Werner Weissenberg

Editor Dr Clare Weissenberg

This online collaborative Kitchener Camp Project was designed and edited in memory of my father, Werner Weissenberg

Born: Pleß, Upper Silesia, Germany, 7th November 1911

Occupation in country of origin: teacher (Physicist at Breslau prior to Nuremberg legislation)

Arrived in Britain as a refugee from Germany on 6th June 1939

Documents

Dachau entry book, November 1938

12th May 1939

There was a long list of things to be done before the men were allowed to leave Germany – even though they were being forced out.

Lists had to be made of property and valuables, and only certain items were allowed to be taken out of the country.

The following two sets of documents provide an example of these lists of requirements.

An English translation follows.

Application – Resolution

Articles to accompany your journey, including hand luggage,

for Teacher Werner Israel Weissenberg,

born 7.11.1911 in Pless O/S

Destination: England

Time: as soon as possible

Your application for air transfer has not been requested

Enclosures

Clearance Certificate for tax purposes for luggage for the appropriate Finance Office

Same certificate for the Accounts Office

Declaration of Wealth with endorsement of appropriate Finance Office according to the situation on 1.1.1935 and today’s present situation

Declaration on Oath that no outstanding debts exist

Declaration on Oath that no State Bank is in the position of owner’s requests by foreign demands

Declaration on Oath that there is no overseas deposit of valuable documents

Travel and hand luggage.

List I + List II

Hebelstrasse 13, Frankfurt am Main, 12th May 1939

Werner Israel Weissenberg

Document: Merkblatt / Instruction sheet

An English translation follows: please just click on any image to enlarge it

Instruction Sheet

For removal of goods

For a decision on the application of transferring property on removal the following papers are required:

1) 2 copies are required by the issuer of visas.

1. Occupation
2. Country of destination
3. Time of packing and loading
4. Shipping agent

The following questions to be answered:

Where are the goods?

Has an application for transfer been placed and in what form?

The application is to be signed by the applicant or by an empowered representative with place and date duly signed

2) Two copies of declaration of clearance for the Finance Office responsible with regard to the transfer of possessions

3) Two copies of declaration of clearance to the Accounts Offices, City Treasurer’s Office or Mayor’s Offices

4) Two copies of declaration of clearance with endorsement by the Finance Office according to the regulations of 1.1.35 and todays

5) Two copies of Declaration under Oath that there are no outstanding debts

6) Two copies that no demands for payment have been made for outstanding debts by banks abroad

7) Two copies of Declaration under Oath that no documents of value have been deposited abroad

8) Four copies of lists of goods to be transported for removal to a place abroad

List 1: Contents which have been acquired before 1.1.1933

List 2: Contents which have been acquired from 1.1.33 to 31.12.37

List 3: Contents of goods acquire between the period of 1.1.38 and the time of emigration with details of purchase prices and receipts. If these are not available a value of the goods to be given (an estimate)

1. If new purchases have been made the necessity for their purchase is to be given
2. Art objects must be accurately described
3. Collections of items such as “laundry, clothing, kitchen utensils” are not permitted
4. Planned purchases for the removal are to be itemised with their costs. If parts of goods have been sent by freight information must be provided clearly

9) Four copies – travel packing list – items must be listed separately as

1. a) Hand luggage
2. b) Passenger luggage

All objects for packing must already be included in the household effects list.

10) The inclusion of jewellery and valuables is strictly prohibited.

With the exception of:

1. Wedding ring of the emigrant
2. Pocket watch or wrist watch valued up to 100 RM
3. Used cutlery – silver 1 set per person for a family of 3, 1 extra set for family of 5 and additional items like carvers. Each piece total weight 40 gm and total no more than 200 gm

Proof of remaining jewellery is to be handed over to the tax offices in Frankfurt

1. Further lists and applications not included will not be considered or returned

Foreign Exchange bureau

Frankfurt am Main

Nachtrag / [Appendage]

Application for sending goods upon removal to another country

Article 10 of the notification for sending goods has been changed in the following manner:

The taking of jewellery and articles of value is strongly forbidden with the exception of

a) The wedding ring of the person emigrating and his/her deceased spouse

b) A silver bracelet or pocket watch

c) Silver cutlery old- 2 sets of 4 items of cutlery consisting of knives, forks spoons and teaspoons (small spoons) per person

d) Silver articles weighing 40 grams per item and a total of 200gm per person

e) Dental plates made of precious metal if in use by the emigrant.

