Dr. Julius Moses

Location 
Bundesratufer 9
District
Moabit
Stone was laid
March 2003
Born
02 July 1868 in Posen / Poznań
Occupation
Arzt / Stadtverordneter
Deportation
on 07 July 1942 to Theresienstadt
Murdered
24 September 1942 im Ghetto Theresienstadt
Is it in accord with medical ethics when almost every day this announcement appears in Angriff? 'A list of recommended doctors can be found at the local Gau for the reference of [NSDAP] party comrades Do not go to Jewish doctors! This constitutes a call for the economic boycott of fellow doctors. The newspaper Berlin am Morgen reported that one Nazi doctor has a poster in his waiting room which reads: 'Jews are not treated here'. An economic boycott of members of our profession and the refusal to treat people of 'alien races': These things that the Nazis are doing today give a taste of what would a 'Third Reich' would be like.

Julius Moses: The struggle against the 'Third Reich' in Der Kassenarzt 5/1932



Julius Moses studied medicine and began practising in the working-class district of Wedding in Berlin. In 1899 he moved to Liegnitz in Silesia and became a member of the Free-Minded Union. He joined the SPD in 1911. In 1913, he called on workers to have fewer children as a way to reduce their poverty, triggering the pregnancy strike debate within the party. During the course of this debate, he met the SPD politician Anna Nemitz, whose daughter Elfriede became his partner. During the First World War, he went over to the USPD and in 1920 he was elected to the Reichstag. He openly registered himself as Jewish in the Reichstag handbook. In 1922, he became a member of the SPD again and was appointed the party’s spokesman on health policy issues. From 1924, he edited the magazine Der Kassenartz in which he spoke out on questions related to Judaism and anti-Semitism and attacked the Nazis' health policies. In 1931, he published a paper titled Mass unemployment: A problem for the nation's health based on a survey he conducted among doctors. Despite the acute danger he was in as a Jew and a known Social Democrat, Moses stayed in Berlin after the Nazis came to power. His son Erwin (from an earlier marriage) emigrated with his family to Palestine. Under the 1935 “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which prohibited Jews and those “of German blood from living together, he was forced to separate from Elfriede Nemitz, with whom he had two children. He moved into a small flat in Tiergarten but was able to visit Elfriede during the day. In 1938, he and his son Rudi, who had supported him financially up to this point, had their doctors' licenses revoked. Rudi then emigrated to Manila in the Philippines. In 1942, Julius Moses was deported to Theresienstadt, where he died in hospital. His first wife Gertrud and their daughter Vera were also deported to Theresienstadt in autumn 1942 and both died there.

Julius Moses was a city councillor; 1921 nominated for election (USPD); 1922 nominated for election (USPD/SPD); 1923 – 1925 nominated for election (SPD)