Siegmund Bauchwitz was born the son of the Jewish merchant Salomon Bauchwitz and his wife Florens Löwenstein in Schwiebus (Świebodzin), just under 70 kilometers east of the Oder River.1
Doctor in Bamberg
Bauchwitz received his doctorate in Munich in 1903, where he had been studying medicine since 1899.2He moved to Bamberg in December 1904, and applied to become the first coroner there five years later. He was initially hired as a deputy, but was able to take over as head of the Bamberg mortuary in 1911.3 He resigned from this position two years later, when he married Alice Sofie Ehrlich, born in 1888, that same year, on March 26, 1913.4 He probably opened his Bamberg medical practice at that time. It is ascertained that he became a convoy physician of a Red Cross medical train in 1913.5
During World War I, Bauchwitz, who had been a reserve physician since 1900, was deployed to the Western Front from September 1914 until the end of the war, participating in the battles of Flanders and the Battle of the Somme, among others.6 He suffered a minor shoulder injury toward the end of the war. He was awarded the Iron Cross.7
This did not help him under Nazi rule. His license to practice medicine was revoked in 1936. Degraded to "Krankenbehandler" (medic), he was only allowed to treat Jewish patients.8
Abuse During the 1938 November Pogrom
Bauchwitz was massively abused in the pogrom of November 10, 1938. According to an eyewitness account by neighbor Eva Schapira, he was dragged out of his house at Hainstraße 7 – where he had moved years earlier from Großer Markt 24 – and "beaten bloody in the street, so that for some time he was unable to care for his [...] patients."9 He had to serve time in "protective custody" in the district court prison, but was soon released. 10 The brutal persecution by the National Socialists did not prevent the doctor from becoming a community leader of the already very weakened Jewish Community in Bamberg in 1939.11 His community function unintentionally put him in the position of a command recipient. Thus the Gestapo forced him to compile "transport lists" with the names of Jews to be deported.12
Death in Auschwitz
He and his wife Alice were themselves deported to Theresienstadt on the last Bamberg Transport II/25 on September 11, 1942. They were forced to board the train to Auschwitz concentration camp two years later, on October 28, 1944, where they were murdered.13 In 2008, two "Stolpersteine" were placed in front of Hainstraße 7 in Bamberg, commemorating the Bauchwitz couple.