---

Aliens Order Certificate of Registration

Male Enemy Alien - Exemption from Internment - Refugee

Surname: Weissenberg 

Forenames: Werner 

Alias: --- 
Date and place of birth: 07.11.1911 in Pless

Nationality: German 

Police Regn. Cert. No. 711 651 

Home Office ref no: C 50 

Address: Kitchener Camp, Richborough, Sandwich, Kent 

Normal occupation: Teacher 

Present occupation: --- 

Name and address of employer: --- 

Decision of tribunal: Exempted "C" & 9a      

Date: 13.10.1939 

Whether exempted from Article 6(A): Yes 

Whether desires to be repatriated: No

Richborough Camp Tribunal no. 3

---

Luggage

Letters

Letter: 17 March 1939

The offer of a way out of Germany.

An explanation of the context, and an English translation of the letter, follows

Around 25,000 Jewish men were imprisoned in Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau during November 1938.

When Werner Weissenberg was incarcerated in Dachau during the ‘November Terror’ (sometimes still referred to as Kristallnacht), his family were frantically trying to get him out, as all such families were.

The families had to pay sums of money to obtain their sons’ and husbands’ release, but the men also had to undertake to leave Germany quickly.

Until they left, they had to report to a police station weekly and remained at risk of re-arrest, which would have meant almost certain death.

For some reason, Werner obtained a rare and much-coveted place at Kitchener Camp, which is mentioned in this confirmation letter from the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland, which  translates as follows below (the ‘Transit Camp, Richborough’ was another name by which Kitchener Camp was known).

Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland / Representative of the Jews in Germany

Department of Emigration

Berlin-Charlottenburg 2,

Kantstrasse 158

17 March 1939

Re: Transit Camp in Richborough England

Ref: C7/B Gleiwitz 47

Herrn Werner Israel Weissenberg

Frankfurt Am Main

15 Hebelstrasse, Philanthropin

With reference to our discussion I am informing you that your acceptance by the Transit Camp Richborough has been confirmed.

There will be an interlude of 14 days before the English Consul is empowered to issue the visa. However, we request that you make all your preparations for your travel and complete all formalities so that you are ready to commence your journey as soon as you receive your visa.

You will receive further details about all your particulars forthwith.

Yours faithfully

Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland

Department of Emigration (C 7)

Dr Paul Israel Eppstein                                   Günter Israel Friedlander

If you have any queries please quote your reference number

Nr. 525

---

Letter: 2 June 1939

With details of how to travel from Germany to Britain

See below for English translation

Submitted by Kitchener Camp Project Editor Clare Weissenberg for her father, Werner Weissenberg

Submitted by Kitchener Camp Project Editor Clare Weissenberg for her father, Werner Weissenberg

Help Association for Jews in Germany

Emigration Department

Berlin W35,

Ludendorffstrasse 20

2nd June 1939

Courier!

Herrn Werner Weissenberg

Frankfurt am Main,

Hebelstrasse 13

Transit Camp Richborough/Kent

Personal Reply

Tel 25 06 33

You have been allocated a place on the transport to the transit camp in England on the 5th June 1939.

We assume that you have meanwhile obtained a through ticket

Cologne, Aachen, Ostend, Dover, Deal to the station at Sandwich

and we would ask you to send your luggage on this ticket to Dover. You must arrange your departure to arrive in Cologne on

Monday, 5th June 39 at nine o’clock in the evening.

You will see from the enclosed plan how you can contact our advice centre. In Cologne you will be put in touch with the help of the advice centre with the participants from the country and above all with the organisers of the transport.

You will continue the journey from Cologne at 1 o’clock at night in the direction of Ostend Dover. You have to hand over tickets, passports and certificates to the organisers.

We would urgently request you to obey all instructions given by the Cologne advisors and to support the organisers by behaving respectfully at all times during your journey and give them your support.

Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland / The Association for Jews in Germany

Emigration Department

Dr Hubert Israel Pollard

Notification Cologne 215574

For travellers out of the country who are joining the transport in Cologne.

Travellers out of the country to the camp who are joining the group in Cologne on the appointed day must meet at the latest at 21.00 hours in the evening.

In case you arrive in Cologne in the afternoon before 18.00 hours you can announce your arrival at our advice office in Cologne until 18.30. Mauitiussteinweg 11. If you arrive in the Community Centre Cacilienstreet 18/22 from 19 hours, where the advisors will meet you.

(Translation by Helga Brown BA Dip. Ed. née Steinhardt)

Letters from home

Envelope showing Kitchener Camp address and hut number

From Else Weissenberg to Werner, from Gleiwitz (Upper Silesia), 1939

Submitted by Kitchener Camp Project Editor Clare Weissenberg for her father, Werner Weissenberg

Memories

As noted by many of the descendant families, my dad did not really talk about these years with his postwar family.

I did hear versions from my mother of narratives about his ‘escape’: most turned out to be good stories but not based in the facts we have subsequently managed to document, so I will avoid repeating those here.

My father never mentioned Kitchener, as far as I can recall. The only narrative he did mention was that he had been ‘somewhere’ in the UK when he arrived (and I can’t remember now whether he referred to it as a camp) and that they had had to leave their luggage there when they went to fight in the war.

The luggage was subsequently ransacked, he said, by other members of the British Army, so that many carefully packed family items were stolen or otherwise lost forever.

In this, it seems similar to what happened on HMT Dunera, when the British forces in charge of the ship and its refugees ransacked their luggage and threw overboard many precious items that had no value to them.

Shocking, with so little left to remind them of families back home – many of whom were subsequently murdered in the Shoah – that this should have been done by the British Army.

Not one of their finer moments.

My father spoke of this with some pain but mostly, with a huge amount of disdain for such people.

………………………………….

Werner did talk occasionally about some of his time in the army: whenever a war film was on and ‘soldiers’ were marching, he’d express amused annoyance that they didn’t swing their arms high enough: “Get ’em up!”, he’d call at the television. He would also mock-ask for volunteers from time to time, adding: “You, you and you!”

………………………………….

One story I recall was that my dad spoke rather scathingly of the fact that the men in his unit were not allowed to have rifles to start with, because they were German.

And when they were finally allowed guns, they were initially given Boer War rifles.

………………………………….

My mother, I think it was, mentioned once or twice that Werner had been in France during the war, but I don’t recall anything my dad said about his combat years, nor about his years as a radiographer in the RAMC, for which he retrained at the University of London and the University of Oxford, from around 1940/41, I think.

I don’t really know how my father came to be retrained as a radiographer. Werner was a physicist – and had been within a term of gaining his doctorate when the University of Breslau refused to allow him to complete.

We suspect that it was another of the British Army’s ‘finer’ moments, in a slightly different mode, in that Werner had been researching the refraction of x-rays in physics … He was part of that group of extraordinary, mainly German Jewish, physicists of the 1920s and 1930s, laying the groundwork that would later become known as quantum physics.

One can see how in Army terms, research in this (utterly different) area became – ‘Well, he knows about x-rays …’

………………………………….

I remember cleaning out the garage at home in Yorkshire one day – it must have been during the early 1970s – and finding his army uniform in a trunk there.

Was it pride in service, a sense that it ought to be kept in case of need again, a simple failure to get rid of things, a reluctance to waste materials?

Probably a bit of all these things. But it’s notable that my father didn’t marry until 1960, so he must have carried his uniform with him, in the meantime, around many places of impermanent residence.

Submitted by Kitchener Camp Project Editor Dr Clare Weissenberg for her father, Werner Weissenberg

Photographs

Submitted by Kitchener Camp Project Editor Clare Weissenberg for her father, Werner Weissenberg

Submitted by Kitchener Camp Project Editor Clare Weissenberg for her father, Werner Weissenberg

Submitted by Kitchener Camp Project Editor Clare Weissenberg for her father, Werner Weissenberg

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