Hans Robinsohn

Vocation

Family

German-Jewish resistance fighter against the Nazi régime. Robinsohn was the son of a Jewish merchant family, who moved from Poznan to Hamburg in 1892 where they opened a fashion house for women and children. His mother was the writer and translator Therese Robinsohn. He joined the German Democratic Party in 1918, whose youth association he co-founded. In 1934 Robinsohn co-founded the Robinsohn Strassmann group with Ernst Strassmann and the Berlin journalist Oskar Stark. Their mission was to collect news and to point out the presence of resistance groups among the German civilian population. Robinsohn emigrated to Denmark in 1938, and made contacts with England from there. When the deportation of the Jews in Denmark was imminent in 1943, Robinsohn was able to flee to Sweden with the help of Danish resistance fighters. After the war, he returned from Sweden initially to Copenhagen and worked there as an insurance employee, until he decided after twenty years in 1958 at 61 years to return to Hamburg. Robinsohn worked from 1960 to 1965 under the managing historian Werner Jochmann in the newly founded Research Center for the History of National Socialism (Nazism) in Hamburg. His scientific work proved the complacency of the judiciary against National Socialist ideology. He died in Hamburg on 28 April 1981, aged 84. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)