Leo Hubert & Hedwig Schülein (Their Life and Fate)

My father realized that it couldn’t go on like that, so he dug a tiny hole under the shed on his allotment and put in a hidden trap door. The two Huberts lived down there in this narrow space for almost three quarters of a year, without any light during the daytime. I would put on my Hitlerjugend uniform as a disguise and cycle to the allotment to bring them food. But slowly this was noticed. One night Leo Hubert came to my father in our flat and said:  “We can’t go on like this or they’ll take you away too. I can’t take the responsibility for that”.

And then the Huberts went back to live with other Jews.

Shortly afterwards, our grandmother from Cronheim visited us and in the early evening I took a picture of our grandma with our two friends. That was the last one.

Note: The family originally believed and reported that in 1942 Hedwig and Leo Hubert were deported from Kriegshaber to the extermination camp in Piaski from which they never returned.  This original information was made available to Yad Vashem and Shoah.org based upon family oral tradition. The family information remains on both Yad Vashem and Shoah.org as of this writing.

Today we know what actually happened. Both recent research and the Bundesarchiv.de indicate that Leo and Hedwig Hubert were in fact deported from Augsburg (their last address was 11 Ulmerstraße) to München (Munich); and then, on 20 Nov 1941 they were “evacuated” from Munich to Kowno (Kauen) Fort IX (9) in Lithuania. After arrival in Lithuania, Leo Hubert and Hedwig Sara geboren Schülein were both murdered by Einsatzgruppen A on 25 November 1945.

The German Federal Republic has acknowledged and accepted responsibility for their murders on the aforementioned date. (See: Massacre in Kowno Fort IX  ; Kowno IX Einsatzgruppen A Executions/ Murders)

Munich – Augsburg to Kowno  (source)

Departure date: 20 November 1941, deportees: 998

With the first deportation of Jews from Bavaria, 998 people from Munich and Augsburg were deported to Kowno on 20 November 1941. Immediately after their arrival, on 25.11.41, the deportees, together with Jews from Berlin and Munich, a total of 2934 people, were shot by Einsatzkommando 3 of Einsatzgruppe A of the Commander of the Security Police and the SD in Fort IX outside Kowno.

The ITS deportation list shown below is numbered up to 1000, but two names were deleted with the note “not evacuated, sick” (Hilda Machol, No. 268, and Benno Schlang, No. 426). The statistics of the Reich Association also record 998 deportees for November 1941, of whom 978 belonged to the Munich Kultusvereinigung and 20 to the Bavarian District Office. Hilda Machol was deported to Piaski on 4.4.42, Benno Schlang to Theresienstadt on 3.6.42 and from there to Auschwitz one year later, while his wife and daughter were taken to Kowno.

Original documentation of their deportation is available below:

Their son Selmar Hubert finally emigrated from England to America (New York) in February 1945 and lived first with a brother of his father’s who had already moved to the USA. This uncle and aunt had arrived to the US via Cuba, at the end of 1938. Selmer’s sister Emmy followed him to the United States.  After the war, both children searched for their parents but could not trace them. Emmy married David Mogilensky and lived in Baltimore. Selmar also lived with his wife in the United States.

When the Museum “Mikrokosmos Cronheim – one village and three religions” was inaugurated in the year 2000, Selmar Hubert and his wife Hilde came from New York and were guests of honor of the town of Gunzenhausen.

Selmar Hubert and Emmy Mogilensky have written about their experiences during their expulsion and their emigration.

An article in the New York Times on 10th February 2008 reported how Selmar Hubert, talking to German schoolchildren in the USA who were ashamed of the past, used the example of his own terrible Cronheim childhood memories to show how we can help one another to overcome guilt.