Dr. med.
Paul Huppert
1878 - 1939

“The author Paul Huppert, son of Dr. Huppert, physician and dentist, was born on November 9, 1878, in Bielitz, Austria-Silesia. I attended elementary school and the Royal Gymnasium in Beuthen (Upper Silesia), which I finished my high school diploma in Easter 1899. Thereafter, I continued my education by studying medicine at the University of Munich, where I took the preliminary medical examination in March 1901. I spent the sixth and seventh semesters studying in Berlin, after which I returned to the rest of my studies in Munich. I took the state medical examination in the winter semester of 1903/1904 and received my license to practice medicine on May 26, 1904. I spent the summer working as a substitute for several practicing physicians in my hometown,” Paul Huppert wrote in his curriculum vitae in his dissertation “Ueber einen Fall von primaerem Gallertcarcinom des Coecums” (On a case of primary gelatinous carcinoma of the cecum), which he submitted in 1904 to the Ludwig Maximillians University in Munich.

Paul Huppert grew up as the oldest child of Leo Huppert and Friederike, née Rahmer, in Beuthen, which is now Bytom, Poland. His brother Alfred died as an infant, and his two younger sisters, Elfriede and Irma, were born in 1883 and 1888.

Education and career

Little information exists regarding Huppert’s further education after completing his medical education in Munich. On May 11, 1905, Dr. Huppert also successfully passed the medical licensing exam at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague.

Documents from the Karlsbad Spa mention that Dr. Huppert was considered not only a doctor of medicine at the universities of Munich and Prague, but also a licensed physician in both Austria and Germany.

His name appears in documents from the Karlsbad Spa Directory of Physicians as a spa doctor as early as 1906. His address was initially recorded at the Markt “Postgebäude” (Post Office Building) with a later change to an address at the Alte Wiese “Strauss.”

On November 3, 1912, he married Gertrude Klemperer. Gertrude Klemperer was born on November 12, 1889 to Dr. Leo Klemperer, a doctor in Karlsbad, and to his wife Theres. On February 27, 1914, Paul Huppert and Gertrude Klemperer welcomed their son Heinz (Henry, Heini). Their daughter Ilse Josefine, born on July 13, 1917, married Kurt Salinger, a commercial clerk born in 1907, in Karlsbad in 1936.

From 1927 onwards, Paul Huppert and his wife were also documented to have an apartment on Charlottenstrasse 40 in Breslau, while continuing to be listed with a residence Karlsbad. Like many other spa doctors, he most likely practiced medicine in cities such as Vienna, Prague, or Breslau during the winter periods.

After 1933

The Munich Agreement in October 1938 coerced Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to the German Reich. Thereby, Jewish doctors were subjected to the same regulations that had taken effect in the German Reich in 1933.

While Dr. Huppert`s practice was provisionally transferred to the supervision of a lawyer on November 29, 1938, he and his wife fled to Prague. Initially they found refuge at the Hotel Axa in Prag II and later found accommodations on the Raabe Street 14. On January 8, 1939, he submitted a request to the authorities in Karlsbad to obtain official confirmation of his former place as residence, as this documentation was necessary for administrative purposes in Prague.

In March 1941, his valuables were sold; in other words, his assets were confiscated.

Dr. Paul Huppert died from a bilateral pneumonia during an influenza epidemic at the age of 60 years on February 3, 1939 in Prague. He was buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague on February 10, 1939.

Following his death, his wife Gertrude fled from Prague on April 14, 1939, initially to Liverpool. From Liverpool, she traveled by ship via Quebec/Montreal to Australia, arriving on June 4, 1939.

Paul Huppert’s sisters did not survive the Holocaust. Irma Friedmann was deported from Breslau to the Theresienstadt ghetto and from there to the concentrationcamp Treblinka, where she was murdered on September 29, 1942. Dr. Huppert`s other sister, Elfriede Friedberg, was murdered in the concentrationcamp Sobibor on July 23, 1943.

Paul and Getrude Huppert’s  children, Heinz (Henry, Heini) and Ilse along with her husband Kurt Salinger, fled to Australia in 1938 and lived near Melbourne. Ilse and Kurt Salinger’s sons, Jeffrey and Dennis, were born in 1941 and 1946 accordingly. Gertrude Huppert died in 1943 and was buried in Fawkner Cemetery near Melbourne. Dr. Huppert`s daughter Ilse died in 1977 and his son Heinz (Henry, Heini) died in 1989. They are both buried in the Jewish section of Spingvale Botanical Cemetery.