Filippo Mario Rispo
* 1894

Filippo Mario Rispo, born 6.2.1894 in Giuliano/Naples, arrested by the Gestapo on 16.5.1944, taken to Neuengamme concentration camp on 11.7.1944, missing since April/May 1945

Spitalerstraße 20

Knowledge about Filippo Rispo's life and above all his death is incomplete and in some cases uncertain, much to the constant grief of his descendants.

Filippo Mario Pietro Rispo was born on February 6, 1894 in Giuliano near Naples. His father was a pharmacist and the family had many children. Filippo attended school until he finished secondary school and then studied English, German and French. His profession was always that of a language teacher. He married a teacher, the marriage remained childless and did not last. According to Italian family law at the time, however, divorce was not possible, and this later became very important in his relationship with his new partner and their children in Germany.

Filippo Rispo left Italy, initially went to England as a language teacher, but moved on to Germany in 1938, to Hamburg. It is not known why he moved from the democratic country to fascist Germany. His descendants are certain that he was not a supporter of the Italian dictator Mussolini, but hated him: Filippo cried tears of joy when he learned of the dismissal and arrest of the “Duce” (25.7.1943).

He met 18/19-year-old Ilse Pragst (11.12.1920 - 6.10.2009) at “Haus Vaterland”, the largest and most popular dance hall in Hamburg at the time, located where the Europapassage is today (on what is now Ballindamm, then Alsterdamm). She worked as a housemaid in the family of medical professor G. Hermann Sieveking at Rothenbaumchaussee 211, where her father was a “valet” (the correct job title at the time) and her mother a cook. The Pragst family lived in the basement of the house. Filippo Rispo and Ilse Pragst became a couple and moved together to Breite Straße 26 IV, now Spitalerstraße 20, where they were completely bombed out in July 1943.

The two were considered engaged and remained so because, as already mentioned, Filippo's marriage could not be dissolved. Two children were born to the couple: Eva-Maria (15.5.1940) and Edgar Filippo (1.2.1942). Filippo Rispo officially acknowledged the paternity of both children and undertook to pay maintenance. After the war, his partner Ilse confirmed that Filippo had always provided sufficiently for the family.

According to various documents from the authorities, Filippo Rispo initially worked temporarily as a textile merchant in Hamburg, then returned to his profession, employed by Rackow's commercial private school on Glockengießerwall. According to family lore, he often met up with fellow countrymen in their local pub. As the meetings were therefore held more or less in public, they were probably more social gatherings than conspiratorial political meetings. It may have been noticeable that Filippo Rispo liked to bring his little daughter Eva-Maria, whom he called “Mausi”, to the meetings as a baby in a carrier - a proud and happy father.

What is on record, however, is that Filippo Rispo was arrested on October 8, 1943. The charge was “violation of foreign currency regulations/foreign currency offense”. After being held in police custody until November 18 and then remanded in custody, the main trial took place on March 16, 1944 at Hamburg District Court. In addition to Filippo, two other Italians were charged with foreign exchange offenses: Salvadore Mirabella (12.6.1908), a businessman from Catania, and Andrea Casiraghi (5.5.1906), a Milanese-born waiter by profession. The accusation was that the three had dealt in precious metals, especially gold and gold coins, without informing the Chief Finance Office and, above all, without offering the precious metal there first. This omission was a criminal offense during the Nazi era.

Filippo Rispo himself was sentenced to six months in prison, a fine of 500 RM and 300 RM in damages for this “failure to offer” 25 Dutch guilders and 50 grams of gold, as well as for brokering 1000 grams of gold to third parties. Mirabella also received a sentence of six months in prison plus fines, Casiraghi eight months plus fines. The costs of the proceedings were added to this.

According to the court order, Filippo Rispo was released from four months of his prison sentence for police and pre-trial detention, which ended on May 16, 1944. From prison, Filippo wrote to Ilse, his partner and mother of the two children: “How happy I am to come back to you. I wonder what the two little ones will say when they see their dad again. Ilse, my very great love, this is the greatest joy of my life, to be back with you and our dear children....”.
The joy of the reunion was brutally destroyed. The moment he was released from prison, Filippo was immediately arrested again, but this time by the Gestapo (secret state police).

But why? Important questions remain unanswered: What did the Gestapo accuse him of? Had he been denounced by someone from the circle that regularly met with him, or by one of the co-defendants in the foreign currency proceedings? As an Italian, was he always a target? After Italy had concluded an armistice with the Allies on September 8, 1943 and thus finally separated from Hitler's Germany, Italy was considered a traitor in Germany and the persecution authorities took tougher action against Italians who had somehow attracted attention. In Italy itself, the Germans arrested thousands after their invasion and deported them to concentration camps. Over 1200 Italians were sent to Neuengamme concentration camp alone in several transports.

Initially, Filippo was taken to the so-called Fuhlsbüttel police prison (concentration camp) and subjected to interrogations and harassment, which were only ever aimed at hunting down and eliminating alleged, even potential “enemies of the state”.

On July 11, 1944, the Gestapo transferred Filippo Rispo to the Neuengamme concentration camp. The prisoner card shows him in the “Prisoner type” section as “Political prisoner” with the prisoner number 36.078. Detention in a concentration camp meant: imprisoned for an indefinite period. Filippo Rispo was never released alive.

