Josef Jakobs - 1898-1941

A few months ago, I wrote a follow-up post about Eric Vincent Ewart White, the defence attorney for Josef Jakobs at his 1941 court martial. I had tracked down the names of three of Eric's grandchildren and reached out to one of them. And... success! Rowan Ewart-White kindly sent me a photograph of his grandfather and a post from the Epsom & Ewell History Explorer site. This post draws heavily upon my 2015 blog on Eric which can be read here, but also includes some extra information.
After so many years, it's exciting to be able to see the face of the man who met my grandfather and who did his best to defend him against the charges of espionage and treachery. The following is a blend of some new information from the Epsom & Ewell site, as well as my own supplemental research.
Early Life
Eric was born in the third quarter of 1909 in Lewisham, Greater London. Eric's parents Bertram Ewart White and Avera Emily née Vincent had married in the second quarter of 1909 in the W…

The Book
Langes Seil, Schneller Tod: Wie Großbritannien seine Mörder hängte.[Long rope, Fast Death: How Great Britain hanged their Murderers] Traugott Vitz, Kirchschlager. 2016.

Background
I had come across an English translation of a chapter from Langes Seil, Schneller Tod in February 2017. The chapter dealt with the execution of various wartime spies in Great Britain and mentioned Josef Jakobs. Several months later, I received an email from the author, Traugott Vitz, and we have been email pals every since. Traugott kindly sent me a copy of his book in German and, while it took me a couple of years due to the illness and death of my father, I did finish it earlier in 2020. My level of German is not all that advanced and quite rusty. I can deal with simple conversations and books fairly well but anything more complex requires a fair degree of effort. With the help of Google Translate, I learned quite a bit of technical legal and execution lingo.

Summary
This book covers the history of exe…

The Book
Out of Nazi Germany and Trying to Find my Way. Irene Matthews. Upfront Publishing. 2002.

Background
A relation of the Hagen clan, living in Norway, put me onto this book. Irene Matthews is the daughter of Ernst David & Clara Hagen, individuals who appeared as clients of Jürgen Ziebell in the black market passport business with which Josef Jakobs was involved. I tracked down a second-hand copy of the book and it arrived a few weeks ago. I read it in one sitting (it's 109 pages) and was entranced.

Summary
In a very engaging and simple style, Irene tells the tale of growing up in Berlin and Potsdam during the 1930s. The everyday activities of a little girl, visiting her Opapa, going to school, playing with her dog. And yet, over all of these everyday activities, the looming shadow of Nazism cast a pall. Slowly, ever so slowly, signs appeared - No Jews Allowed. In late 1938 and early 1939, after her father was sent to a concentration camp in the wake of Kristallnacht, Irene&#…

The Book
The M Room: Secret Listeners Who Bugged the Nazis. Helen Fry, Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.

Background
I bought this book as an e-book two years ago. Last year, it was republished on Yale University Press with a different title (The Walls Have Ears: The Greatest Intelligence Operation of World War II). I haven't read the republished version, so all of my comments relate to the original version.

Summary
The impetus for this book seems to have been an encounter between the author and one of the "secret listeners" who used to work in the M (microphone) Room at Trent Park, an interrogation centre run by British military intelligence during the Second World War. This gentleman's tales sparked Fry to investigate the history of the M Room at this facility. Receiving many high-ranking German officers, Trent Park (a.k.a. Cockfoster's Internment Camp), the secret listeners were privy to many top secret revelations uttered by the Germans when they …

During his court-martial, Josef told the court that he had direct Jewish ancestors. This was quite a revelation, as he had earlier told military interrogators that he was not Jewish. His court martial testimony, that his own grandfather was Jewish, seems like a desperate bid to gain the sympathy of the court. My own genealogical research has definitively shown that Josef's ancestry, on both sides, is Catholic well back into the 1500s.

At various points during his interrogations and court martial testimony, Josef also mentioned that his "father-in-law" was Jewish. In actual fact, it was Josef's step-father-in-law who was Jewish, a man named Abraham Wolfgang Elkan. When I published my book on Josef Jakobs (The Spy in the Tower), I told a bit of the tale of Elkan and, while I knew he had died before 1943, the year that his wife (Therese (née Knöffler) Elkan) passed away, I did not know the circumstances of his passing. Had he perished in a concentration camp…