From the Alfred – Alf Schwarzbaum collection: A letter from Dr. Philipp Auerbach, May 21, 1948

From the Alfred – Alf Schwarzbaum collection: A letter from Dr. Philipp Auerbach, state commissioner of the Bavarian provincial government for religious, political and racial victims of the Nazis (Staatskommissariat fuer rassisch, religioes und politisch Verfolgte), Muenchen, addressed to Alfred – Alf Schwarzbaum during his stay in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Auerbach requests to meet Schwarzbaum for the purpose of discussing the payments of German reparations and package sending to Holocaust survivors. May, 21, 1948. Single page, original, German, print. Original: 26408, Holdings registry. Note: Philipp Auerbach was born in Hamburg in 1906. He had a higher education in Chemistry and political science. Before the war he was the head of a chemical import-export company and an activist in the German democratic party. During the war he was incarcerated in the concentration camps. After liberation he found a position within the British military occupation zone. He was appointed later to the above position and when the Commissary was closed he was appointed as head of the Nazi victim's reparations bureau. The Auerbach affair: He was arrested in 1952 and removed from his position under the accusations initiated by his political rival, the Catholic minister of justice Josef Mueller. He was dismissed from his position, trialed and found guilty of various economic felonies although he claimed throughout the trial that it was a staged trial organized by the minister of justice with judges who had Nazi background. At the end of the trial it was ruled that he was not guilty of embezzlement yet was guilty of several economic violations and he was sentenced to two and a half years in jail. Auerbach committed suicide while his attorneys planned to appeal against the trials results (August 16, 1952). His name was cleared in 1954 by an investigation committee on behalf of the Bavarian parliament and his rival Josef Mueller who was accused of prosecuting Auerback, had to resign from his position. About Alfred Schwarzbaum: Alfred (Alf) Schwarzbaum was a Jewish merchant from Bedzin, Poland, who fled to Switzerland after the occupation. In Switzerland, he set up a relief enterprise, and supported hundreds of Jews. Alfred (Alf) Schwarzbaum was born in 1896 in Sosnowiec, Poland. He later moved to Bedzin, became a businessman and started a family. In late September 1939, following the German occupation of Poland, he sent his daughter to England. In November 1939, he was jailed for several weeks in Myslowice and was interrogated by the Gestapo. After his release, he turned down an offer from Mosheh Merin, head of the Sosnowiec Jewish council, to be his deputy. Using his connections and his fortune, he was able to obtain visas for Switzerland. In April 1940, he left Poland and settled in Lausanne. Schwarzbaum soon started sending out food, clothing, money and papers to Poland. He managed to navigate between the often uncoordinated Jewish and Zionist organizations based in Switzerland, to transfer financial help to Jews in Poland. He sent hundreds of parcels to German occupied localities, via Lisbon, Sweden and Turkey. He visited refugee camps in Switzerland, and corresponded with persons living under the Nazi rule. He also produced passports, which led him into trouble with the Swiss police, who feared for violation of the country's neutrality policy. In 1945, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine. In Israel, he supported funds and provided stipends for students in need, in several Israeli institutes for higher education. He died in 1990.