Moritz Rabinowitz

Moritz Moses Rabinowitz (20 September 1887 – 27 February 1942) was a retail merchant based in the city of Haugesund, Norway. Rabinowitz was active in the Jewish community in Norway and was an early opponent of Nazism. After Nazi Germany invaded Norway, Rabinowitz was arrested and moved to Germany. He was murdered in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1942.

Family Rabinowitz was born in Rajgród into a Jewish family as a son of Isaac Levi and Chaya Rosa Rabinowitz. It is also known that he had two sisters and a younger brother. The brother – Herman Herschel – also emigrated to Norway and settled in Bergen. Rabinowitz wrote that he had witnessed "barbaric" murders during pogroms, particularly in Białystok. As long as he lived, Rabinowitz sent money to his parents in Poland.

Rabinowitz married Johanne Goldberg, the daughter of Salomon Goldberg who founded the Friedenstempel in Berlin. They had one child, Edith, born in 1918. She married the Austrian refugee Hans Reichwald, and they had a son Harry, born in 1940. Johanne Rabinowitz died on 25 November 1939, after relocating to Bergen to be near her sister Rosa, who had married Moritz's brother Hermann. Rabinowitz traveled extensively along the Norwegian west coast south of Bergen and apparently spent most weekends with his family. Taking place in June 1927, it was the second defamation lawsuit against Nationalt Tidsskrift, after the lawsuit from Kristiansund-based chief physician Ephraim Koritzinsky which took place in May.

Rabinowitz expressed his deep opposition to Nazism in the newspaper pages as early as 1933, figuring that Hitler's "career was only possible in an era as desperate and confused as today's." German Nazi newspapers named him as the Jewish community's secular leader in Norway. In 1934 he wrote that "the new Germany lives in a martial psychosis, specializing in child-rearing for war, and military technique...children are taught from the cradle to hate all foreign peoples and to kill them at the order to do so." In 1934 he also predicted a devastating world war, was unimpressed by the non-aggression treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union. He sent telegrams to world leaders, including Roosevelt, Hindenburg, and Chamberlain, imploring them to intervene on behalf of German Jews. In 1939 he demanded that Norway improve its coastal defense system against a German attack and occupation.

They finally caught up with him in Skånevik Municipality, probably by shadowing employees who were conveying business decisions between Rabinowitz and his businesses. By then, his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson had joined him.

Rabinowitz was first detained in the regional jail at Lagård in Stavanger, was then sent to Møllergata 19 jail in Oslo on 26 February 1941 and then to Ånebyleiren concentration camp on 22 March, until he was sent back to Møllergata 19 on 25 April, where he remained until his deportation on the MS Monte Rosa 22 May 1941. The Monte Rosa landed in Stettin, where he wrote his will. Rabinowitz ended up in Sachsenhausen, where he was placed in the barracks for Jews, though he was officially categorized as a political prisoner. He died on 27 February 1942. The death certificate lists pneumonia as the cause of death, but according to a fellow prisoner, Rabinowitz was kicked and stomped to death outside Barrack 38 in Sachsenhausen. Rabinowitz's brother, daughter, grandson, and son-in-law were all later deported and murdered in Auschwitz.