Philipp Auerbach was certainly not particularly pleasant to deal with.

Even as senior government councilor for social welfare in Düsseldorf after the war, he not only made friends.

From September 1945 he was responsible for the care of those persecuted during the Nazi regime.

The military governor of North Rhine Province, Brigadier General John Ashworth Barraclough, did not give him a good report.

In a letter to Auerbach, the British Army officer wrote that "a certain arrogance in your nature had largely aroused public opposition".

"Your behavior towards the military government was highly hurtful, if not defiant.

They have repeatedly tried to discredit the military government.

You exercised a disruptive influence in the province at a time

Peter Philipp Schmitt

Editor in the department "Germany and the World".

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When Philipp Auerbach committed suicide a good six years later, it was also intended as a signal with which he wanted to accuse his plaintiffs.

He, the Auschwitz survivor, was sentenced by former National Socialists just seven years after the war and Holocaust.

It was "a disgraceful verdict" for him and also for many Jews in the still young Federal Republic.

Auerbach was state commissioner for racially, religiously and politically persecuted people in Munich when he was arrested in March 1951.

He was charged with extortion, embezzlement, embezzlement, passive bribery and unauthorized use of an academic title.

He yelled again and again

Auerbach, a member of the first board of directors of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, was known throughout the country at the time; he was one of the most important representatives of those persecuted by the Nazi regime.

And he was a seriously ill man when he died on August 16, 1952, aged just 45, after taking too many sleeping pills.

Two farewell letters were found next to the dead man: one was for his family, his second wife Margit and their four-year-old daughter Ruth, the other was intended for the public.

As his last words he wrote down an Old Testament curse: "My blood be on the heads of the perjurers!"

A year had been investigated before the criminal proceedings against Auerbach were finally opened in April 1952.

Up until then, it had been one of the largest trials in post-war Germany.

The hearing lasted 62 days, 130 witnesses and eight experts were invited to Room 185 of the Munich I Regional Court.

Again and again Auerbach lost his composure in the red plush chair he had asked for for the long sessions because he was suffering from kidney stones.

He kept yelling at the judges and the prosecutor.