Marga Spiegel | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Marga Spiegel in November 2009 | |
| Born | Margarette Rothschild June 21, 1912 |
| Died | March 11, 2014 (aged 101) Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany |
| Other names | Marga Krone, while in hiding |
| Occupation | Author |
| Known for | Surviving the Holocaust and writing a memoir, which also became a film |
| Notable work | Saviors in the Night (Unter Bauern – Retter in der Nacht) |
| Spouse | Siegmund "Menne" Spiegel |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany (nephew) |
| Awards | |
Marga Spiegel (21 June 1912 – 11 March 2014) was a German woman who went into hiding with her daughter in 1943 during the Holocaust of World War II. Her husband also hid during the war, but separately from the family since it was harder to conceal a Jewish man of military age. He was also well-known in the farming community as a cattle and horse trader. Even though they had some close calls, Spiegel and her family survived for several years with the help of several farmers and their families.
Spiegel's family was persecuted by the Nazis beginning in 1933 when Adolf Hitler became chancellor, and the Nazi Party changed Germany's form of government to a dictatorship. Nazis enacted laws to classify undesirable people as "enemies of the state" or outcasts. The Rothschilds were subject to arrests and harassment. Siegmund Rothschild was sent to a concentration camp early in the Holocaust and died there in 1938, one year after the death of his wife. Marga Spiegel's husband, Siegmund Spiegel, lost 37 members of his family during this period.
After being forced to leave their home and business in Ahlen, the Spiegels lived in an apartment for Jews with six other families. Then, Germans assigned Siegmund to a forced labor work unit, and he lived with his family in a run-down, former Army barracks back in Ahlen. They decided to hide after the Spiegels were ordered to meet with the Gestapo on 27 February 1943.
Spiegel wrote a book about their story. It was published in 1969 and was later released as a movie in 2009 titled Saviors in the Night. Between 2010 and 2014, she received the Federal Cross of Merit, Honorary Award of the Cinema for Peace Foundation, and the Order of Merit of North Rhine-Westphalia.