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Binem Rauch * 1908

Bremer Reihe 21 (Hotel Bremer Hof) (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

HIER WOHNTE
BINEM RAUCH
JG. 1908
VERHAFTET 1939
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
1941 NEUENGAMME
ERMORDET 24. 6.1942

Binem (Benno) Rauch, born 29.7.1908 in Drogobycz near Lemberg (today Ukraine), died 24.6.1942 in Neuengamme concentration camp

last residential address: Bremer Reihe 21 (Hotel "Bremer Hof")

Binem Rauch was the son of Adolf Rauch and his wife Rosalia, née Schmindling. Since the area around Lemberg in Galicia became part of Poland after the war of 1919/20 between Poland and the newly founded Soviet Union, he received Polish citizenship, which he kept until his death.

He went to high school in the middle town of Drogobycz and later began an apprenticeship there as a textile merchant. As a young man he then moved to Berlin, where he met his future (non-Jewish) wife, master tailor Emmy Luise Wildgrube (born in Berlin in 1909), whom he married in 1932. In September 1937 their daughter Lilian was born, on a trip to Paris.

In the 1930s, the couple built up a ladies' tailor store with a large ready-made clothing business in Berlin, employing 22 people as permanent staff, along with 12 home workers and seasonal workers. During the November pogrom in 1938, both businesses were severely demolished and partially looted.

According to the wife's testimony after the war, the Rauchs were forced by the German Labor Front (DAF) in 1939 "in the most ruthless manner" to sell the businesses to a former employee for the very low amount of 5000 RM. After the sale, this ex-employee is said to have tried to avoid paying the purchase price by denouncing the Rauch family for alleged currency smuggling and unauthorized possession of weapons. However, the proceedings based on these denunciations were then discontinued in 1940 apparently due to lack of evidence.

As a result of the harassment by the Nazi regime, the Rauch couple decided in 1939 to emigrate to Ecuador via Hamburg with their young daughter. When the Rauchs arrived in Hamburg at the end of August 1939, the ship tickets for the crossing had already been purchased and all the necessary departure formalities had been arranged; the family's extensive luggage was already on its way to South America.

The family put up at the Hotel "Bremer Hof" in Bremer Reihe, not far from the main train station, in order to board the ship "Caribia" a few days later for the trip to Ecuador. However, this did not happen, because due to the beginning of the war on September 1, 1939, the ship did not receive a departure permit.

The Rauchs continued to live in the hotel in St. Georg for several weeks until Binem Rauch was arrested and interned on September 21 because he was a Polish citizen and thus belonged to a state with which the "Third Reich" was at war. Later, because of the criminal charges filed against him in Berlin by the former employee, he was taken into custody in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison.

Although the proceedings were dropped in 1940, the Nazi regime found another pretext to have both Binem Rauch and his wife Emmy convicted of an alleged crime. Emmy Rauch had tried to stay in contact with her husband after his arrest and to provide him with information. She apparently attempted to do this by bribing a prison guard, who smuggled cassettes both ways between the spouses.

Emmy Rauch was also initially taken into custody for this "crime" in February 1940, and in May was sentenced to three months in prison by a Hamburg district court. In the same proceedings, her husband Binem was sentenced to one year in prison for the same "offense."

After serving this sentence in the prison, he was sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp for "protective custody" in April 1941. Here he died on June 24, 1942, allegedly of "purulent meningitis."

After her release from prison, his wife Emmy lived with their daughter Lilian and her mother Anna Wildgrube in Hansdorfer Straße in Barmbek. When the house was bombed out in the summer of 1943, she moved with her mother and child to her mother's birthplace on the island of Fehmarn. After the war ended, she returned to Hamburg for a few years to run a tailor shop, but later, after remarrying, turned back to her hometown of Berlin.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Benedikt Behrens

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