Ina Hartwig, Head of the Department of Culture and Science, together with Police Vice President Björn Gutzeit and representatives of the local advisory board and the AG History and Remembrance, presented a commemorative plaque to the public on Friday, November 5th on the 17th police station in Höchst. It is reminiscent of the police officer Karl Koch, who repeatedly protected his Jewish neighbor from imminent deportations during the Nazi regime.

The head of cultural affairs emphasizes: “The memorial plaque reminds of the courage and the extraordinary moral courage of a Supreme Police Officer. For Karl Koch it was a high personal risk to protect Josefine Schain from the impending deportation and thus to offer covert resistance to the persecution of the Jews as part of the German state apparatus. In times when the so-called New Rights are increasingly trying to create public spaces and even subvert the state, the memory of Karl Koch is particularly important. Moral courage today in resolutely rejecting anti-Semitism and racism – even if it may seem harmless and is expressed among friends or colleagues. The New Right rarely shows its hatred of Jews and its racist worldview as openly as the National Socialists. So it tries to gradually shift the public discourse and to establish anti-constitutional positions as a legitimate opinion too easily – these attempts cannot always be identified and require a high level of sensitivity on our part. “

Police Vice President Björn Gutzeit said: “The police officer Karl Koch has shown himself to be a person who obeyed his conscience, while only following instructions and orders from them know that by all human standards they should only be considered inhuman and cruel. As a person, Karl Koch can and must therefore still be a role model for us today. We must always preserve humanity as one of the most important foundations of our actions. “

Mayor Susanne Serke added: “As Mayor of the Local Advisory Board 6 I am very happy that we can honor Karl Koch, a courageous Highest Citizen, with this plaque. We as local advisory board 6 have taken up the suggestion of the working group for history and remembrance in cross-party agreement and also gladly contributed our budget to the financing of the memorial plaque. In my opinion, it is an important task to remember the people who lived here with us on site, who helped other people and who showed great courage with their deeds. I would like us to have the same people today who get involved, get involved, do not hide, but speak up when others are threatened or attacked. May this plaque also fit in with the fact that many are taking the courage shown by Karl Koch as an example. “

Waltraud Beck from the Höchst AG History and Remembrance said: “We are pleased that the suggestion of the AG History and Remembrance to put up a memorial plaque for Karl Koch at the Höchst police station has been taken up and implemented. Josef Fenzl and I did research on Josefine Walter nee Schain and Karl Koch for the AG. We are very happy that the daughter of Josefine Walter, Dagmar Walter, and Rita Fenzl, the wife of the unfortunately deceased Josef Fenzl, were present for the unveiling of the memorial plaque. “

Karl Koch joined the Höchst Police in 1918 and worked from 1933 to 1947 in the 17th police station at Gebeschusstraße 10. Josefine Schain was considered the daughter of a Jewish father who had converted to Christianity in the Nazi categories as “half-Jewish” and war in the 1940s increasingly threatened to be abducted in a concentration camp. Her father Josef Schain died in 1941 in the Łódź ghetto. Since 2008, a stumbling block has been remembering him in Höchster Brüningstrasse 34. The memorial plaque was created by the police headquarters and the cultural office of the city of Frankfurt as well as the local advisory board 6.

(Text: PM City of Frankfurt)