Dr. med
Walter Gerhard Julius Nauenberg
1897 - 1987

Training and place of work

“I was born on January 29, 1897 in Großlichterfelde, son of the private school  director Julius Nauenberg, PhD, and his wife Regina, née Petsch. Taught in my  father’s private school (since 1900 in Berlin) until 1909, I was sent to the Royal  Wilhelms-Gymnasium, where I stayed until I took my Abitur exam (“Notabitur”  because of World War I ) at the beginning of August 1914 and then I joined the  army as a volunteer. I took part in the war, mainly on the Western Front. From  1918 onwards I studied medicine in Berlin and Rostock, state examination in  1921, doctorate in 1922. From 1922 to 1927 I worked as a trainee and assistant  doctor in the first internal department of the Rudolf Virchow Hospital in Berlin (Head of the Department: Prof. L. Kuttner). From 1928 to 1933 I was associated  with Dr. Fritz Sachs, large and well known Laboratorium Clinicum,  Grolmanstrasse 34, Berlin,” says Walter Nauenberg in his CV, which can be  found in his application under the Federal Compensation Act at the beginning  of the 1950s (Berlin Compensation Authority, Compensation File No. 75.606,  Sheet M 7). The Nauenberg family were members of the Jewish religious  community in Berlin. Walter Nauenberg’s younger sister Lilly died at the age of  22 in December 1920.

Walter Nauenberg, who first enrolled at Rostock University in the summer  semester of 1920, received his doctorate at the university there in 1922 with  the thesis “Ueber Pseudotabes pituitaria”. In the same year he received his medical license. Since then he has worked with Leopold Kuttner, the leading  gastroenterologist at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital in Berlin at the time  alongside Ismar Boas, Hermann Strauss and Theodor Rosenheim. Kuttner  probably motivated his assistant Nauenberg to join the specialist society for  stomach, intestinal and metabolic diseases as early as 1925, especially since  Kuttner was president of the legendary fifth congress of the specialist society in  Vienna in 1925 and provided it with statutes and the official list of members for  the first time.

In 1928 Walter Nauenberg moved from the Rudolf Virchow Hospital to Dr. Fritz  Sachs in Berlin-Charlottenburg and was associated with him until 1933.

1933

“In 1933 I married Dr. Erna Sachs and took over her practice – for the patients  of the official statutory health insurance too – which was given to me as a  participant in the war 1914-1918. In 1937 I lost part of the permission to treat  patients of the statutory health insurance, in 1938 (October) all the permissions  and my title” (CV, W N, compensation file, p. 7).

Erna Nauenberg-Sachs was born on September 26, 1903 into a Jewish family of  a physician, studied medicine and received her doctorate at the University of  Berlin in 1929 with the thesis “Splenic tuberculosis in polycythemia vera”. She  did the work with the pathologist Erwin Christeller, who worked as a prosector  at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital. Erna Sachs received her license to practice  medicine in May 1929. She then worked as a welfare doctor for the city of  Berlin. On January 1, 1931, she took over the practice of her father, Michael  Sachs, MD, at Neue Winterfeldtstrasse 47 in Berlin-Schöneberg. At that same  time, she received permission as a general practitioner to treat patients with statutory health insurance besides private practice.

After her license to  practice statutory health insurance was revoked by the Nazi authorities in April 1933 and her dismissal from the Berlin municipal service as a welfare doctor,  she continued to work as a private doctor with her husband in the Neue  Winterfeldtstrasse practice. Her daughter Eva was born in 1933 and her son Michael was born in 1934.

The Nauenberg couple was aware of the consequences of the Nazi dictatorship  early on. Escape from Germany was considered. Emma Friederike Sachs, née  Kallmann, Erna Nauenberg’s mother, aged 63 in 1935, could not decide to leave  Germany. Walter and Erna Nauenberg learned the Spanish language, especially  since they worked as medical officers for the Colombian embassy in Berlin and  carried out health examinations as part of the visa issuance for refugees.

Escape to Colombia 1938/1939

“As a long-time doctor at the Colombian Consulate General, I was granted the  right to asylum on November 10, 1938 and lived there (Dörflinger Str. 16) until I  got my visa to Colombia. On December 2nd 1938 I emigrated to Colombia. In  June 1939 my family reunited with me here [ in Baranquilla, note H Je ]. In May  1940, my wife and I passed the local [Colombian, note H Je] exam and we  received the license to practice our profession […]. On November 26, 1941, I  lost my German citizenship, and on December 10, 1941, I was granted  Colombian citizenship” ( CV, W.N., Compensation File Sheet M 7, Berlin  Compensation Authority).

