HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Joseph Wulf (; 22 December 1912 – 10 October 1974) was a German-Polish Jewish historian. A survivor of the
Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...
, he was the author of several books about
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
and
the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
, including ''Das Dritte Reich und die Juden'' (with Léon Poliakov, 1955); ''Heinrich Himmler'' (1960); and ''Martin Bormann: Hitlers Schatten'' (1962). The House of the Wannsee Conference museum in Berlin houses the Joseph Wulf Library in his honour.
"Joseph Wulf Library"
House of the Wannsee Conference.


Early life

Born in
Chemnitz Chemnitz (; from 1953 to 1990: Karl-Marx-Stadt (); ; ) is the third-largest city in the Germany, German States of Germany, state of Saxony after Leipzig and Dresden, and the fourth-largest city in the area of former East Germany after (East Be ...
, Germany, the child of a wealthy Jewish merchant, Wulf was raised from 1917 in
Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
, Poland, and educated there in Jewish studies and agriculture. His father had hoped he would become a rabbi, but he turned instead to writing. Before the war, he married Jenta Falik-Dachner, with whom he had a son, David.


The Holocaust

After Nazi Germany
occupied Poland ' (Norwegian language, Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV 2 (Norway), TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. ...
in 1939, sparking
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, the Wulf family was deported to the
Kraków Ghetto The Kraków Ghetto was one of five major metropolitan Nazi ghettos created by Germany in the new General Government territory during the Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), German occupation of Poland in World War II. It was established for the p ...
. He became close to famed poet/songwriter Mordechai Gebirtig and painter Abraham Neumann in the ghetto. Wulf joined a group of Jewish resistance fighters, but he was captured and imprisoned in the
Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...
in 1943, slave labor subcamp Buna-Monowitz. While there, he made the decision to dedicate his life to exposing Nazi crimes. This commitment found fruition after the war, working for the Jewish Historical Commission in Krakow and co-founding of the Centre for the History of Polish Jews in Paris. There, he recorded a number of Yiddish songs to preserve the work of his ghetto friend Gebirtig and of Jakub Weingarten. He also preserved two songs he composed while in Auschwitz, including ''Sunbeams'', which features prominently in the 2023 film '' The Zone of Interest''. He survived one of the notorious death marches that took place just before the camp's liberation, when the SS forced inmates to move to different camps after fleeing, on 18 January 1945. Wulf's wife and son survived the war by hiding with Polish peasants, but he lost his father, mother, brother, mother-in-law, and young niece.


Writing and research

At the end of the war, Wulf remained in Poland, where from 1945 to 1947 he co-founded the Central Jewish Historical Commission, publishing documents about Nazi Germany. He moved to Stockholm and in the summer of 1947 to Paris, working for a newspaper and the Centre pour l'Histoire des Juifs Polonais, where he met Léon Poliakov, the French historian. In 1952 he and his wife moved to Berlin. Steven Lehrer writes that Wulf "cut an unmistakeable figure ... dressed impeccably, carried a walking stick, and held a long cigarette holder clenched between his teeth at a jaunty angle." Wulf and Poliakov co-wrote ''Das Dritte Reich und die Juden'' ("The Third Reich and the Jews"), 1955, published in Berlin by the Arani Verlag. It was followed by two more volumes, ''Das Dritte Reich und seine Diener'' ("The Third Reich and its Servants"), 1956, and ''Das Dritte Reich und seine Denker'' ("The Third Reich and its Thinkers"), 1959. Nicolas Berg writes that the work "marked the breaking of a West German taboo", placing the Holocaust at the centre of its study of Nazi Germany, unlike the approach of other German historians at the time, and using direct language. Violence and mass murder had been goals of the regime, they wrote, not a means to achieve some other goal. According to Berg, the books were generally regarded as important, but German historians looked down on them as unscholarly. The first volume included a document signed by Otto Bräutigam, an adviser to
Konrad Adenauer Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman and politician who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of th ...
, West German Chancellor from 1949 to 1963. Bräutigam had worked for the Nazi's Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. The document signed by Bräutigam said: "Through word of mouth, clarity may well have meanwhile been reached in the Jewish Question," an apparent reference to the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The publication of this document attracted national and international press coverage. The Federal Defence Ministry refused to include the first volume in its list of books recommended for the German army's libraries, because it contained documents signed by military leaders during the Third Reich who were still active in West Germany. Wulf went on to publish several more works about Nazi Germany, among them biographies of
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...
and
Martin Bormann Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, and a war criminal. Bormann gained immense power by using his position as Hitler ...
. In 1961 he won the Leo Baeck Prize and in 1964 the Carl von Ossietzky Medal. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the
Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public university, public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period a ...
. Wulf's most widely-distributed work is ''Sunbeams,'' a song he recorded as an afterthought while preserving the work of other composers. It is a highlight in the 2023 film '' The Zone of Interest''.


