The tragic story of the fate of George Gruenewald, a Jewish drugstore proprietor of Berlin, who “disappeared,” until his body turned up in a hospital, and of his wife who officially “committed suicide,” was revealed here yesterday as an example of the Nazi terrorization that continues not only in the provinces, but in Berlin.
Until last week, Gruenewald was the unmolested proprietor of a pharmacy on the Franzler Allee. He had been in business in the neighborhood for many years, was well regarded, and had many friends in the community. Last week a Nazi adherent opened a drugstore next to Gruenewald’s establishment. On the day after the opening, a Nazi committee visited the Jewish pharmacist and suggested that he close his establishment, in order to avoid competition with their comrade. Gruenewald refused to comply. On this same day he disappeared.
For two days his wife haunted the police bureau for news of her husband. No clue was found. But on the third day she received a notice from a hospital, requesting that she call for her husband’s body. Frau Gruenewald, violently embittered, vowed to spend all she possessed in efforts to find the murderers, and establish their guilt. She engaged private detectives to conduct an investigation of the case.
That same day, Frau Gruenewald was found dead. She had been poisoned.
The police report declared her a “suicide for reasons unknown.”
The case is only one of a continually growing number in which Jewish merchants who mysteriously disappear, and are later found dead, are officially reported as suicides.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
