Lisbeth Auerbach was influenced by her father's profession.1 Born in Solingen-Wald, Benjamin Auerbach (9/24/1855-11/18/1940) was a gynecologist and, from 1885, head physician at the Israelitisches Asyl für Kranke und Altersschwache (Israelite Asylum for the Sick and the Old and Infirm) in Cologne.2 He was a unique character in Cologne. He was out and about in the city on foot and was on first-name terms with everyone.3
Friend of Lilli Jahn
Lisbet Auerbach studied in Cologne, where she received her doctorate with the dissertation "Die Histopathologie der chronischen Encephalitis epidemica."4 After having received her license to practice medicine in 19255 she first worked as an assistant in the Internal Department of the Wenzel-Hancke Hospital in Breslau under Erich Frank, from where she also published.6 She returned to Cologne in 1931. She used the title "Fachärztin für Innere Medizin" (specialist for internal medicine) from March 15, 19317 and established her practice at Brüderstrasse 2.8 The physician Lilli Jahn – murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944 – was still part of her circle of friends. Lilli Jahn had worked at the Cologne Israelitisches Asyl on and off on a temporary basis from 1924 to 1926 and became known through Martin Doerry's biography, published in 2002.9
Emigration
Auerbach had already decided to emigrate in the summer of 1934. She first moved to London and was registered at 167 Goldhurst Terrace NW6.10She was issued a passport in Glasgow on June 5, 1934, with which she boarded the "SS Albert Ballin" in Southhampton on July 20, 1934. The ship took her to New York.11 She gave Edinburgh as her last place of residence in Great Britain upon entering the United States.12 Auerbach settled in New York (150 W. 87th Street) and applied for U.S. citizenship before the end of September 1934,13 which she received six years later.14 She was already a member of the American Medical Association15 and practicing in Manhattan by then.16
Her parents also emigrated to New York. Benjamin Auerbach left the Israelitisches Asyl in 1935 at the age of eighty. He and his wife Ida emigrated to London in 1939 and then to New York in 1940, where he died the same year.
Lisbeth Auerbach died in New York on March 16, 1976 at the age of 75.17
On November 4, 2024, a "Stolperstein" (stumbling stone) was laid in memory of Lisbeth Auerbach by the artist Gunter Demnig at the behest of the DGIM in Cologne's Brüderstrasse.