Leo Bendel
Leo Bendel (born 1868 in Strezwo, Poland, then Galicia, Austria-Hungary; died 30 March 1940 in Buchenwald concentration camp) was a tobacco dealer and art collector. Bendel came to Berlin from Galicia around 1900 and became a tobacco dealer there. He was considered to be well-off, lived in Berlin-Dahlem and acquired several paintings and graphics over the years. Nazi persecution After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Bendel was persecuted because of his Jewish origins. In 1935 he was dismissed from the position of general agent for the Job Cigarette Papers company because he was Jewish. Together with his wife Else Bendel, he fled Nazi Germany, and between 1935 and 1937 he sold his art collection to finance his escape. In the summer of 1937 Leo and Else Bendel went to Vienna. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, Bendel was arrested at the beginning of September 1939 and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar. He died there in the spring of 1940. Else Bendel survived as a non-Jew under poor conditions in Vienna. After the war she made claims for compensation in Berlin; her application had not yet been decided when she died in September 1957. However,