Hiltgunt Zassenhaus (1916–2004)
Autor von Ein Baum blüht im November. Ein ergreifendes Zeugnis der Nächstenliebe und Menschlichkeit aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg
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Ein Baum blüht im November. Ein ergreifendes Zeugnis der Nächstenliebe und Menschlichkeit aus dem Zweiten… (1974) 69 Exemplare
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Wissenswertes
- Rechtmäßiger Name
- Zassenhaus, Hiltgunt Margret
- Andere Namen
- Zassenhaus, H. Margret
- Geburtstag
- 1916-07-10
- Todestag
- 2004-11-20
- Begräbnisort
- Feuerbestattung
- Geschlecht
- female
- Nationalität
- Deutschland (Geburt)
USA - Geburtsort
- Hamburg, Deutschland
- Sterbeort
- Baltimore, Maryland, USA
- Ausbildung
- Universität Hamburg
- Berufe
- Physiker
- Beziehungen
- Zassenhaus, Hans J. (Bruder)
- Preise und Auszeichnungen
- Red Cross Medal (1948)
Order of St. Olav (1964)
Order of the Dannebrog
Order of Merit (1969) - Kurzbiographie
- Hiltgunt Margret Zassenhaus was born in Hamburg, Germany. Her father Julius Zassenhaus was a liberal history professor who lost his job in 1933 when the Nazi regime came to power. Her mother Margret Ziegler Zassenhaus was an anti-Nazi dissident who helped smuggle Jews out of Germany. Hiltgunt studied philology, specializing in Scandinavian languages, and graduated from the University of Hamburg in 1939. She continued her language studies at the University of Copenhagen until the outbreak of World War II. In 1940, she was hired to censor letters from German Jews in the ghettos. Instead, she sometimes smuggled the letters out or added messages in the margins. She resigned that job in 1942 and entered medical school in Hamburg. At that time, she was asked by the Third Reich's Justice Department to monitor pastoral visits and letters to and from Danish and Norwegian resistance prisoners. She gained the trust of the prisoners, and managed to bring them news of the war and messages from their families, and smuggle in food, medicine, and writing supplies. When World War II was drawing to a close, she learned of a plan to execute all political prisoners, and passed on the information to the Red Cross. As a result, 1,200 Scandinavian prisoners were freed and transported out of Germany.
After the war, she was unable to complete her medical studies due to the damage inflicted Hamburg. She arranged to smuggle herself into Denmark in 1947; later the Danish Parliament passed a special law to legitimize her status. She continued her medical studies at the University of Bergen, and finally graduated as a physician from the University of Copenhagen. She emigrated to the USA in 1952, settling in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed her internship and residency at City Hospital and opened her own medical office in 1954 as H. Margret Zassenhaus. She wrote two books about her wartime experiences, Halt Wacht im Dunkel (On Guard in the Dark, 1947) and Walls: Resisting the Third Reich (1974). In 1978, she was featured in a British television series called Women in Courage. She and some of the surviving prisoners also were the subjects of a 1980 British television documentary, It Mattered to Me. She was honored by several nations for her lifesaving efforts in World War II and received the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav, the Red Cross Medal, the Danish Order of the Dannebrog, and the British Order of Merit, among others.
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I’ve read many memoirs by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, but this one is by a German woman, a Gentile, who decided not to play it safe, but to “fight back” against the Nazis.
Her story reads like an adventure tale. I became caught up in the danger that Zassenhaus put herself through to save Scandinavian political prisoners. I learned what it was like for her and for her family, living in Germany during the war. Although she does anything but draw attention to it, Zassenhaus’ strong ethics and sense of honor inform the book. She refused to compromise these codes when her resulting actions put her life in danger.
The main theme seems to be how important it is to speak up or act in resistance against dangers to freedom like Nazism. Her clearly written scenes allowed me to envision how and why an entire nation was caught up in Hitler’s madness. As an example, one character, her neighbor Mr. Braun, is an angry man who doesn’t get along with any of the neighbors. There is something a little “off” about him. But as the Nazi movement takes over the country, Mr. Braun becomes the Warden of the precinct that Zassenhaus and her family live in. This gives him control over their freedom and their lives. By transferring control to “small” and dangerous people like Mr. Braun, Nazism was able to create a net (network) that captured all of Germany in its mesh.… (mehr)