Ludwig Neumann shortly after his release from Dachau • Wiener Holocaust Library

This powerful image, from the Wiener Holocaust Library, shows German Jew Ludwig Neumann soon after he was released from Dachau in 1938. During a time of increasing antisemitism, especially after Kristallnacht, many German Jewish men were sent to Dachau, which was set up by the Nazis in 1933, initially to hold Jews and political prisoners. Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other German concentration camps that followed. It was in the aftermath of Kristallnacht and such measures that concerted German and Austrian Jewish emigration to Britain and other countries began.

Ludwig Neumann was a German Jewish businessman who owned an industrial clothing company. As a result of anti-Jewish measures, he was forced to sell his factory in 1938 and was interned in Dachau for a number of weeks. He was released on the understanding that he would leave the country immediately, and travelled to Great Britain where he was briefly interned as an enemy alien. Following his release however, he served as an anti-aircraft gunner for the British. After the war, Neumann returned to Germany to try and re-establish the family business, but eventually came back to Britain where he held a number of posts as a production manager in the clothing industry.

Ludwig Neumann was also a keen amateur photographer and the Wiener Holocaust Library’s Ludwig Neumann collection holds many photographs from his travels in the Mediterranean and around the world in the early twentieth century, as well as in the 1950s and 1960s.

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