On Thursday, 5 November, 24 new Stolpersteine will be laid at nine locations in Chemnitz. Set into the pavement, these memorial stones commemorate the tragic fates of people who were persecuted, deported, murdered, driven to their deaths or forced to flee during the Nazi regime. The stones provide information about the names and key dates in the lives of these people and mark their last places of residence or where they were active.
The event is open to the public. In addition to the sponsors of the Stolpersteine, as well as relatives and friends of the victims, anyone interested is welcome to attend.
Media representatives are also invited.
At 9.00 am, on Stefan-Heym-Platz in front of the smac, Mayor Ralph Burghart will welcome those present. Stolpersteine will then be laid there for Carl Lewin, his wife Charlotte Lewin (née Hirsch), and their children Hermann Lewin, Johanna Kramrich (née Lewin) and Eva Grünberg (née Lewin).
The laying of the Stolpersteine has been made possible by committed citizens, local organisations and pupils from schools in Chemnitz, who have secured the funding for the small commemorative plaques by sponsoring them. Many of them, along with relatives and descendants of those being honoured, will be present at the laying ceremony across the city.
The 24 Stolpersteine at nine locations in Chemnitz in detail:
9.00 am, at Stefan-Heym-Platz in front of the smac
Carl Lewin, former manager of the Schocken department store in Chemnitz, worked for various trading firms in Germany after completing his apprenticeship. In 1910, he became managing director of the Hirsch department store in Geestemünde and married Charlotte Hirsch, the daughter of the department store’s owners. The couple had three children: Hermann, Johanna and Eva. In 1914, the family moved to Saxony, where Carl Lewin initially took over the management of the department store in Freiberg. In May 1930, Lewin once again accepted an offer from the Schocken family and took charge of the new department store in Chemnitz. When the ‘boycott of Jewish businesses’ was imposed on 1 April 1933, the head of human resources advised him not to remain in Germany any longer. In September 1935, the family moved to Berlin, eventually fleeing to England in 1936 and on to Merano (South Tyrol). In September 1938, the family emigrated to Haifa, Palestine. Carl Lewin died there in 1946 after a prolonged illness. His widow outlived him by 26 years. The couple were laid to rest in a cemetery in Haifa.
Sponsors: Verein Freunde des smac e. V., pupils of the Agricola Gymnasium, Chemnitz
Pupils from the Agricola Gymnasium in Chemnitz will accompany the laying of the memorial with a short programme.
9.50 am, Goetheplatz 3 (now next to house no. 5)
Following the death of his father in 1918, Arthur Becker became a partner in the family business, Gebr. Becker, one of the best-known glove factories in Chemnitz at the time. A few years later, he married Charlotte Clara Frank, the daughter of a merchant from Leipzig. The couple lived with their children, Fritz-Edgar and Liesel Anita, at 3 Goetheplatz. In 1933, the Becker family decided to leave the country. From then on, they lived in the Netherlands. Faced with the threat of war, they emigrated to Canada in April 1939 and lived in Montreal. In the 1950s, Arthur and Charlotte Becker moved to the USA and lived in Hollywood, Florida, until their deaths.
Fritz-Edgar Becker lived in Toronto until his death. Liesel had three children with her husband, Ernest B. Sabloff: Daniel, Lynn and Nancy. In 1983, the couple moved to the USA. In 2001, Liesel Sabloff took part in the 10th ‘Days of Jewish Culture’ in Chemnitz as the city’s guest of honour. She has been living in a care home for several years and welcomes the laying of the Stolpersteine in memory of her family.
Sponsors: Roman Wunderlich, Katharina Günzel, private individuals, pupils from the Montessori Secondary School in Chemnitz, Stefan Wahl
10.25 am, Heinrich-Beck-Straße 3
Hertha Wendel, née Kirsch, and her husband Moritz lived at Heinrich-Beck-Straße 3 with their three children, Marga, Erich and Hans Richard. By the time of Moritz Wendel’s death in June 1939, his son Erich Wendel had already emigrated to South Africa. Their daughter, Marga Wendel, who had been married since February 1930 to the actor and staunch Zionist Erich Moral, had already emigrated to Palestine with her husband in 1934. Her mother, Hertha Wendel, also emigrated in October 1939 to Cape Town, South Africa, where her son Erich had settled.