Walter and Erna Nauenberg are still listed in the 1937 Reich Medical Calendar (  RMK ) as practicing physicians – stigmatized as Jews with a colon in front of  their names. During the pogrom on November 9, 1938, Walter Nauenberg was  saved from the threat of arrest by the GESTAPO with the active personal help of the Colombian Consul Joaquin Quijano Mantilla. [J. Quijano Mantilla, 1878 – 1944, was a Colombian writer, politician and consul in Berlin since 1927. In 1929 he was appointed Colombian consul general in Berlin. He enabled the  Nauenberg family to escape to Colombia]. Quijano Mantilla ensured that  Walter Nauenberg found asylum in the Colombian embassy in Berlin in  November 1938 and was able to flee Germany with diplomatic protection via  Berlin-Tempelhof Airport to Amsterdam on December 1, 1938. From there he  took the ship to Barranquilla in Colombia. Erna Nauenberg was heavily  pregnant at this time; her son Uriel (Uli) was born on December 16, 1938 in  Berlin. She followed with her three children and a nanny from Hamburg on  June 2, 1939 on the ship Cordilliera of the Hamburg Amerika Line to  Barranquilla.

Walter and Erna Nauenberg were initially able to work as doctors and earn a  living in the Colombian oil town of Barrancabermeja (Barranca), about 600 km  from Barranquilla. There was antisemitism in Colombia as well, and despite being highly trained doctors from Berlin they were not able to practice in  Barranquilla when they first arrived. They needed to travel for days up the river Magdalena to be able to work as doctors for a private company. During this time, the three children were looked after in Barranquilla by the nanny who had come with them from Berlin.

Walter Nauenberg, who had been interested in bacteriology since his training, was involved in the fight against infectious diseases in Colombia. In March 1939, in a lengthy lecture at the La Samaritana University Hospital in Bogota, he reported on the campaign against venereal diseases in Germany in the 1920s. His lecture was published in the journal of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bogota.

Moving to the United States since 1945

On April 9th 1948, a leading presidential candidate, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, was assassinated in Bogotá, Colombia. Erna saw people burning stores and churches and worried about the intensifying violence and possibility that the horrors they had escaped in Germany would happen in Colombia. She made arrangements for the two older children to finish school in New York, and the youngest, Uriel, joined them later. Since then she has repeatedly stayed in New York, where  her fourth child, Lucrecia, was born. “At the end of 1949 my wife presented the  state board exam in New York, at the beginning of this year [1953, note H Je] I  presented it.” [W. N., curriculum vitae, compensation file, sheet M 7). In 1953  the family and nanny finally moved from Colombia to the USA / New York.

In addition to her private practice, Erna Nauenberg worked as a clinical  assistant since October 1950 and as a senior clinical assistant since 1959 on  Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the morning in the Outpatient  Department Medical Service at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Since January  1954, Walter Nauenberg had been working in the same way as his wife in  addition to his private practice at Mount Sinai Hospital New York. They worked 6 days a week taking Saturday afternoon and Sundays off. Both worked actively there until 1974. Walter Nauenberg also worked on infectious diseases within a working group at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center New York.

Because of their Spanish they treated many Spanish speaking patients and because of their tropical disease training they treated many gay patients in the late 1970s and early 1980s who first had amoebas and then unrelated to the tropical diseases contracted HIV.

Walter published clinical research papers during his time at Mount Sinai. For example, in 1965 he published a paper in the American Journal of Medicine on  Rat Tapeworm infection in humans, and in 1970 he published a paper on the  “Observations on the Treatment of Strongyloidiasis with Thiabendazole in New York City” in The Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine.

Erna received one of the earliest acupuncture licenses in New York.  At that time it was not easy to learn about acupuncture in the United States, she traveled to Austria and China to learn about acupuncture.

At the end of his life, when Walter could hardly walk, he would take the bus for 1 stop ( 3 blocks) to go to the office. Monday morning June 15 as he was getting ready to go to work he was not feeling well and his daughter in law Jean took him to Mt Sinai where he died. Walter Nauenberg died on June 15, 1987 at the age of 90 in New York.

Erna kept practicing until she had several strokes in October of 1988. Erna  Nauenberg-Sachs died at the age of 86 in April 1990, also in New York.

Emma Friederike Sachs, nee Kallmann, Erna Nauenberg’s mother, was deported  by the GESTAPO from Berlin to the Theresienstadt / Terezín ghetto in  September 1942. She died there under the conditions of the ghetto at the age  of 70 on January 5th. 1943.