Arnold Sack

In August 2025, a book was restituted to the heirs of Dr. Arnold Sack (1863-1940). The volume was incorporated into the accession book “Gift” in 1945 under accession number “3111”. In February 1948, the book was given the shelfmark “Kg 1484 4”. The “Kulturamt” is noted as the supplier. It is unclear exactly which institution was the supplier of the “gift” used in the accession books. With the help of a signature comparison, the person could be clearly identified.

Dr. Arnold Sack was born on 4 June 1863 in Odessa, the son of Israel (1831-1904) and Amalie Sack (1832-?, née Münz). The family belonged to the Jewish religious community. Arnold had five siblings. Arnold Sack attended grammar school in St. Petersburg. After graduating, he studied at the University of St. Petersburg from 1881 to 1882. The numerous pogroms in the Russian Empire between 1881 and 1884 led to the Sack family, like so many other Jews, fleeing the country. Arnold Sack moved to Heidelberg, where he continued his studies and graduated with a doctorate in 1886. He then went on to study medicine, which took him to Leipzig and Strasbourg as well as Heidelberg. Arnold Sack received his license to practice medicine in Heidelberg in 1889. In the same year, Sack passed the Dr. med. examination in Strasbourg.

During his studies, Sack met Luise Schatzkin (1867-1935). The Schatzkin family was part of the Jewish religious community in Langensteinbach near Karlsruhe. The couple married in 1889 and Arnold Sack practiced medicine in Langensteinbach for a year. Sack then went to work as an assistant at a dermatology clinic in Karlsruhe. In 1890, daughter Sophie was born in Langensteinbach and a year later son Waldemar Theodor was born in Heidelberg. At the end of 1891, the family moved from Langensteinbach to Heidelberg. Arnold Sack practiced there as a specialist in skin and venereal diseases until 1938. According to the Heidelberg address books, his practice was located in the local light and X-ray institute at Handschuhsheimer Landstraße 12 in Heidelberg until 1938.

In 1895, the Sack couple and their children were granted citizenship of Baden. While Arnold and Luise and their son Waldemar Sack settled permanently in Heidelberg and the surrounding area, daughter Sophie moved to Berlin. There she married Dr. Emil Faktor (1876-1942), a theater critic, editor and writer from Prague, on 17 February 1914. The marriage gave birth to two daughters and a son: Richard was born in 1914 and Lili Therese in 1917. The youngest child, Edith Faktor, died six months after her birth in March 1920. Arnold Sacks' son Waldemar married Sophie (also Zofia) Rittenberg from Warsaw before 1915, the exact date of the marriage has not yet been determined. Their son Heinz Adalbert was born in 1915 and their son Robert Arno Sack in 1920.

When the National Socialists came to power, the Sack family became the focus of Nazi persecution. Arnold Sack remained in Heidelberg and was able to continue practicing until the spring of 1938 despite increasing repression and public denunciations. Daughter Sophie, who had worked professionally as a concert pianist, moved with her family to her husband's native Prague in 1933. Emil Faktor had lost his position as editor-in-chief of the Berliner Börsen-Courier due to his Jewish religious confession. In Prague, Faktor worked as a freelance journalist and critic. In 1935, the Faktor family's German citizenship was revoked.

Arnold's son Waldemar, who had also been working as a specialist in skin diseases since 1922, lived with his family in Baden-Baden. On April 1, 1933, the day of the so-called Jewish boycott, members of the SA forced their way into Waldemar Sack's apartment and destroyed furniture and other fixtures and fittings. This was followed by constant attacks and denunciations in the local party press and by his colleagues. Luise Sack died in Baden-Baden on December 31, 1935. Widower Arnold Sack remained in Heidelberg until the spring of 1938, before he was forced to close his practice permanently in May 1938. Sack then moved in with his son at Stadelhoferstrasse 14 in Baden-Baden.

The Sack and Faktor families no longer saw a future for themselves in Nazi Germany and intensified their efforts to emigrate. Waldemar Sack visited his son Heinz, who was studying in Paris, in 1938. Presumably with the intention of bringing his family to France as well, Waldemar ignored the deadline for returning to Nazi Germany. His wife Sophie managed to follow together with their son Robert.

Arnold Sack was the only one of his family to stay behind in Baden-Baden. On October 22, 1940, during the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles or Feast of Booths (Hebrew: Sukkot), more than 6,500 people from the former districts of Baden and Saarpfalz were deported to the Gurs internment camp run by the French Vichy government. The transport was the first mass deportation of Jews since the beginning of the Second World War. Arnold Sack was one of the deportees. One month after his internment, Arnold Sack died in Gurs on November 21, 1940.

Arnold Sack's granddaughter Lili Therese succeeded in emigrating to the USA in 1939. Despite her daughter's efforts and possession of the necessary affidavit, Emil and Sophie Faktor were denied entry to the USA due to the US quota system. On October 21, 1941, the Faktor couple were deported from Prague (Transport B, No. 352) to the Litzmannstadt ghetto, where they were murdered on April 10, 1942. Lili's brother Richard, a lawyer by profession, had left Prague illegally in August 1939 and stayed in Katowice for a short time. After the German invasion of Poland, Richard fled to the Soviet Union. He had begun studying medicine in Prague, which he was initially able to continue after fleeing Poland. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Richard Sack was deported to the Urals by the Soviets as a “German” - the National Socialists had already revoked his German citizenship in 1935. From then on, he worked as a German teacher in Nizhny Tagil. As a Jewish “Soviet German”, Richard Sack was subjected to Stalinist terror. As an alleged German spy, the Soviets executed him in Nizhny Tagil on December 14, 1942.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Arnold Sack's son Waldemar was still in France, where he had been interned as a German citizen in September 1939. His wife Sophie went into hiding together with their sons Heinz and Robert. Waldemar Sack was able to escape from the internment camp near Paris. He followed his family into the Parisian underground. In the early summer of 1942, Waldemar Sack and his family fled from the intensified raids to the unoccupied area of France under the control of the Vichy regime, where he was interned again as a German citizen, this time in the Douadic camp in the Indre department. He fell seriously ill there. Waldemar Sack was able to leave the camp in December 1942. The French administration placed him under house arrest in Tournon Saint-Martin. Due to the threat of further raids, Waldemar, like other fugitives, went into hiding under false names at the Abbé Alexandre Glasberg's Center d'accueil du Bégué in Cazaubon. He died in this hiding place on June 30, 1943.

Arnold Sack and his family were persecuted for being Jewish. Daughter Sophie was murdered together with her husband in the Litzmannstadt ghetto. Son Waldemar died underground in France. Grandson Richard was executed in the Soviet Union. They were all victims of the Shoah. Arnold Sack's granddaughter Lili was able to flee to the USA. Arnold's daughter-in-law Sophie (née Rittenberg) and her sons Heinz and Robert survived National Socialism as so-called U-boats in France.