Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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He had to climb down a ladder two or three metres into these dugouts, shovel
the rubbish into a basket, which had a rope attached and return up the ladder to
a horse-drawn wagon. He and three other Jewish fellows were doing this. That
was the second job. 197
Other than the details of his father’s long and arduous working day, Freiberg’s son
also recalled the kindness of his father’s non-Jewish employer:
He was mainly working in Cracau 198 and their shift was from very early in the
morning until the afternoon. So, in the summer days M. and I used to go and
visit him at work and then when they finished work we used to all go down
to the Elbe and have a swim. But this Kühne was actually a farmer. I’m not
sure where his farm was. But it was pretty close to Magdeburg and he used
his horse-drawn wagons on his farm and as a sideline he picked up the
rubbish on contract. But every day he had food for us. And there was always
extra for us to take home. That was one of the reasons we went to see Dad
because we got something to eat. That’s why after the war we saw Kühne
quite frequently to make sure he was not being hassled. 199
Jews deemed ‘non-essential’ to the war effort were deported first. Unlike the
majority of Jews who had all been deported by March 1943, Joachim Freiberg was
still working for Franz Kühne when Magdeburg suffered its near complete
destruction in January 1945. He continued in this position until liberation. Of the
documented cases of forced labourers, the only ones to remain in Magdeburg after
the last mass deportation were those Jews in mixed marriages and ‘Mischlinge.’
In the last phase of the war, the situation of labour reached crisis point and, in
the winter of 1944–1945, most people defined by the Nuremberg Laws as ‘first-
degree Mischlinge,’ Jews married to ‘Aryans,’ and even ‘Aryan men married to
Jewish women were also inducted into forced labour. 200 Those not inducted into
forced labour faced deportation at any time.
On 4 November 1941, the provincial government in Magdeburg received a
nationally-despatched memorandum from the Reich Minister for Finance detailing
197 Name withheld, op. cit., 18 June 1999.
198 Cracau is a south-eastern suburb of Magdeburg.
199 Name withheld, op. cit., 13 July 2004.
200 Kaplan, op. cit., p. 174.