Kupfer-Koberwitz, Edgar, 1906-

Edgar Kupfer was born in the town of Koberwitz, Germany on April 24, 1906. He received his education in various cities across that country, including Bonn, Regensburg and Stuttgart. When his parents were divorced he left school to support his mother and sister. He remained with them and worked various jobs in factories, stores and banks. Kupfer's parents were later reconciled, and in the aftermath of a disappointing love affair Kupfer left Germany for Italy in 1925. Between 1925 and 1940, he moved between Germany and Italy, working in many types of jobs, including for newspapers, travel bureaus, and as a model for a sculptor of monuments.

In 1940, Kupfer was taken into custody by German police as an enemy of the German state, presumably for his pacifist ideology. He was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp for the duration of World War II. By pretending to be simple-minded, Kupfer received a clerk's job in the camp's store room, which gave him the opportunity to clandestinely begin a diary. He recorded incidents of concentration camp life on tiny slips of paper. He hid the pages of his diary from prison guards by concealing them among business papers. He later buried them, where some of the pages sustained water damage.

While at Dachau, Kupfer continued to practice the vegetarianism he had embraced years before, dividing his meat ration amongst fellow prisoners. In his diary, he explained his belief that humans' ability to cruelly deny the humanity of others stemmed from widespread brutality of humans towards animals. He explained, "I believe as long as man tortures and kills animals, he will torture and kill humans as well—and wars will be waged—for killing must be practiced and learned on a small scale. We should try to overcome our own small thoughtless cruelty, to avoid it, and to abolish it." During his regime, in an attack on pacifist organizations, Hitler banned all vegetarian organizations and arrested their leaders in German-occupied territories.

Despite nearly being consumed by typhus, Kupfer survived his imprisonment at Dachau and was among the more than 67,000 prisoners liberated by American forces on April 29, 2945. Kupfer expressed his gratitude at having evaded death in the camp: "The day is over, this April 29 1945. I will celebrate it for the rest of my life as my second birthday, as the day that gifted me life anew." Vowing to use his writings to publicize his experiences and views, Kupfer attained the assistance of Thomas Emmet of the Counter Intelligence Corps to save his manuscript from deterioration in its hiding place.

Kupfer took great pains to establish the genuineness of his manuscript. To demonstrate its authenticity, he unearthed it in the presence of Counter Intelligence Corps agents. Kupfer also created and circulated a questionnaire among former Dachau inmates, gathering statements about his behavior in camp and his general trustworthiness. The Dachau Diary was serialized in the journal Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte under the title "Als Haftling in Dachau." From his Dachau notes, Kupfer also wrote an essay on vegetarianism which was published in the book Radical Vegetarianism, written by Mark Mathew Braunstein in 1981.

Mr. Kupfer, a resident of Chicago in the postwar period, donated his diaries to the University of Chicago in April 1, 1954.

From the guide to the Kupfer-Koberwitz, Edgar. Dachau Diaries, 1942-1945, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)