Wannsee memorial


Proposal

In 1965 Wulf proposed that the villa in Berlin in which the 1942 Wannsee Conference was held should be made into a Holocaust memorial and research centre. During the Wannsee Conference,
Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( , ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a German high-ranking SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He held the rank of SS-. Many historians regard Heydrich ...
, chief of the
Reich Security Main Office The Reich Security Main Office ( , RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and , the head of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS). The organization's stat ...
, had outlined to several leading Nazis, in somewhat coded language, the German government's plan to enact the Final Solution. In August 1966 Wulf co-founded, with Friedrich Zipfel and Peter Heilmann, the International Document Center Organization for the Study of National Socialism and Its Aftermath, and began campaigning to have it housed in the Wannsee Conference villa. Wulf abandoned his efforts in 1971. The German government was not interested in moving forward with the idea at that time. The building was in use as a school, and funding was not available. The issue of the memorial was so politically sensitive in Germany that Wulf apparently needed police protection because of threats. Klaus Schütz, then mayor of
West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...
, said he did not want any "macabre cult site". However, posthumously, Wulf won out in the creation of such a museum at Wannsee.


Death

Wulf committed suicide on 10 October 1974 by jumping from the fifth-floor window of his apartment at Giesebrechtstraße 12, Berlin-Charlottenburg. For three years, he had planned to write a 500-page history of East European Jewry. A publisher's letter accepting his proposal arrived on the day of his death and was found unopened. In his last letter to his son, David, he wrote, "I have published 18 books about the Third Reich and they have had no effect. You can document everything to death for the Germans. There is a democratic regime in
Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...
. Yet the mass murderers walk around free, live in their little houses, and grow flowers." Wulf is buried in
Holon Holon (, ) is a city in the Tel Aviv District of Israel, located south of Tel Aviv. Holon is part of the Gush Dan, Gush Dan metropolitan area. In , it had a population of , making it the List of cities in Israel, tenth most populous city in Isra ...
on the central coast of
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
, south of
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...
. In early 1974, he had written in an open letter, "Appeal to the German intellectual public", intended for submission to ''
Die Zeit (, ) is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles. History The first edition of was ...
'', that he did not want to be buried in Germany: "For a conscious Jew living and working in Europe, how you Christians forget what you have done with Jews over two thousand years, how you Germans forget that you have exterminated six million Jews, only becomes clear on Israeli soil. On Israeli soil, all of Europe seems to be in a sort of
Orwellian ''Orwellian'' is an adjective which is used to describe a situation, an idea, or a societal condition that 20th-century author George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and ...
condition."


Museum

In 1986 the mayor of Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen, announced that a memorial would indeed be built at the Wannsee villa. On 20 January 1992, on the 50th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, the site was finally opened as a Holocaust memorial and museum. In the dining room where the conference was held, photographs and biographies of the participants hang on the wall. The museum also hosts permanent exhibits of texts and photographs that document events of the Holocaust and its planning. The Joseph Wulf Mediothek on the second floor, a reference library, houses over 65,000 books, 10,000 films, 120 journal subscriptions, and materials such as microfilms and original Nazi documents.


Selected works

* with Léon Poliakov (1955). ''Das Dritte Reich und die Juden'', Berlin: Arani-Verlag. ** A slightly adapted edition was published in Dutch as ''Het Derde Rijk en de Joden'' (1956), Amsterdam. * with Léon Poliakov (1956). ''Das Dritte Reich und seine Diener'', Berlin: Arani-Verlag. * with Léon Poliakov (1959). ''Das Dritte Reich und seine Denker'', Berlin: Arani-Verlag. * (1960). ''Die Nürnberger Gesetze'', Berlin. * (1960). ''Heinrich Himmler'', Berlin. * (1961). ''Das Dritte Reich und seine Vollstrecker. Die Liquidation von 500.000 Juden im Ghetto Warschau'', Berlin: Arani-Verlag. * (1962). ''Martin Bormann: Hitlers Schatten'', Gütersloh. * (1963). ''Aus dem Lexikon der Mörder'', Gütersloh. * (1963). ''Musik im Dritten Reich'', Gütersloh. * (1963). ''Die bildenden Künste im Dritten Reich'', Gütersloh. * (1963). ''Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich'', Gütersloh. * (1963). ''Theater und Film im Dritten Reich'', Gütersloh. * (1964). ''Presse und Funk im Dritten Reich'', Gütersloh. * (1968). ''Raoul Wallenberg: Il fut leur espérance'', Paris (first published by Colloquium Verlag, Berlin, 1958).


Sources


Citations


Works cited

* * * *


Further reading

*


External links


"Joseph Wulf"
House of the Wannsee Conference.
"Joseph Wulf Library"
an
"Online catalogue"
House of the Wannsee Conference. {{DEFAULTSORT:Wulf, Joseph 1912 births 1974 suicides 1974 deaths 20th-century biographers 20th-century German historians 20th-century German male writers Auschwitz concentration camp survivors German biographers 20th-century German Jews German male non-fiction writers German historians of the Holocaust Kraków Ghetto inmates Male biographers People from Chemnitz Suicides by jumping in Germany Polish emigrants to Germany