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Heinz Geiringer

Heinz Geiringer was the son of Erich Geiringer and Fritzi Markovits, Otto Frank's second wife.

Person

Vervaardiger onbekend. Fotocollectie Anne Frank Stichting Amsterdam
  • Heinz Felix Geiringer
  • Born on: July 12, 1926
  • Born in: Wenen, Oostenrijk
  • Died on: April 26, 1945
  • Died in: Ebensee, Oostenrijk

Foto van Elfriede Geiringer-Markovits en Heinz Geiringer voor het portiek van Merwedeplein 46-II, Amsterdam, april 1940

Vervaardiger onbekend. Fotocollectie Anne Frank Stichting Amsterdam

Rechthebbende(n) onvindbaar

Heinz Geiringer was the eldest child of Erich Geiringer and Fritzi Geiringer-Markovits. He was born on 12 July 1926 in Vienna. His sister Eva was born three years later.

At the age of seven, Heinz suffered an eye infection, which led to him going blind in one eye.[1]

After the Anschluß of Austria with Germany in 1938, his mother fled to Brussels with him and Eva. His father had already left for the Netherlands. In early 1940, Fritzi traveled to the Netherlands with the children and the family was reunited. In April 1940 they moved into an apartment at Merwedeplein 46-I in Amsterdam.[2]

There Heinz went to the Amsterdamsch Lyceum.[3] However, in the summer of 1941, the anti-Jewish measure was introduced that prohibited Jewish children from attending public school. He then had to go to the 4th grade of the gymnasium of the Jewish Lyceum.[4] Margot Frank was in the same year as him. They were not in the same class, but his sister Eva remembers that Heinz and Margot were friends and did homework together.[5]

On 5 July 1942, Heinz received a call to report to a German labour camp. The Geiringer family then decided to split up and go into hiding. In September 1942 Heinz and his father went into hiding in The Hague with the Katee-Walda family. Later they moved with them to Soest. His mother and sister went into hiding together in Amsterdam.[6]

Heinz was artistic and musically inclined. While in hiding he made at least twenty oil paintings and wrote almost two hundred poems in Dutch, German and French. Heinz's first poems mainly concern memories of life before going into hiding and everything he had to miss. For example, he wrote poems about his sister and about the piano in their house on Merwedeplein, which he could no longer play. Later poems describe the feeling of exclusion and a desire to live. Themes that also return in his paintings.[7]

A conflict over money with the Katee-Walda family forced Erich and Heinz to find another hiding place. They also wanted to be closer to the rest of the family and were housed in a house on Kerkstraat 225 in Amsterdam. However, they were betrayed and arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst on 15 May 1944.[8] One day later Fritzi and Eva were also arrested.[9] The entire family was deported to Auschwitz via Westerbork on 19 May 1944.

When Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945, Heinz and his father were sent on one of the many 'death marches'. They arrived in Mauthausen on 25 January 1945. On Heinz's registration card, his occupation was noted as Hilfsschlosser, assistant locksmith.[10] Four days later, on 29 January 1945, they were both send to the subcamp Ebensee. He died there on 26 April 1945 at the age of eighteen.[11]

While in hiding in Soest, Heinz hid a number of paintings and poems under the floor. After Eva and Fritzi's return from Auschwitz, they collected these works.[12] In 2019, a trilingual collection with a selection of Heinz's poems and paintings was published.[13]

Source personal data.[14] Addresses: Vienna; Brussels; Amsterdam: Merwedeplein 46-I.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Eva Schloss, Herinneringen van een Joods meisje, 3e druk, Breda: De Geus, 2005, p. 22.
  2. ^ Stadsarchief Amsterdam (SAA), Dienst Bevolkingsregister, Archiefkaarten (toegangsnummer 30238): Archiefkaart E Geiringer & Archiefkaart E.E. Markovits.
  3. ^ SAA, Het Amsterdams Lyceum, toegang 902, inv. nr. 2714: Leerlingendossier van Heinz Felix Geiringer.
  4. ^ Dienke Hondius, Absent. Herinneringen aan het Joods Lyceum Amsterdam, 1941-1943, Amsterdam: Vassallucci, 2001, p. 282-283.
  5. ^ Schloss, Herinneringen van een Joods meisje, p. 35.
  6. ^ Nationaal Archief (NL-HaNA), Den Haag, Centraal Archief Bijzondere Rechtspleging (CABR), inv. nr.: 75212, p. 2.
  7. ^ Heinz Geiringer, Gepeins in het donker – Pondering in the dark – Grübeln im Dunkeln, met een inleiding van Martha van der Bly, Amsterdam.: Rose Rebel Publications, 2019, p. 25-29.
  8. ^ Bianca Stigter, Atlas van een bezette stad: Amsterdam 1940-1945, Amsterdam: Atlas Contact, 2019, p. 180.
  9. ^ NL-HaNA, CABR, inv. nr.: 75212, p. 5.
  10. ^ Arolsen Archives - International Center on Nazi Persecution, Bad Arolsen, Incarceration Documents, DocID: 1455284: Heinz Geiringer.
  11. ^ Zeitgeschichte Museum & KZ- Gedenkstätte Ebensee: Totenliste vom 26.4.145. Bron: Muzej narodne revolucije, Zagreb.
  12. ^ Geiringer, Gepeins in het donker, p. 29-30.
  13. ^ Geiringer, Gepeins in het donker.
  14. ^ Zeitgeschichte Museum & KZ- Gedenkstätte Ebensee: Totenliste vom 26.4.145; SAA, Burgerlijke Stand van de Gemeente Amsterdam, toegang 5009, inv. nr. 7411: Register van Algemene Akten van overlijden, aktenummer 50; SAA, Dienst Bevolkingsregister, Archiefkaarten (toegangsnummer 30238), Archiefkaart Heinz Felix Geiringer. In deze akte staat als overlijdensdatum 10 mei 1945 genoteerd.