KURT
I’m beginning to write my book Behind the Words: The Story of the Wolf Siblings. I have begun writing about the siblings in separate chapters, writing about what information there is about them.
Kurt and Otto are who I’m going to have the most trouble with. With the destruction of documents, records and other things pertaining to Czech Jews, the destruction of Kurt’s records were also involved.
Here’s what I have found:
Lieutenant in memoriam MUDr. Kurt Wolfwas born on February 13, 1915 in a Jewish family in Lipník nad Bečvou. Soon after the First World War, the family moved to Mohelnice, from where Kurt commuted to the grammar school in Litovel. After graduating on June 14, 1935, he went to study medicine in Brno. After Munich, he interrupted his studies, fled abroad, and after crooked trips to Europe, he got to the Soviet Union, where he assisted in health care and worked as a teacher in Kazakhstan. On February 20, 1942, he joined the forming Czechoslovak unit in Buzuluk. After graduating from the officer’s school, he was appointed commander of the team in the 2nd Infantry Company, as one of the first volunteers received tribal number 361. Due to his medical knowledge, he was to be assigned to the medical service, but he refused, he wanted to fight. With the 1st Field Battalion, he went to the front as a sergeant and commander of the infantry team, and that became fatal to him. On March 9, 1943, the second day of the Battle of Sokolovo, his platoon advanced across the icy terrain at the head of the attacking wave. After being spotted by the enemy, the unit comes under heavy fire from machine guns, mortars and cannons. Sergeant Kurt Wolf raises his nailed soldiers to the ground. At that moment, however, he is mortally wounded by a direct hit from a mortar grenade. He fell in a counterattack near the village Arťuchovky, shortly afterwards the enemy’s defense was broken.
For his bravery, Sergeant Kurt Wolf was posthumously promoted to the rank of lieutenant and awarded the Sokolov Memorial Medal, the Order of the White Lion for Victory of the First Degree, the Czechoslovak War Cross and the Order of the Red Banner — all in memoriam. On February 15, 1947, the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University in Brno awarded him the title of MUDr. in memory. In March 2014, Kurt Wolf in memoriam praised the town of Mohelnice for his heroism with the Silver Pyramid, where Kurt Wolf spent most of his life after moving from Lipník nad Bečvou.
Not only Kurt, but also his younger brother Otto received the Mohelnice award . Together with his parents and sister Felicitas, they did not board the transport in 1942 and hid from the Nazis in the forest near Tršice. In April 1945, eighteen-year-old Otto was caught in Zákřov. Despite cruel interrogation and torture, he did not reveal anything about himself or the rest of the family, but he fell victim to a massacre of Cossacks who looted the village for alleged cooperation with the guerrillas. He and the other men were burned alive in a forest hut. The family learned of the deaths of both sons, Kurt and Otto, only after the war.
Kurt was a med student and a fighter. He was really someone I wished could have survived the war, so he could live to tell his tale, but he died at the age of 28. Felicitas was the only one to survive of the siblings.
Behind the Words hopefully comes out next year- this one I’m going to take my time on.
Information from: https://info.mesto-lipnik.cz/vismo/dokumenty2.asp?id_org=200271&id=1098&n=wolf%2Dkurt&p1=1082
