Frederic Haymann/Onkel Fritz

In battle he was wounded when he stepped on a mine and was hospitalized in a military hospital. He loses a leg. He receives the decoration "Cruz de Hierro" for his bravery in combat.

After the war Fritz goes to Berlin with his wife Berthe Bartenstein to study architecture and join the avant-garde Bauhaus movement. In Berlin Fritz was the chief architect of the Central Bank until the arrival of the Nazis in 1938.

This camp was established by the Nazis to show it as a fictitious model for the world, completely removed from reality. In this place Fritz is in charge of the administration of a housing complex. He manages to survive and is liberated by the Russian army.

"...now the war is over and we will have to try to reunite the tears.
Since March 1943 I have been here, uprooted from everything one has loved...And with that, our family and Berthe's family has been annihilated..."

Upon his release, Fritz returns to Berlin in search of Berthe or a surviving relative, but finds no one.
He is employed as a teacher at the Berlin City Construction School.

The traumatic experience, being the only member of the family to return alive, took away his will to live. "Fritz died of grief, loneliness and, worst of all, hopelessness" (his nephew Rudi).

Today his family honors him and thanks him for the possibility of being able to live Judaism in freedom.

Actual photograph taken on a family trip to the Haymann family building in Ratibor, now Poland.

Portrait of Rudi, Fritz's nephew, with his grandson in Berlin in a building designed by Fritz.