Hans Richard Wendel had been living in Spreenhagen since the spring of 1939, later moving to Berlin-Charlottenburg, and married the photographer Ingetraut Schaefer in 1940. He was responsible for organising the refugee transports via the Black Sea route to Haifa. At the Danube port of Bratislava, the refugees were to be distributed amongst three passenger ships (the SS ‘Atlantic’, the SS ‘Pacific’ and the SS ‘Milos’). The Wendels were on board the SS ‘Pacific’. The passengers were transferred to the ‘Patria’ by the Royal Navy. To prevent deportation, Hans Wendel was tasked by the Haganah, a paramilitary underground organisation in Palestine, with rendering the ship unseaworthy by means of a bomb explosion. On 25 November 1940, the bomb exploded in the engine room. The ‘Patria’ capsized and sank within 15 minutes. Hans Wendel was killed in the blast; Ingetraut Wendel and her mother, Marie Schaefer, survived the explosion.
Sponsors: Anne Czäczine, City of Chemnitz’s 2024 High-Potential Programme
11.00 am, Georg-Landgraf-Straße 24
Dr Emanuel Firnbacher received his licence to practise medicine in Munich in January 1926 and began his medical career in Chemnitz in March 1928. He initially worked as a junior doctor at the Stadtkrankenhaus am Küchwald, before setting up his own practice as a specialist in internal medicine at 2a Stollberger Straße in March 1930.
Whilst still in Würzburg, Emanuel Firnbacher had married Liselotte Bing, the daughter of a doctor, in 1928. Their daughter, Margarete Firnbacher, was born in 1929 at the State Maternity Hospital in Chemnitz. The family found a home befitting their status on the ground floor of the house at 24 Wittelsbacher Straße.
Frieda Horn, Liselotte Firnbacher’s mother, moved from Würzburg to Chemnitz in March 1935. Her husband had died shortly before and she herself was seriously ill. Frieda Horn died in July 1935 and was laid to rest in the Jewish cemetery in the Altendorf district.
Following the enactment of the Nuremberg Race Laws in September 1935 and a dispute with the local medical association, the Firnbachers decided to flee Germany. In October 1935, they travelled to Karlsbad, from where they took the train to Trieste and then continued their journey on the passenger ship ‘Tel Aviv’. The family reached the city of Haifa on 7 February 1936.
In 1956, the couple returned to Germany. Dr Emanuel Firnbacher died in Grub, near Munich, in 1981. His wife had already passed away in Munich 22 years earlier.
Margarete Firnbacher grew up in Palestine and left the newly established State of Israel in 1949 to study medicine in Zurich. On 24 December 1954, she married the economist Franz Ritzmann. The couple had five children. Dr Margarete Ritzmann died on 17 June 1999 in Zurich.
Relatives: Descendants of the family from Switzerland
Sponsors: Sabine von Heyking, Mike Wirrig, private, Andreas Weber
11.45 am, Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße 13
Johannes Rose was born in Görlitz into a Romani family and trained as a cattle and horse dealer. At the end of 1931, Johannes Rose moved to Chemnitz, where he attended the Saxon Higher Technical College for the Textile Industry. His later business was located at Grenadierstraße 13 (now Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße).
Johannes Rose was stripped of his German citizenship in 1934. As part of the so-called ‘Arbeitsscheu Reich’ campaign in June 1938, he was arrested by the Gestapo on account of his Roma heritage and later deported, together with his brother Fritz, to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He had already been in contact with the Jehovah’s Witnesses – a group banned and persecuted by the Nazis – whilst in Chemnitz; in Sachsenhausen, he joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses permanently and was secretly baptised whilst in the concentration camp.
In the spring of 1945, Johannes Rose was part of a group of 230 Jehovah’s Witnesses on the death march from Sachsenhausen to Schwerin. There, on 28 July 1945, he married Trude Schwonbeck. The couple moved to Chemnitz, where Johannes Rose once again worked as an independent livestock trader. His application, submitted in April 1946, for recognition as a ‘victim of fascism’ was rejected by the authorities.
Consequently, the couple moved back to Schwerin, where Johannes Rose was granted ‘victim of fascism’ status in 1948. Following the ban on the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the GDR, he fled with his family to West Berlin in September 1950. On the grounds of his religious affiliation, he was sentenced in absentia in April 1951 “for incitement to boycott democratic institutions, an offence under Article 6 of the Constitution and Control Council Directive 38, Section II, Article III A III”, by the Grand Criminal Chamber of the Schwerin Regional Court to four years’ imprisonment.
In 1962, Johannes Rose died at the age of 53 following a heart attack. Johannes Rose was one of the 24 survivors of an extended family numbering 180 people.
Sponsors: Jehovah’s Witnesses/Romance Language Group, Chemnitz
1.45 pm, Georgstraße, next to house no. 2
Franz Wiesner was born in the town of Böhmisch Kamnitz (now Česká Kamenice). At the age of 17, he took part in the Chemnitz workers’ resistance against the invading Reichswehr and was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for “serious breach of the peace”. Later, he was active in the Socialist Workers’ Youth and the ‘Jahn’ workers’ sports club in Chemnitz-Altchemnitz, and joined the KPD in 1930.
