Annotations
Brandenburg an der Havel
04/13/1942
Municipal police officers in uniform escort the people persecuted as Jews past Nicolaiplatz in the direction of the train station. Willi and Hans Levy and Charlotte Samt can be seen in the front row.
Annotations
People
6
Keywords
2
Historical context
Deportation von Brandenburg an der Havel nach Warschau am 13.04.1942
On April 13, 1942, 20 Jews from Brandenburg an der Havel became victims of the deportation “Ptsd. II” (Potsdam) organized by the Potsdam State Police Office. According to a witness statement Detective Inspector Kriesche was responsible for implementing the deportation in the town. The deportees had to gather in the courtyard of the Gestapo office on Neuendorfer Straße. Carrying their hand luggage and escorted by officers of the municipal police, they had to walk about two kilometers from the Gestapo office to the train station. In a third-class passenger car, they were taken to Berlin, where they had to spend the night of April 14 in the synagogue on Levetzowstraße, which was used as an assembly camp.
On April 14, the deportees from the Potsdam district and 65 people from Berlin had to walk about seven kilometers to the Grunewald train station. From there, they were taken to the Warsaw ghetto on a train to which another deportation transport from Magdeburg was attached. On April 16, the chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council, Adam Czerniaków, noted in his diary: "At 6 o'clock, the train with the new arrivals from Germany entered the station. It looks like a thousand people."
About the image series
The series of pictures from Brandenburg an der Havel consists of eight photographs. They show a variety of scenes: the deportees gathering and registering in the courtyard of the Gestapo office, their forced march across the town, and their boarding the train at Brandenburg train station. The front and/or back pages of all the prints are written on. The two photographs taken on the platform are also available as slightly enlarged duplicates. They may have been produced for an exhibition or a report.
Photographer
Walter Kriesche, Kriminalinspektor
Walter Kriesche was born in Cottbus on April 7, 1882. He became a police officer and moved to Brandenburg an der Havel, where he married Frieda Müller in 1923. As a staunch NSDAP member and protégé of the mayor of Brandenburg, Wilhelm Sievers, he rose from being an ordinary police officer to become head of the political department of the Brandenburg criminal investigation department during the Nazi era - without taking any exams or undergoing any special training.
In this function, Walter Kriesche was probably responsible for the deportation on April 13, 1942. Eyewitness accounts describe him as brutal, and there is also talk of sexual assaults on female forced laborers. Walter Kriesche took his own life on May 4, 1945, shortly before the invasion of the Red Army.
Provenance
The Brandenburg picture series was taken by Detective Inspector Walter Kriesche, the person responsible for the deportation of people persecuted as Jews. He received the pertinent order from Brandenburg's mayor Wilhelm Sievers.
Ten prints, including two duplicates, have been preserved in the municipal archives of the town of Brandenburg an der Havel. The handwritten names were probably added after the liberation by someone who knew the community well. One hypothesis is that the pictures were in the possession of a survivor for some time. The inscriptions on the backs of the pictures suggest that at least some of them were used for exhibition purposes. The whereabouts of the negatives are unclear.
Call number at source archive
L.1.-61/10
Title at source archive
ohne Titel
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the town archives of the town of Brandenburg an der Havel for their kind cooperation, Maximilian Vogel from the Nazi Euthanasia Memorial for his help in identifying the exact locations where the pictures were taken, and the town museum for sharing information.
Text and research by Akim Jah, Lisa Paduch und Alina Bothe.
Kooperationsverbund #LastSeen. Bilder der NS-Deportationen Dr. Alina Bothe Projektleiterin
c/o Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg
Freie Universität Berlin
Habelschwerdter Allee 34A
14195 Berlin
lastseen@zedat.fu-berlin.de
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