Ilse Pragst, Filippo Rispo and the two children saw each other again, probably towards the end of 1944: Ilse had learned that he was working with a convoy of prisoners on the construction of the bunker on Langenfelder Damm (Eimsbüttel). She managed to make contact and, with reference to the children, persuaded the guards to turn a blind eye, at least for a short time. It is said in the family: Two-year-old Edgar did not recognize his father and was so frightened at the sight of the dirty man with the striped clothes that he hid behind his mother, screaming. Ilse Pragst brought a bowl of spaghetti with her, Filippo sat down on the ground, took “Mausi”, now four years old, between his legs and fed her the spaghetti. According to her daughter, the memory of this is always vivid in her mind.

Two letters by Filippo Rispo from Neuengamme have survived, one dated 8.10.1944 and the other 18.3.1945. Although he writes the usual formula in such letters that he is doing well, there is no mention of any hope of being released. The letter dated March 18, 1945 is Filippo's last sign of life. It is also something of a farewell letter to “My dear Ilse and my very sweet children”. In calm, neat handwriting, he writes, among other things: “I dream of you almost every night, and my thoughts are always with you and for your future, otherwise my life has no meaning...”.

What happened to this life after March 18, 1945 is unknown.

The death registers of Neuengamme concentration camp, although incomplete, list 345 Italians. Filippo Rispo is not among them.

Ilse Pragst, then Eva-Maria and Edgar Filippo and other relatives tried over the years to find evidence or at least clues as to where and how their partner and father died. All searches were in vain.

Filippo Rispo was certainly not one of the 71 Gestapo “protective custody prisoners” who were murdered in the detention bunker at Neuengamme concentration camp between April 22 and 24, 1945. They had all been brought to Neuengamme on April 20 as prisoners of the so-called Fuhlsbüttel police prison and were no longer registered. Filippo Rispo, however, had already been there for over eight months and had been given a number, 36,078. (In the relevant publications of the memorial and also in other publications, Philipp Rispe is always counted among these 71 murdered persons. There is a multiple error here).
Most of the male Italian prisoners of Neuengamme concentration camp were initially sent to forced labor in subcamps, some of them later to the Sandbostel camp in the district of Rotenburg/Lower Saxony. The mortality rate here was particularly high. It is not known whether Filippo Rispo was in one of these groups.
In the chaotic final phase of the Nazi dictatorship, the focus was more on elimination and deportation than on bookkeeping.

Most of the Neuengamme prisoners who were still alive when the camp was evacuated, which began on April 19, 1945, perished on May 3 on the ships “Cap Arcona” and “Thielbek” in the Bay of Lübeck off Neustadt. Around 7,000 prisoners had been loaded onto the two ships - what was to happen to them is unknown. As the ships were not marked as prisoner transports, the British Air Force, which was circling over the Baltic Sea, did not recognize the situation. Reinforced by other fighter planes, the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed the ships, which caught fire. The “Thielbek” sank, the “Cap Arcona” capsized. Only around 400 men were able to save themselves on land four kilometers away in eight-degree water. Filippo Rispo was not among them.

Ilse's, then the two children's, struggle for financial support after the loss of their companion and father was agonizing, even humiliating and insulting, in the emergency situation after the end of the war in which they had been bombed out twice. Initially, “Miss Ilse Pragst” was told by the “Office for Labor and Social Affairs/Reparation of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg” that there was no evidence of an engagement and that she was not entitled to any form of widow's pension or survivor's pension. Ilse Pragst capitulated and did not pursue any further claims for herself personally. The fight for the two children that followed lasted over 20 years. The quibbles of the so-called restitution authority show ingenuity and a portion of impudence: the father could not have been a victim of the war, as his death had only occurred on December 31, 1945, as the Hamburg district court had already documented on July 12, 1952. Filippo Rispo may have been a “political prisoner of the Neuengamme concentration camp”, but this does not mean “that he was imprisoned for reasons of political opposition to the Nazi regime” (Amt für Wiedergutmachung/AfW, 30.3.1966.). Among other things, he could have been imprisoned after Italy's “apostasy” merely “as an enemy alien”, which “unfortunately rules out compensation under the BEG (Federal Compensation Act)” (ibid.).
It is possible that Rispo was “severely wronged, but the BEG does not grant compensation for every injustice committed by the Nazi rulers.” (AfW, 5.2.1968).
Etc. etc. etc.

It was only with the help of three lawyers that Eva-Maria and Edgar Filippo succeeded in 1969, 24 years after the death of their father and only in a settlement, in receiving capital compensation “as surviving dependants of their illegitimate father”. Eva-Maria, now 28 years old and married, received DM 9,404 for the 188 months from her father's death (December 31, 1945), as determined by the local court, until she came of age (May 1968). Edgar Filippo, 24 years old, received a few Deutsche Mark more due to slightly improved calculation rates.
After paying the lawyer's fees, Filippo Rispo's children shared the money with their mother.

In honor of his grandfather, one of Edgar Filippo Pragst's sons took the name Mario Rispo.

Translation: Beate Meyer