<p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong>(HOLOCAUST).</strong></span></p> <p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong><br /></strong></span></p> <p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong>Archive relating to the German-Jewish physician Paul Bendix of Frankfurt and Shanghai.</strong></span></p> <p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong><br /></strong></span></p> <p>Collection of hundreds of personal documents, photographs, letters, postcards and clippings pertaining to Dr. Paul Bendix (1895–1961), especially from his stay in Shanghai from 1939 to 1947 where he found sanctuary from Nazi persecution and served as a physician for the Jewish community.</p> <p><br /></p> <p><b>Frankfurt, 1895-1961 and Shanghai, 1939-47.</b></p> <p><br /></p> <p>Dr. Paul Bendix (1895–1961) was a medical doctor from Frankfurt/Main who began his career as an army physician during World War I and later established a successful medical practice in Frankfurt. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>Bendix emigrated to Shanghai in 1939, after the Nazi employment ban on Jewish physicians in July 1938, which rendered him unable to continue practicing, He was among the few German Jews who returned to Germany in 1947, where he resumed his medical career in Frankfurt and worked for the Hessian State Health Insurance. Dr. Bendix passed away in Frankfurt in 1961. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>The collection includes a range of significant documents documenting his life, including his high school report cards from Frankfurt, records and diplomas of his medical studies in Heidelberg and Frankfurt, and materials from his service as an army doctor during WWI.</p> <p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong>The collection is particularly notable for the extensive documentation from his time in Shanghai.</strong></span></p> <p><br /></p> <p>Between 1936 and 1949, Shanghai was a sanctuary for approximately 20,000 German and Austrian Jews, providing one of the few places in the world where visas were not required. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>Dr. Bendix’s personal papers feature a variety of items from his time in Shanghai, such as his Chinese identity papers, his business cards, a map of the Shanghai Ghetto, his calligraphic exercises teaching himself Chinese and English, clippings, notes, and his involvement in the Jewish community in Shanghai. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>The collection also sheds light on Paul Bendix’s personal and family tragedies. His only brother, Walter, was killed in World War I in 1915. His mother, Lina Friedlaender Bendix (1873, Posen - 1921, Frankfurt) died at the age of 48. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>Dr. Bendix’s German wife divorced him in 1936 due to his inability to provide for her after gradually losing his patients and livelihood due to restrictions placed against Jews. She subsequently remarried into a German noble family. Custody of their daughter, Ruth (born 1931), was initially given to Paul Bendix, but his wife’s relatives intervened and the little girls was removed from him. One week before the full professional ban on Jewish physicians (July 25, 1938), Bendix drafted a heart wrenching farewell letter for Ruth, sealed and only to be opened on May 11, 1947, one day before Ruth’s 16th birthday in which he explained the circumstances of the divorce and his struggles due to Nazi persecution. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>In two additions to this farewell letter later that year, he advised his daughter to be proud of her Jewish heritage and pointed out several ancestors from the wider Bendix Samuel Friedlaender family. The letter also expressed that he was trying to emigrate either to America or Kenya. Ultimately, Paul Bendix succeeded in emigrating to Shanghai in late March 1939. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>Ruth survived the war, married and settled in Frankfurt; her father joined them after his return to Germany. Dr. Bendix’s sister, Lotte, succeeded in escaping to London. Their father, Ludwig Levi Meier Bendix, born in 1858 in Krotoschin, perished in Theresienstadt in 1942. </p> <p><br /></p> <p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong>Sources:</strong></span>&nbsp;</p> <p><br /></p> <p>Irene Eber (Ed.) Jewish Refugees in Shanghai 1933-1947: A selection of documents (G&ouml;ttingen: Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, 2018), pp. 292, 395 (about Paul Bendix). </p> <p><br /></p> <p>Alon Tauber, Zwischen Kontinuit&auml;t und Neuanfang : die Entstehung der j&uuml;dischen Nachkriegsgemeinde in Frankfurt am Main 1945-1949 (Wiesbaden: Kommission f&uuml;r die Geschichte der Juden in Hessen, 2008), p. 161 (about Paul Bendix). </p> <p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong><br /></strong></span></p> <p><span style="color:#9C0000"><strong>A Stolpersteine</strong></span> is located outside Paul Bendix’s former home: 14 Hermannstrasse, Frankfurt-Nordend, see: </p> <p><br /></p> <p><a href="https://frankfurt.de/frankfurt-entdecken-und-erleben/stadtportrait/stadtgeschichte/stolpersteine/stolpersteine-im-nordend/familien/bendix-levi-meyer-paul-lotte" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://frankfurt.de/frankfurt-entdecken-und-erleben/stadtportrait/stadtgeschichte/stolpersteine/stolpersteine-im-nordend/familien/bendix-levi-meyer-paul-lotte</a></p>