Franz Wiesner was married twice; his first marriage was to Charlotte Wiesner. The couple had two children: Ingeburg and Franz, who died at the age of eleven. He married Lisa Magdalene Rausch in Chemnitz in 1940. This marriage produced a son, also named Franz.
Franz Wiesner received his call-up papers for military service in 1942. This enabled him to avoid a prison sentence, as the Secret State Police had imprisoned him on suspicion of ‘communist activities’. Wiesner was posted to Reval in Estonia (now the Estonian capital, Tallinn), which had been under occupation since 1941. ‘Enemy propaganda’ among Wehrmacht personnel concerning the Wehrmacht’s defeat at Stalingrad, the listening in on ‘enemy radio stations’ and prohibited contact with Soviet prisoners of war led to his re-arrest in November 1943. He was transferred to Berlin-Tegel to face a military court. On 7 November 1944, the court sentenced him to death under Section 5 of the Special War Criminal Law Ordinance of 17 August 1938 for ‘undermining military morale’. The sentence was carried out on 13 February 1945, just a few months before the end of the war. Wiesner’s remains were buried at the Spandau Waldfriedhof cemetery, ‘In den Kisseln’.
Relative: Torsten Frenzel – great-grandson of Franz Wiesner
Sponsor: Torsten Frenzel
2.15 pm, Josephinenstraße 19
Fritz Bauer, who came from Frohnau in the Ore Mountains, was a waiter by profession.
He was arrested several times for homosexual relations. On 2 September 1941, he was once again held in Leipzig police custody; the reason given for his detention was ‘collective transport’. The following day, he was transferred, along with other prisoners, to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where the camp administration classified him as a ‘professional criminal’.
Bauer subsequently fell seriously ill, but he was not transferred to the infirmary, which ultimately led to his agonising death on 25 February 1942. The official cause of death was given as ‘heart failure’. His remains were cremated and interred at the Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof Güterfelde (now in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district).
Sponsor: Karsten Lein
2.45 pm, Klarastraße 42
Kurt Martin Gerstner suffered from ‘congenital mental deficiency’, as the condition was known at the time. Despite his disability, he started school at Easter 1910. In December 1913, on the recommendation of the school authorities, he was admitted to the State Educational Institution in the Altendorf district, founded in 1905, where around 500 children with intellectual disabilities lived.
In 1916, Kurt was discharged home, but his health subsequently deteriorated. He was then admitted to the Chemnitz Municipal Mental Hospital and, in July 1921, to the Zschadraß State Hospital and Care Home.
In May 1934, the Chemnitz Hereditary Health Court ordered his compulsory sterilisation, which was subsequently carried out at the institution.
On 21 June 1940, Kurt Gerstner was transferred, along with other patients, as part of a transport (‘Aktion T4’) to the extermination centre in Brandenburg/Havel, where he was murdered by gassing on the same day. To conceal the circumstances of his death, the ‘T4’ headquarters in Berlin sent his parents a death certificate containing false information. The urn containing his alleged ashes was sent to Chemnitz and buried on 13 August 1940 at the Central Cemetery on Reichenhainer Straße in a family plot.
Relative: Sven Gerstner-Nitschke – great-nephew of Kurt Martin Gerstner
Sponsor: Sven Gerstner-Nitschke
3.20 pm, Leipziger Straße 105
Hans Ziegler, born in 1912, was initially a member of the Socialist Workers’ Youth before joining the Communist Youth Association in 1926. He was active there in his neighbourhood of Schloßchemnitz. He was closely involved in the preparations for the 1932 Reichstag elections and continued his activism even after the NSDAP came to power. Arrested at the end of May 1933, he was sent to Sachsenburg concentration camp shortly afterwards. After more than a year in detention, he resumed distributing leaflets and collecting money for the underground movement upon his release. To avoid the threat of further arrest, he emigrated to Czechoslovakia, where he became involved in refugee aid and offered his services as a courier to Germany.
At the end of 1937, Hans Ziegler enlisted with the International Brigades in Spain. It was not until April 1946 that his parents received news of their son Hans’s death. They were still living in the flat at 105 Leipziger-Straße and, until then, had had no certainty as to his fate. A fellow fighter from the International Brigades, who had returned from exile, reported on Hans Ziegler’s final mission near Belchite (province of Zaragoza); he had been killed in action on 2 March 1938.
Sponsor: Hannelore Wagner
Detailed biographies and further information about the project can be found at www.chemnitz.de/stolpersteine.
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