Jews once lived lived here: When houses tell stories

Over the years, many people have passed through this fourth-floor apartment in an old Berlin building. Here, at Rosenheimer Straße 40, they have sat on the sofa and gathered around the kitchen table. They have looked out the window and let their minds wander.

Marie Rolshoven has lived here with her family since 2007. "The feeling of crossing that threshold, the same one the former residents crossed for the last time, stays with you," she says. She knows that Jews once lived here, and none of them survived the Nazi era.

Driven from their homes

After the National Socialists seized power in January 1933, it quickly became clear that Jews were considered second-class citizens under Nazi rule. Even the right to remain in their homes could no longer be taken for granted.

"A racially conscious fellow citizen cannot be expected to share a household with a Jew," the Nazi party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter wrote on September 18, 1938, claiming that landlords were therefore entitled to terminate leases without notice. On April 30, 1939, the law took effect. Jewish tenants and property owners were forced to leave their homes and move into buildings designated by the authorities, referred to in Nazi jargon as "Judenhäuser"(Jewish houses).

Several people were forcibly housed in Henny and Carl Möller's apartment at Rosenheimer Straße 40. In the end, there were nine of them. In the fall of 1941, Nazi authorities began systematically deporting Jews to ghettos and camps in Eastern Europe.

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary: "The main thing is that the capital of the Reich be cleansed of Jews; and I will neither rest nor relent until this goal is fully achieved." The residents of Rosenheimer Straße were among those who were subsequently deported.

Remembering at the original site

Marie Rolshoven aims to honor the fate of these individuals. In 2016, she, along with her late mother and a friend, founded the initiative Denk Mal Am Ort (a wordplay meaning both "Think about it at the site" and "Memorial at the Site") inspired by the Amsterdam project Open Jewish Homes.

The idea is to invite people to the very location where everyday life once occurred. "You feel a strong connection to these individuals through the actual site," says Rolshoven. "It's different from visiting a memorial."

'My brother's bed used to be right here'

Two floors below, her neighbors had a similar experience. Denk Mal Am Ort found out that the Jewish Katzenellenbogen family had previously rented the apartment.

The family escaped Nazi Germany in 1939, just in time. "In 2018, 92-year-old Joel Ludwig Katzenellenbogen was invited back here, accompanied by his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson,” Rolshoven tells DW.

The Denk Mal Am Ort initiative discovered him through Facebook. Rolshoven recounts how touched the visitors were when the former resident walked in and remarked, "Yes, I remember it clearly. My brother's bed used to be right here. He was 10 when we had to leave the country."

Soon there will be no eyewitnesses left

Joel Ludwig Katzenellenbogen has since passed away, along with many other eyewitnesses. This highlights the importance of intergenerational remembrance, according to Rolshoven. She has already welcomed a descendant of a former resident into her home.

Claudia Samter's mother managed to escape from Berlin to Argentina, but her aunt was not as fortunate. Seeking assistance in tracing her family's history, Claudia contacted Denk Mal Am Ort. It turned out that her aunt had once been housed in Rolshoven's apartment.

Claudia Samter has already visited twice. "After all, there's no grave in a cemetery for her to visit," says Rolshoven. "We sat at the kitchen table to talk about life today and tomorrow, and we laughed a lot and cried, too. It felt good to give this space a new purpose once again."

Denk Mal Am Ort has so far organized 90 commemorative events in eight cities this year. Many young descendants attended, according to Rolshoven. "Knowing that they had stood in this stairwell and touched the same doorknob helped them."

Seeking traces of ancestors

19-year-old Adam Ethan Klein from Switzerland also wanted to learn more about his ancestors' history. "I always knew there was a story of escape, but it was never a significant topic at home,” he says.

"They'd say, ‘Yes, your great-grandparents left Germany in 1938, just in time. Luckily, otherwise you wouldn't be here today'."

Klein says his decision to dig deeper was prompted by the spread ofantisemitism, as well as the widespread slogan "Never again is now." (Editor's note: This slogan serves as a call to actively confront antisemitism, hatred, and threats to democracy today.)

The whole family was aware of a suitcase belonging to his maternal great-grandfather in the attic. However, no one ever looked inside until Adam finally opened the suitcase and discovered dozens of documents. He also found a letter from the Hanover District Court dated June 12, 1933, addressed to his great-grandfather, attorney Max Haas.

