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Beno and Gerd Zwienicki (standing first and second on the right) pose in front of their father's bicycle shop with a group of non-Jewish children from the neighborhood.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 89869
Beno and Gerd Zwienicki (standing first and second on the right) pose in front of their father's bicycle shop with a group of non-Jewish children from the neighborhood. Beno and Gerd Zwienicki left Germany in 1939 after having endured their mother's murder and their own arrest on Kristallnacht. One of the German boys later became a guard at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Beno and Gerd Zwienicki (standing first and second on the right) pose in front of their father's bicycle shop with a group of non-Jewish children from the neighborhood.

Beno and Gerd Zwienicki left Germany in 1939 after having endured their mother's murder and their own arrest on Kristallnacht. One of the German boys later became a guard at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Date
1929
Locale
Bremen, [Hannover] Germany
Photo Designation
LIFE BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST -- Germany (pre-1933) -- Family/Friends/Portraits
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Jacob G. Wiener

About This Photograph

Biography
Jacob Wiener (born Gerd Zwienicki) is the son of Selma Stiefel and Josef Zwienicki. He was born in 1917 in Bremen, where his family owned a bicycle shop. Gerd had three siblings: a brother Benno (b. 1918), a sister Liesel (b. 1921), and a brother Alfred (b. 1925). Gerd left home in 1936 to study at the Breuer yeshiva in Frankfurt. A year later he began his studies at the Wuerzburg Jewish teachers seminary. On the night of Kristallnacht the students of the rabbinical seminary, including Gerd, were arrested and placed in protective custody, where they remained for eight days. Meanwhile, Gerd's family was facing tragedy in Bremen. His father was sufficiently aware of the threat posed by the Nazis that he fled from his home during the pogrom. However, he did not anticipate what they might do to his family in his absence. That night when members of the SA came looking for him at his home and failed to find him, they shot and killed his wife and arrested his son, Benno, who was then sent to Sachsenhausen. Following Benno's release, the family departed for Canada, leaving Germany on May 31, 1939.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Jacob G. Wiener
 
Record last modified: 2013-03-19 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1097086