Erich Jacobsohn

On 2 March 1893, Jacobsohn was born in Bublitz (Pomerania), the son of the merchant Moses Jacobsohn. He attended primary school in the formerly Prussian town of Lobsens (now Łobżenica, Poland) and later attended commercial school in Graudenz (now Grudziądz, Poland). He then completed an apprenticeship as a shop assistant in the metal industry. During the First World War, he served as a front-line soldier.

In the autumn of 1920, he left his homeland following territorial reorganisations after the war and moved to Chemnitz, where he worked as a sales representative for hardware and as a textile merchant. On 21 March 1925, he married Klara Marie Fischer, an office clerk from Chemnitz eight years his junior. Their daughter was born a year later.

In 1938, Erich Jacobsohn had his business licence revoked. His plans to emigrate to the USA came to nothing. During the November pogroms of 1938, he was arrested and spent just under a month in Buchenwald concentration camp. Afterwards, he could only find work on an hourly basis, including as a transport worker. According to the asset seizure order of July 1939, he was “never in possession of any assets”, was unemployed and lived on weekly benefits of 15.70 Reichsmarks from the Jewish Welfare Organisation.

He was forced to perform hard labour at the Fritz Todt horticultural business and at the E. F. Barthel lighting fittings factory in Altchemnitz. In April 1940, he breached the conditions of the asset preservation order and enforcement proceedings were initiated, resulting in a fine. The security order also extended to his wife, who in 1944, together with their daughter, received a notice of conscription as an unskilled labourer for the Josef Witt Spinning Mill (Schulstraße 38, Altchemnitz).

On 14 February 1945, Erich was deported to Theresienstadt, where he was forced to perform guard duty until his liberation.

Erich Jacobsohn returned to Chemnitz on 9 June 1945 and was initially unemployed. He joined the SPD; in September he became a founding member of the Jewish Community of Chemnitz; and from October he was employed by the railway post office in Chemnitz.

In January 1948, he acted as a witness for the prosecution in the criminal proceedings at the Chemnitz Regional Court against the horticultural engineer Fritz Todt and his foreman Paul Georg Lang. The Todt company had been assigned a number of Jewish forced labourers. The verdict was six years’ imprisonment for Lang and four years’ imprisonment for Todt. Due to persistent disciplinary offences and disputes with Lang, Max Pinkus, a Jewish forced labourer, had been reported to the Gestapo, resulting in his immediate deportation. Pinkus never returned. He was murdered in Auschwitz.

In August 1961, the Ministry for State Security unsuccessfully attempted to recruit his flat as a safe house.

After his wife died on 16 March 1963, he moved in with his daughter at 38 Hans-Sachs-Straße (Lutherviertel). Erich Jacobsohn died on 1 December 1970 in Karl-Marx-Stadt and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in the Altendorf district.