Who was Walter Frankenstein? Holocaust survivor dies at 100

Walter Frankenstein, a Holocaust survivor who evaded persecution by Nazi, has died at the age of 100. He breathed his last on Monday, April 21, according to his close friend Klaus Hillenbrand.

A foundation that looks after the Holocaust memorial in Berlin said that Frankenstein died in Stockholm, The Associated Press reported.

Who was Walter Frankenstein?

Born in 1924 into a Jewish family, Frankenstein hailed from Flatow, West Prussia -- an area that was back then a part of Germany, but now is with Poland.


According to Jewish Museum Berlin, Frankenstein received major help from his uncle in 1936 when he was not allowed to attend the public school in the town for being a Jewish. His mother made him shift to Berlin, where he found his new residence in the Auerbach Orphanage. This happened nearly three years after the Nazis came to power.

After shifting his base to Berlin, he continued with his school education and got training as a bricklayer. This orphanage was the place where Frankenstein met his then-soon-to-be wife Leonie Rosner for the first time.

While being enrolled at the school of architecture and construction crafts of the Jewish community, Frankenstein soon started getting training to become a mason in 1938. However, he was prevented by the Nazis from becoming an architect.

On November 9, 1938, Frankenstein witnessed Kristallnacht, wherein the Jews were terrorised by the Nazis in Germany and Austria. At least 91 people were killed, more than 1,400 synagogues were burned and nearly 7,500 businesses of Jewish people were vandalised by them during that time.

Apart from this, roughly 30,000 Jewish people were taken into custody and put into concentration camps.

During a 2018 interview with The Associated Press, Frankenstein recalled how he was 14 years old at that time and was standing on the roof of the orphanage to see fire in the city area.

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Walter Frankenstein's family hid in Berlin

In 1941 beginning, Frankenstein was enlisted into forced labor by the Nazis and was threatened by them on a regular basis of getting deported from the region.

One year after this, he got married to Leonie in 1942 and the couple welcomed their first child together -- son Peter-Uri -- in 1943.

Just five weeks after the birth of the child, Frankenstein and his family were forced to go into hiding in the city. At that time, he took refuge at his friends' residence and even used to live in the ruins of the buildings bombarded by the Nazis.

Their second child, son Michael, was born in 1944, while the family managed to survive the final few weeks of the war in a bunker in April 1945.

During the time of liberation, the two children were among the youngest of the German-Jewish kids to have survived the war in Berlin. In total, the couple is believed to have survived more than two years in hiding in Berlin.

During the mid-1950s, the family shifted to Sweden, while Frankenstein travelled to Germany multiple times and used to spend time with children to speak about his life.

He was given the Order of Merit, Germany's highest honour, in 2014.

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FAQs

1. How many Jewish people used to stay in Berlin during the Second World War?
Nearly 160,500 Jews lived in Berlin in 1933 when the Nazis got power. However, this population was reduced to around 7,000 by the end of the Second World War.

2. How many people were killed in the Holocaust?
Around six million European Jews were murdered by the Nazis.