Chaim Hass grew up in Halicz (now Halych, Ukraine) in a Jewish farming family. He trained in business and moved to Berlin in 1896. After completing his military service, he settled there as a businessman and married Cina Glueckmann. The couple had two children. Chaim Hass started a company with several factories. His wife died in 1935 and he married Elsa Raphael two years later. As a Jew, he was affected by the National Socialists’ expropriations in the 1930s, losing his company. In September 1939 Hass was arrested, mistreated, and released two weeks later with a hernia. His family emigrated to Britain at the end of the 1930s, but he remained in Berlin. Fearing deportation, Chaim Hass went underground in January 1942 and stayed in various places under the name of Karl Gottschalk. He also performed various forms of unskilled labor. He ignored instructions to register with the police. Instead, he applied for a job as a guard on a remote country estate at the beginning of 1943. He survived the war and emigrated to the UK.
Chaim Hass, after 1945. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
