The 300 children action of 1939

In 1939 about 250 mainly Jewish children between the ages of 6 and 16 arrived in Switzerland from southern Germany. The so-called 300 children campaign was approved by the Federal Ministry of Justice and Police impressed by the November pogroms of 1938 and Swiss Relief Organization for Emigrant Children (SHEK) carried out.

The children would spend six months in Switzerland before moving on to a safer country. The outbreak of World War II thwarted the plans. Most of the children stayed in Switzerland for six years, which saved their lives.

Among these children were a few sisters from Memmingen, Anneliese and Lotte Laupheimer. They came from a middle-class Jewish family and their father, Julius Laupheimer, ran a menswear shop with his brothers. At the end of 1938 he was arrested and temporarily interned in the Dachau concentration camp. Anneliese was eleven years old at the time and had an intellectual disability.

Many of the children from 300 children campaign were housed in houses. Anneliese and Lotte were fortunate to have friends in Switzerland: Emma Zuberbühler, who had worked for a while as a housekeeper for the Laupheimer family in Memmingen. Her husband had a painting business in Uster (ZH). Emma Zuberbühler unbureaucratically took the sisters and two cousins, Ruth and Ilse Laupheimer, into her house.

In the summer of 1942, Anneliese and Lotte’s parents were deported to Poland. In a postcard dated June 19, 1942, Jewish social self-help Lublinthat the Laupheimers are “in Piaski, district of Lublin, and healthy”.

In Piaski, which was part of the Generalgouvernement after the German occupation of Poland, a ghetto was set up from 1940, initially for Polish Jews who were deported to the Belzec extermination camp in March 1942. The ghetto then became a transit camp for German Jews who were later murdered in the Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps.

The fate of Jeanette and Julius Laupheimer is not known in detail; but it is clear that they did not survive WWII. A former neighbor from Memmingen, Else Günzburger, wrote to Emma Zuberbühler on 14 March 1946: «Unfortunately, both parents and uncle Mr David are no longer alive. Of the Jews in Memmingen, only the men of mixed marriages, Gutman, Grünfeld and my husband, are still alive[.]»

The Zuberbühler family probably did not expect their hospitality to last so long. It must have been a big job taking care of the girls. Anneliese Laupheimer therefore came in November 1942 to a home for handicapped children in Uster.

When the war ended, a lot changed for Anneliese. Her sister emigrated to the US in 1946, where she married Walter Ullmann. Because it was now clear that Anneliese no longer had a family to return to and that emigration was not an option because of her disability, she applied for this. SHE K permanent asylum in Switzerland for them. After the end of World War II, the majority of refugees – true to Switzerland’s maxim of being just a transit country – had to travel on to other countries.

The few who remained behind for health or age reasons lived in some sort of temporary housing; Permanent asylum status was established for them in 1947. Overall, just under three percent of all refugees admitted during World War II were able to stay in Switzerland permanently, or about 1,600 people. Of these, 1,345 were granted permanent asylum, including Anneliese Laupheimer “because of an incurable disease”.

The reception of the now 20-year-olds went from SHE K to the Association of Swiss Jewish Refugee Aid VSJF above. Of the VSJFOriginally established as a Jewish welfare organization, it was charged by the federal government with the care of Jewish refugees during World War II. Of the VSJF together with the federal government and the canton of Zurich, took over the house expenses for Anneliese Laupheimer (USD 20 was regularly transferred by Lotte Ullmann-Laupheimer) and supported her in her claims for damages in Germany.

Since the federal government and canton believed that they would get some of the expenditure back if they were successful, they actively participated in the progress of the compensation. Anneliese and Lotte did not only receive one-off amounts; An orphaned and incapacitated due to her disability, Anneliese also received a lifelong pension from the German state for the murder of her parents. As a result, Anneliese was not only able to support herself (through her guardian), but also to repay the alimony already received.

In a 1960 report – Anneliese was not only examined by a pediatrician, although she was now over 30, but also consistently described as neuter and as a child – it read:

Both the infantilization of an adult woman with intellectual disability and the terms imbecility and idiocy are problematic from a contemporary perspective, but were common scientific terminologies in contemporary psychiatry.

Other compensation payments Anneliese received in the 1960s were administered by the VSJF to her sister’s family in the US, who was seriously ill and needed help herself. After Lotte’s death he spoke VSJF another 5000 DM to their survivors (Walter and Lotte Ullmann had two small children). The widower thanked him for the support in an emotional letter: “I must not forget this. The amount sent was a great help to us as my lb. Ma’am, my money was almost gone.”

Ilse Wyler-Weil was Anneliese’s guardian for many years. Ilse Wyler, who also works with the 300 children campaign came to Switzerland, married the cattle dealer Max Wyler and lived with him in Uster. She regularly visited Anneliese, whom she described as “in need of a lot of love” and “sweet and well-behaved, but totally unable to entertain herself in any way”, and brought her little gifts for her birthdays and Jewish holidays. public holidays.

Anneliese Laupheimer died in 2008 and is buried in the Winterthur Jewish Cemetery. Since there were no heirs or will, the rest of her estate (minus funeral and headstone costs) went to her VSJFIlse Wyler-Weil and the Hugo Mendel Foundation promised.