Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Berlin
About Franz Kaufmann
- Franz Kaufmann (5 January 1886 – 17 February 1944) was a German jurist and victim of the Holocaust.
- His role helping underground Jews survive in hiding in Berlin and his execution are documented in The Forger, the memoirs of Cioma Schönhaus.Kaufmann was born to Jewish parents on 5 January 1886 and baptized a Protestant.
- He served in the first World War in the 10th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment receiving, among other medals, the Iron Cross.
- After being wounded he was discharged from the army in 1918 as a reserve lieutenant.
- He obtained a doctorate in law and political science and in 1922 was appointed to a specialist post in government finances in the Prussian ministry of the interior.
- He later became chief secretary of the Reich Public Accounts Office, in the finance ministry.In 1936, because of his Jewish origins, he was dismissed from his post as chief secretary.
- When World War II broke out in 1939, he volunteered for the Red Cross but was refused, again due to his Jewish origins.
- He continued to enjoy privileged status due his then so-called racially mixed marriage to an Aryan-classified woman and because he brought up his daughter as a Christian.Kaufmann joined a bible study group with The Confessing Church at Berlin-Dahlem in 1940, and—with other members of the church—began to supply post-office identity cards to on-the-run Jews.
- Ultimately he headed an underground group that created and supplied all manner of fake documents to underground Jews, including certificates of Aryan descent, driving licenses, and food ration cards.
- These documents were essential to the survival of many Berlin Jews.He was arrested in August 1943.
- No charges were laid against him, since as a Jew under the Third Reich he was subject not to German law but to police power.
- On 17 February 1944 he was taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and shot.
Read more at Wikipedia