Hans Frankenthal
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Hans Frankenthal (15 July 1926 – 22 December 1999) was a German
Frankenthal eventually put his biography to paper in the 1990s in his book Verweigerte Rückkehr which was published half a year before his death. The English edition was published in 2002 under the title The Unwelcome One: Returning Home from Auschwitz.
Childhood
Frankenthal was born into a family of prominent Jewish butchers in
After Jewish businesses began to be boycotted following the
Frankenthal's father, Max Frankenthal, believed that the Nazis would not harass his family to a large extent because he was a decorated soldier in the
Discrimination prior to the Holocaust
In 1937 Max Frankenthal was arrested after allegations from German farmers in Friedeburg that he had attempted to manipulate the weighing scale in order to haggle the price of stock down. He was only held for several hours because the owner of the scales spoke out in his defence. This was, however, only the first of several groundless arrests that were used to intimidate the Jewish community of Schmallenberg. The charges ranged from claims of theft to Rassenschande (crimes against race).
On 10 November 1938, the local synagogue was burnt down and most of the Jews were arrested. All over the village Jewish homes were raided and vandalised. The Nazis dubbed the country-wide event "Kristallnacht". The women and children were released the same day, but the men remained in custody in a shelter for the homeless. The families of those still in custody were able to bring food to their loved ones until the inmates were transferred to the Gestapo jail in nearby Dortmund. The Jews remaining in Schmallenberg were then forced to sign over the title deeds of their property with the promise that it would bring their husbands and sons back. During the Kristallnacht, only one German in Schmallenberg is known to have protested. Dina Falke stood on the street and asked the SA troopers what the Jews had ever done to them until she was silenced by worried family members. Several citizens actively aided the SA in destroying Jewish property and raiding Jewish Homes. Robert Krämer allegedly helped the SA by providing straw to set the synagogue in flames.
On 28 November, the Jewish men were allowed to return home. They had been transferred from the jail in Dortmund to the
At this point the Nazis began to make life for the Jews even harder. They implemented Arbeiteinsätze, in which the Jews were forced to work on projects such as digging ditches to hold water for fighting fires in the upcoming war. Max Frankenthal worked in a factory owned by a friend where he avoided exploitation until the factory was no longer able to hold forced labourers. He and his brother, Emil Frankenthal, were then sent to work for the city, where Emil died of a stroke. The German government ceased to recognise the citizenship of Jews and forced them to add the name Sara to all female names and Israel to all male names.
As the school in Schmallenberg was now closed to Jewish children, Frankenthal and his brother began attending classes at a workshop in Dortmund where they learnt hand skills, foreign languages and were educated in Zionism. In May 1941 this workshop was closed by the Dortmund Gestapo and the students were forced to work for the state. Frankenthal and his brother began work for a roadworks company named Lahrmann. He later learnt that his father also worked in the same work party.
Deportation
On 28 February 1943, the construction site manager informed the workers that they would be required to report to the former Jewish school in Dortmund for the checking of their work papers. Upon their arrival they were placed under arrest and then held for several days before being loaded into cattle transport wagons and sent east.
Frankenthal, and several others of those arrested, received an order from one of the officers who was in charge of the troopers to pack the Jews' luggage into several wagons. At a train station in Bielefeld, Frankenthal noticed that these wagons were no longer attached to the train. Because his father had already been detained in a concentration camp, Frankenthal asked what was going on. His father informed him that they would not require their luggage at their destination.
During the journey the inmates’ food and water rations were simply cancelled, and several of the older ones did not survive. After spending three days and three nights in the train, the arrested Jews arrived in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex.
Internment
As the family arrived at the camp, Max Frankenthal told his two sons that he was sure that he would not survive the ordeal, and that should they get out, to go back to Schmallenberg. The Jews were then ordered to exit the train. In the confusion the two sons lost their parents, who they later learned were sent directly to the
As they arrived, the inmates were forced to strip naked and were sent to their barracks where their bodies were shaved. They then had their inmate numbers tattooed onto their arms. Frankenthal became 104920 and his brother 104921. The inmates were then sorted out according to skills. The brothers both claimed to be locksmiths, although they had only begun training at the workshop in Dortmund. They were then showered and issued with their striped uniforms.
The Blockältester, or inmate block leader, then greeted the new arrivals to inform them of their current situation: they were in an extermination camp, and any family members, whom they could not see in this block, had probably already been gassed.
The inmates in Frankenthal's block were composed mainly of Jews, with several political prisoners as well. The prisoners were forced to work under horrendous conditions for long hours. The inmates also worked alongside civilian workers from the Polish and German populations who instructed the inmates inside the camp, but not inside the electric fence.
Most of the prisoners in Monowitz worked for IG Farben in Liquidation. During his internment at the camp, Frankenthal played a minor role in the largely unsuccessful resistance. He was also subject to dental experiments from SS doctors.
On 18 January 1945, the
Here the inmates built V2 rockets in an underground factory. When the inmates began the deliberate sabotage of German rockets, prisoners were hanged from the ceiling as a warning to the other workers. During an aerial bombardment of the camp on 3 April 1945, Frankenthal, his brother, and another inmate managed to escape. In the confusion the brothers were separated from the third fugitive. After three days they were recaptured by a group of Volkssturm (German militia). They were put on transports and sent east. At some point Frankenthal lost consciousness and awoke two days after they were liberated by Russian troops.
Liberation
The train stopped at
Upon their return to Schmallenberg, the brothers found out that although several houses were destroyed during the war, their parents' house was not among them. The house was, however, inhabited by some relatives who had already made their way from a ghetto back to Schmallenberg.
Hans Frankenthal Prize
From 2011 onwards the Foundation Auschwitz Committee (Stiftung Auschwitz-Komitee) inaugurates the Hans Frankenthal Prize. This annual prize is awarded to groups, initiatives and institutions that accomplish educational work and awareness training according to the aims of the Auschwitz Committee for the remembrance of the Shoah and against neo-fascist activities.[1]
Bibliography
- Frankenthal, Hans (1999). Verweigerte Rückkehr. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag (1999) ISBN 3-596-14493-0
- Frankenthal, Hans (2002). The Unwelcome One. Returning Home from Auschwitz. In collaboration with Andreas Plake, Babette Quinkert, and Florian Schmaltz. Translated from German by John A. Broadwin. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press (2002) ISBN 0-8101-1887-4
References
- ^ "Stiftung Auschwitz Committee on the Hans-Frankenthal-Preis". Stiftung-Auschwitz-Komitee.de (in German).