Georg Dimentstein

Location 
Grellstraße 18
District
Prenzlauer Berg
Stone was laid
June 2009
Born
06 January 1897 in Kirchhain (Brandenburg)
Murdered
06 January 1945 im Konzentrationslager Sachsenhausen
Georg Dimentstein was a member of the Berlin workers’ resistance movement and active in the Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein Organization, one of the largest resistance groups active in the later years of the Nazi regime, 1942 to 1945. He was born on 6 January 1897 in Kirchhain in Lower Lusatia. His mother died in 1910. In 1928 he married Gertrud Lehmann and they lived at Grellstraße 18 in Prenzlauer Beg, Berlin.
From 1919 to 1928, Dimenstein worked as a freelance commercial artist. He also painted and exhibited his own artwork until 1933. As a Jew, he was banned from the art world in 1933. To make ends meet, he started working from home as a draughtsman for various companies. His last client was the company Bruns und Stauff. From 1942, he and his wife Gertrud, who was not Jewish and therefore afforded him some protection from Nazi persecution, belonged to the group around the engineer Hugo Kapteina. Hans Lippmann, Arthur Grimmer, Reinhold Hermann and others met in Kapteina’s apartment to discuss politics, and later became part of the Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein organization. Dimentstein was involved in distributing pamphlets and enlisted support for the anti-Nazi organization Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland (National Committee for a Free Germany). After learning of the arrest of his friends Kapteina and Hermann in late July 1944, Dimentstein warned Hans Lippmann and others of the imminent danger, had false ID documents made up by Gerhard Churfürst, and went underground. For about six weeks he lived in hiding in the homes of friends and acquaintances such as Marga Schumacher and Marta Seegers. On 17 August 1944, Dimentstein was arrested, one day before his wife Gertrud’s arrest. Like all arrested Jews, he was not granted a trial. Reich Minister of Justice O. G. Thierack and leader of the SS Heinrich Himmler had made an agreement in 1942 that all captured Jews should be sent to concentration camps. In early January 1945, Georg Dimentstein was shot dead in Sachsenhausen concentration camp on orders from the Reich Main Security Office.