A former Nazi party member was posthumously designated this month as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, one of the few former Nazis to be rewarded the title, a Times of Israel report said.
Three years ago, a report on Israel’s Kan News, revealed the heroism of Kleinicke, who used his position as a senior Nazi official supervising construction in Chrzanow, Upper Silesia to rescue hundreds of Jews from transport to Auschwitz (12 miles away) by “claiming” them as workers. He also sheltered Jews in his basement who were too weak to work and warned Jews about upcoming deportations.
Unfortunately, the Nazis gradually realized that Jews under Kleinicke were “missing” and he was reassigned to military training in 1943 as a punishment.
Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff and 95-year-old Holocaust survivor Josef Konigsberg, who was personally saved by Kleinicke from being deported to Auschwitz, presented Kleinicke’s daughter, Juta Scheffzek with the certificate, who accepted it on her father’s behalf.
When Konigsberg was 16, he was waiting in a line of Jews to be transported to Auschwitz and Kleinicke personally removed him from the line. “I owe him my life,” Konigsberg said. “My mother came and begged him to rescue me. Kleinicke grabbed me and said that I was his best worker.”
“This is one of the most beautiful days of my life,” Konigsberg said, looking toward Scheffzek. “Thank you, thank you.”
“Those of us who worked for Kleinicke were like VIPs,” one survivor told Kan News. “We had a certificate that we worked for him and that was our insurance policy.”
Kleinicke, who passed away at age 72 in 1979, remained silent about his actions during the Holocaust and didn’t reply to a few survivors who wrote him after the war. He told a few brief details to his daughter but she didn’t fully understand what he was telling her.
The Kan report united Scheffzek with some of the survivors and prompted her to research her father’s wartime activities.
“It verified what my father said to me in very few words — and I never knew if he had been telling the truth,” she said.
Helmut Kleinicke, a Nazi official who risked his life to shelter & help Jewish labourers to avoid deportation to the death camps during the Holocaust, has been posthumously awarded the designation of Righteous Among the Nations. @TimesofIsrael https://t.co/PA8UWSRA4B pic.twitter.com/nVRCbUJqBO
— The Wiener Holocaust Library (@wienerlibrary) January 23, 2020
Of the over 27,000 Jews recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, Kleinicke is only the 628th German and one of the few former members of the Nazi party to receive the award.
In related news, Prince Charles visited the grave of his grandmother on his trip to Israel last week for the World Holocaust Forum. Princess Alice, the mother of Prince Phillip hid three Jews from the Nazis in Athens during the Holocaust.
(YWN
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One Response
This article is written poorly, even by YWN standards.
Here are three of the errors:
First of all, the first name of this hero is not named once in this article.
Second of all, titles are awarded, not rewarded.
Third of all, I believe that non-Jews are awarded this title, not Jews!