewish population of Berlin, Germany's capital city, was about 160,000. Berlin's Jewish community was the largest in Germany, comprising more than 32 percent of all Jews in the country. In the face of Nazi persecution, many Jews emigrated from Berlin. Berlin's Jewish population fell to about 80,000 people as a result of emigration from Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939, despite the movement of other German Jews to Berlin. Like the Jews of Germany as a whole, the Jews of Berlin faced persecution and discrimination after 1933. On April 1, 1933, Jewish stores and businesses were boycotted, an official action which spurred many subsequent unofficial boycotts of Jewish goods and services. In 1933 most Jewish civil servants and professionals were summarily fired or pensioned. In May of that year,"un-Germa" books—those written by Jews, liberals, and leftists, among others—were publicly burned in front of the opera house. During Kristallnacht, the"Night of Broken Glas" pogrom on November 9–10, 1938, most of Berlin's synagogues were burned down and Jewish-owned stores and homes were looted and vandalized. The shattering of shop windows, especially along Leipziger Street, gave the pogrom its name. Dozens of Jews were killed in Berlin. Thousands were arrested and taken to concentration camps, particularly to Sachsenhausen. Deportations of Jews from Berlin to ghettos and killing centers in eastern Europe took place between October 1941 and April 1943. Assembly points for the deportations were established at synagogues on Levetzow Street and Heidereuter Alley, at the Jewish cemetery on Grosse Hamburger Street, and on Rosen Street. Later, even the Jewish home for the aged, the community office building, and the Jewish hospital were used as assembly centers. After enough Jews for an entire transport (usually 1,000 people) had been assembled in these makeshift centers, they were taken to the rail station—us…
physical characteristics and technical requirements: Photocopy; 134 p. ; 30 cm.
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
has beginning date: 1947-01-01
has end date: 1947-12-31
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: deu
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn14026
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Photocopy of a register of Jewish citizens located in Berlin, Germany, in 1947 that was copied by John Finke in Chicago in 2000. John (then Hans) was a concentration camp survivor who became an aid worker after the war. Hans, his parents and his sister Ursula lived in Berlin during the rise of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933 with its aggressive anti-Jewish policies. Jews were forced out of their jobs and their businesses were confiscated. In February 1943, Hans, 23, an electrician by trade, was a forced laborer for Siemens when he was hospitalized with appendicitis. On February 29, his parents were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz. On March 8, the Gestapo raided the hospital and arrested staff and patients. Hans was transported to Monowitz concentration camp, and later sent to Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Flossenberg, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. Hans was in Bergen-Belsen when it was liberated by the British Army. His parents were murdered in Auschwitz, but his sister Ursula survived in hiding. Bergen-Belsen became a displaced persons camp and Hans began working for the British and then various aid groups. He met Alice Redlich, who had left Berlin for England in 1938 to continue her nurses's training. She volunteered with the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad and, in September 1946, left for the Bergen-Belsen DP camp in Germany. Her family was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943. Alice and Hans married on June 20, 1948, in the camp. The couple, with Alice pregnant with their first child, emigrated to the United States on August 29, 1949.
title: Reference work