Hertha Berlin’s supporters give face to club member murdered in Holocaust

In 2018, a group of Hertha Berlin supporters was looking into the club’s history under the Nazis.

While researching details about the club’s Jewish doctor, Hermann Horwitz, they came across a name of a person that was excluded from the club on the same day as Horwitz: Eljas Kaszke.

Eljas Kaszke’s Hertha Berlin membership card

Hertha fans had basically nothing other than his name. They spent months researching his life, and found the following:

Eljas Kaszke was born in Warsaw. His family moved to Berlin in 1905, where he worked as a businessman. He married a woman from Hamburg that also had a Danish passport.

Kaszke joined Hertha Berlin as a member in October 1927, one of only 400 members back at the time. He lived close to the Plumpe, Hertha’s old ground. He was a match-going fan, and he used to receive birthday greetings from the club once a year.

Hertha fans, with the help of the Sachsenhausen Memorial Fund, also found that Eljas Kaszke had applied for a German nationality. His application was rejected in 1933, due to the fact he was “an Eastern Jewish foreigner.”

In September 1938, Kaszke was thrown out of the club together with five other Jewish members. Less than a year later, the Nazis told him he must leave Germany and its occupied territories, which he ended up not doing for an unknown reason.

Kaszke was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp along with 533 other Jews on September 13, 1939.

This is also where he lost his life six months later due to a “tissue inflammation.”

That’s a lot of information, but one thing was still missing: a face.

After months of research, the 17 Hertha fans involved managed to find a photo of Eljas Kaszke in Berlin’s State Archive.

They did it voluntarily.

The plan is now to publish a whole biography about the life of Eljas Kaszke, and his Hertha membership will be reinstated, along with the other Jewish members of the club that were expelled from it during the Nazi era.

May the memory of Eljas Kaszke, as well as the memories of the other Jews and non-Jews that were murdered by the Germans and their fascism during World War Two, be a blessing.

Never forgive, never forget.

Fascism kills. Racism kills. Antisemitism kills.

(Sources for the information and photos: Hertha Berlin website, Berlin Zeitung)