Moritz Rabinowitz - Capture, Deportation, and Death

Capture, Deportation, and Death

Rabinowitz fully expected that the war would come to Norway. On 8 April, the day before the surprise attack came, he submitted his last op-ed article to Haugesunds Avis in which he asked readers to give the Norwegian soldier respect and support. The Germany army landed in Norway on 9 April and Haugesund on 10 April. The Gestapo made capturing Rabinowitz its highest priority in the little coastal town. Rabinowitz had prepared several places along the coast as hiding places and moved from one to the other with Gestapo on his tracks. Following the war there was some debate as to why Rabinowitz did not avail himself of four known opportunities to flee the country by sea to England. Among the townspeople of Haugesund, it was rumored that he was too invested in his company and his money. This view, reinforced by stereotypes was rejected in the local papers, when Rabinowitz's (non-Jewish) business manager and several employees emphatically stated that such motivations would be uncharacteristic of him. Subsequent research has shown that he declined passage on two occasions for reasons entirely unrelated to his business affairs

They finally caught up with him in Skånevik, probably by shadowing employees who were conveying business decisions between Rabinowitz and his businesses. By then his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson had joined him.

Rabinowitz was first detained in the regional jail at Lagård in Stavanger, was then sent to Møllergata 19 jail in Oslo on 26 February 1941, and then to Åneby on March 22, until he was sent back to Møllergata on 25 April, where has kept until his deportation on the MS Monte Rosa 22 May 1941. The Monte Rosa landed in Stettin, where he wrote his will. Rabinowitz ended up in Sachsenhausen, where he was placed in the barracks for Jews, though he was officially categorized as a political prisoner. He died on 27 February 1942. The death certificate lists pneumonia as the cause of death, but according to fellow prisoner, Rabinowitz was kicked and stomped to death outside Barrack 38 in Sachsenhausen. Rabinowitz's brother, daughter, grandson, and son-in-law were all later deported and murdered in Auschwitz.

As it happened, Rabinowitz managed to convey his last greetings via a German inmate and another inmate from Haugesund to the people of Haugesund. These were reproduced in the obituary that was published on 20 June 1945. On 6 May 1986, the people of Haugesund erected a memorial stone for Rabinowitz.

Rabinowitz also dictated and signed his last will and testament to a fellow inmate, Christian Wilhelm Rynning-Tønnesen, where he left all his earthly belongings to his daughter Edith, also expressing a wish that his businesses continue as going concerns. Since Edith and her entire family also were murdered, what was left of Rabinowitz's estate went into probate after the war. After the occupying powers had confiscated his businesses, and at least NOK 300,000 in cash and securities, his estate was valued at NOK 986,000 at the end of the war. The Norwegian government imposed fees and taxes of NOK 450,000 in the course of the next ten years. Among other things, the authorities assumed that Rabinowitz's heirs had died in the sequence that maximized tax liability (and thereby tax revenue).