Gustav Kron
* 1878

Gustav Kron, born 23 Apr. 1878, deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, murdered 1942 in Chelmno

Gustav Kron was born on 23 April 1878 in Wolfhagen. He was the youngest son of the cattle dealer Isaak Kron (1832–1891) and his second wife Hannchen Löwenstein from Obervorschütz. After his father’s death, the gifted pupil was not able to continue his schooling, as had been planned. A former teacher, however, took a special interest in him and gave him private lessons, and he was eventually accepted at the Israelitic Teachers’ Seminary in Kassel after passing the entrance examinations. There he trained to become a teacher and cantor. He did his compulsory military service from 1 April 1900 to 1 April 1904 in Arolsen with the 83rd Infantry Regiment. During that time he found his first job as a teacher, cantor, religious community official, and shohet (kosher butcher) for the local Jewish community. He taught at the Jewish school and led Saturday morning religious services twice a month in Arolsen and twice a month in Mengeringhausen. He was later a teacher in Westhoffen in Alsace until the outbreak of the First World War, and after the war from 1916 until 1919.

He served in the First World War from 1914-1916, first on the Western Front in the First Battle of the Marne, and was then transferred to the Eastern Front immediately after the Battle of Tannenberg. He was stationed in Koblenz after a severe case of dysentery, and was then discharged as he was considered unfit for service on the front.

“If you don’t leave this house at once, I’m calling the police!” This is the greeting he received from his mother when he returned home to Westhoffen. She only recognized her son, who weighed only 90 pounds, when he spoke to her.

The lack of teachers after the war must have been so severe in Alsace that Gustav Kron travelled by bicycle between three schools in three local villages. He also became the cantor in Balbronn in 1917. When Alsace-Lorraine was annexed by France and Gustav Kron was dismissed from his teaching position, he returned to Hesse, although he had no immediate job prospects.

While filling in for Viktor Blumenkrohn, a teacher who had become ill, he met Blumenkrohn’s daughter Selma, whom he married in 1921. After a temporary substitute position in Momberg near Marburg, Kron was a teacher and cantor in Harmuthsachsen from 1919–1924, until the Israelitic School had to close due to the lack of pupils.

Beginning in 1924, Gustav Kron was a teacher and cantor in Fritzlar. There he also taught Hebrew to Protestant and Catholic seminary students. At the same time he taught business German at the Fritzlar Vocational School, where former soldiers who had served for 12 years were preparing for a position in the civil service. He also taught geography and French at another school in Fritzlar.

After his son Walter left Germany for the US on a children’s transport, Kron also considered emigrating. He applied for positions as cantor in several Jewish communities in the US, but without success. He, his wife, and his elderly mother moved to Hamburg in 1937. In November 1938 he was temporarily held in the Oranienburg Concentration Camp. His mother must have died in Hamburg. In late 1941, he and his wife Selma were deported to Lodz, and from there to Chelmno, where he probably died in May 1942.

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.