The Life of Harry Jacobs
This is a website dedicated to sharing the story of Harry Jacobs, born Heinz Georg Jakobovits in Vienna, Austria on May 30, 2012. Follow Harry's journey from his birthplace to his death on
May 18, 2009, and learn about his family's history along the way.
British Army 1942?
Vienna May 1992
January: Heinz first inmate to be hung on cross-like scaffold with guards swinging his legs as they passed. He had major back problems for the rest of his life
May: Marta obtains visa for Liberia & Heinz is released from Dachau but immediately re-arrested and sent to work camp close to Vienna.
He feigns a leg injury and is able to escape from the camp infirmary.
July: Marta organizes escape through Freiburg into Switzerland then into France where he arrives to fireworks--it's Bastille Day. He meets up with his best friend, Otto Wolf, a successful theatre director who continues throughout the war to work using a non-Jewish alias
1939
September 1: Heinz follows directions for those foreigners wishing to join the French army and lines up at a football stadium (Stade Colombes?). It is the processing point for assignment to 1 of 6 internment camps. Heinz is sent to Meslay-du-Maine, a camp he described as marginally different from Dachau and the location of Arthur Koestler's "Scum of the Earth".
September 1: World War II starts
Hans Braun arrested by 5th Column in Vienna. Committed "suicide" by throwing himself out of an upper story window while strapped to a chair. Heinz represented the family in identifying his body
March: Annexation of Austria--Anschluss
Heinz arrested and initially incarcerated in the basement of a local high school. Inmates were forced to fight and something happened that Heinz was ashamed of. After ~14 days, he was sent to the Dachau KL in Bavaria
1938
1938
November: Kristalnacht
Otto (father) disbarred from Austrian bar over misuse of client funds
Mother opens millinery business
November: Nazi Munich Putsch
August: World War I Begins
November: End of World War I
Heinz hospitalized with lung problems (pleurisy?) misses significant amount of school
May: General Strike in Britain. Winston Churchill key cabinet minster involved
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When the Austrian Army in support of the Heimwehr shelled Karl-Marx-Hof, a city council estate, Heinz helped to supply the thousands of inhabitants with food and weapons
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Heinz's step brother Hans Braun selected to defend Paul Hudl and saved him from being executed by having him declared insane
February: Short Austrian Civil War between conservative Heimwehr and socialist Schutzbund
July: Assassination of Conservative Austrian Chancellor Dolfuss by 4 Nazis. 3 were executed and 4th Paul Hudl was sentenced to life in prison. He was was released after the Anschluss
1912
1914
1917
1918
1923
1926
1934
1937
1938
1939
Heinz/Harry's Life
Born May 30
Future father-in-law goes to France with the British Expeditionary Force
Heinz member of group who pelted Von Neurath with rotten tomatoes that resulted in massive battle with Austrian Nazis
World Events
November: Revolution in Russia
February: German Foreign Minister, Baron Von Neurath visits Vienna
May 25: Prisoners awake to find guards had all fled and the camp was open. Heinz together with 2 Poles and a Briton head for NW France where the remnants of the defeated Polish Army had been instructed to gather should France fall.
The 4 former prisoners make a 250 mile or so trek in time to join the evacuation of troops from the beaches of Dunkirk. The Polish Army take over one of the large vessels and sail not to a British Channel Port but to Plymouth in Devon.
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Heinz in his own words, "was met by the question, 'Do you want to fight back' in contrast with my treatment in France". He was assigned to a new Jewish platoon in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC).
May 26 - June 4 Dunkirk Evacuation
April?: Heinz volunteers for the French Foreign Legion and is stunned to be accepted! He is transferred to a training camp in Le Mans about 40 miles away.
1940
May 10: Germany attacks Benelux countries and France ending the "phony war" period
Autumn: Heinz visits his sister Reserl in Sussex Gardens, Paddington, London. This was the last time he saw or heard from her. He presumed she died in the Blitz which would be a reasonable assumption as Paddington is a major railway station and is recorded as having been subjected to high explosive bomb attacks between Oct. 7, 1940 and June 6, 1941.
September 1940 - May 1941 The London Blitz
At some point in late 1940 or early 1941 Heinz was sent to an army base in Shropshire.
Unknown date: Heinz meets Florence Ward when she approaches him for a "ladies excuse me" dance at the Majestic Ballroom in Wellington, Shropshire
June 22: Germany invades Soviet Union
September 8: Siege of Leningrad begins
December 11: US declares war on Germany
Florence's mother instructs Harold, a merchant sea officer, to visit New York to meet Heinz's sister Olga to verify his version of his background
Probably June: Heinz parents transported to the Terezin/Theresienstadt ghetto/KL
October 1942: RASC was incorporated into the newly formed Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (REME) which Heinz/Harry was to be part of for the next 35 years as a soldier then a civilian employee.
January 20: Wannsee Conference initiated the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem
July: N Africa desert war begins
August: Battle of Stalingrad begins
February 9: Heinz and Florence marry in Wellington, in the presence of her mother, brother Harold, friend Lois Williams, and Heinz best man Dan Angerthel (later Arden)
February: Germans surrender at Stalingrad
Unknown date: Otto Jakobovits dies in Terezin
May 26: Florence changed named from Jakobovits to Jacobs (I don't have record of Heinz change to Harry Jacobs)
April 19 - May 16: Warsaw Ghetto uprising
September 3: Italy surrenders
June 6: Harry returns to Europe as part of the REME workshop in Mike Sector of Juno Beach on D-Day.
January 27: Siege of Leningrad over after 900 days
August 25: Allies liberate Paris
September: Harry injured at the Battle of Arnhem where he was part of REME transport support
October: Marta Jacobovits is part of 18,401 people loaded into eleven transports to Auschwitz. She is not recorded as having arrived and is presumed to have died on the train.
December 16: Battle of the Bulge begins
Florence teaching in Hadley
Harry & Florence active in Wrekin Labour Party
August?: Harry returns to Germany as a translator
December: Florence taken ill. Harry is denied leave to visit her and quits the Army.
May 8: Victory in Europe Day
July 5: Landslide Labour victory in General Election with majority of 145
August 14: Victory in Japan Day
Harry joins 22 Command Workshop in Hadley as a civilian employee
January 10: 1st UN General Assembly Meeting
February 15: ENIAC, 1st general purpose computer dedicated at Univ of Pennsylvania
September 10: Harry becomes a naturalized British citizen
April 1: Berlin blockade begins & continues
until May 1949
April 17: Christopher Jacobs born
May 14: Israel declared an independent state
July 5: UK National Health Service created
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1948
June 25: Korean War begins
June 3: Caroline born
1950
May 14: Israel declared an independent state
July 5: UK National Health Service created
June 2: Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
first time Jacobs family watch TV
September: Florence returns to teaching - at Ketley Bank Primary School
1953
June 17: Korean War armistice
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