Wilhelm Buchheim

Wilhem Buchheim was a bright and inquisitive boy. But even though he had the best grades, six months after school started, he was assigned second place when seats were allocated based on students' performance. "A Jew can never be the best in a German school," his teacher informed him. At the time, Wilhelm Buchheim was six years old. Even years later he remembered this sentence. It is possible that this encounter with antisemitism awakened the desire to become a teacher and to protect other children from what he endured.

After fighting as a soldier in World War I, like many other young Jews of his generation, he took a job as a teacher at the Jewish Elementary School in Essen. From then on, he was committed to the education of the youngest. It was not until 1933 that he moved to the Jewish School in Dortmund and became its principal. In his diaries, he reports how the increasing influence of the National Socialists on education affected everyday school life. Wilhelm Buchheim also describes in detail in his diaries the November pogroms in Dortmund.

In 1939, he emigrated to Great Britain, before managing to come to the USA in September 1941. For Wilhelm Buchheim, this marked the beginning of a completely new chapter in his life. The break with his past in Germany is also reflected in his diaries: from September 1941, he keeps them exclusively in English.

Further information and documents

Wilhelm Buchheim Collection, AR 2078

https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/17213

Diaries 1914–1943

https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE5865746&