The letter stated: "As of today, following the decree issued by the Minister of Justice, you have been removed from the list of licensed attorneys."

'They were above all one thing: Jews'

Klein was profoundly affected by the letter: "With this single sentence, it became unmistakably clear to the families that they were not quite what they had aspired to be for generations: an average German family. From that moment on, they were above all one thing: Jews."

For Klein, this was a troubling realization. So was the news that someone had stabbed an ultra-Orthodox Jew to death in Zurich while shouting antisemitic slogans. The attack occurred not far from the synagogue where he had shortly before celebrated a cousin's bar mitzvah. (Editor's note: In Judaism, a bar mitzvah is a ceremony that marks a young person's coming of age in religious matters.)

"For the first time in my life, I felt that unsettling sensation of not quite belonging. Yet Zurich is my home, the city where I've lived carefree as a Jewish Swiss from birth," Adam would later write.

"That was definitely new, uncharted territory for me. I had always thought that such things don't happen in Switzerland. Maybe that was a bit naive of me," he admits.

The subject would not let him go. Adam continued his research, determined to write his high school graduation thesis about his relatives. In the spring of 2024, he set off with his parents, sister, grandmother, uncles, aunts and several cousins to visit the places where their ancestors had lived.

A magical encounter

At some point during their journey, they found themselves in Stuttgart, standing in front of a five-story building at Hölderlinstraße 55, when a man on a bike emerged from the courtyard and approached them.

"So, are you taking a guided tour of the city, or are you planning to move here?" he asked jokingly. The man was Thomas Koch, who had spent time researching the former residents of his house. When he heard the answer, "No, we're just checking out where our ancestors lived," he was thrilled.

Koch had already discovered that the former owners of the house, the Merzbacher brothers, sold it in 1936 for 75,000 Reichsmarks. From that amount, they had to pay 70,000 Reichsmarks in wealth taxes and the Reich Emigration Tax. The remaining sum was just enough to cover the ship fares to Brazil and the United States.

From 1937 to 1938, a family named Hirschheimer, who worked in the plywood trade, lived on the ground floor before they were forcibly relocated to a "Judenhaus." Their trail went cold in 1939, as Koch found no further records. So, he asked, "Are you the Hirschheimer family?" They were indeed.

Koch describes the encounter as magical. Adolf and Auguste Hirschheimer were Adam's great-great-grandparents, and their daughter, Ilse, was married to Max Haas.

Adam Klein and Thomas Koch have kept in touch since then. The next time Adam visited Stuttgart, he was invited over for coffee and cake.

Adam was impressed by the beautiful apartment. "It was fascinating to imagine how my ancestors once lived there, and it probably wasn't that different. Back then, there was likely coffee and cake as well."

Adam showed Koch photos of his grandmother, Ilse, who had married at the synagogue in Stuttgart, standing in the living room in her wedding gown. "In front of the door that we still have," says Koch.

“It was really moving to discover new roommates in a historical context set in the past. And I think this experience — this process of putting myself in their shoes — is a deeply empathetic one that simply brings us together through this apartment.”

Shattered identities

Ilse and Max Haas found refuge in England, while the Hirschheimers emigrated to Switzerland in 1939. Adolf Hirschheimer died in 1940 from a heart condition, but Adam, his great-great-grandson, believes he "certainly also died of a broken heart."

Auguste was brought to England by her son-in-law, Max, where the family felt homesick. "There, we were the Jews; here, we are the Germans. Try figuring that out," Ilse Haas wrote to a friend. Adam chose these lines as the title for his thesis.

Adam's great-grandparents could not find peace after being stripped of their homeland. From England, they eventually went to Israel and, at some point, returned to Europe — to Switzerland.

"At the end of their lives, my great-grandparents settled just a two-hour drive from their old homeland," Adam wrote. "When I look at their lives through the eyes of a great-grandson, it becomes clear that after breaking ties with Germany, they never managed to put down roots anywhere again."

"Remembering is important because, ultimately, we have to learn from history," says Adam. "And I think every single person has a responsibility— and the power — to actively keep memories alive. And hopefully, that can happen even without eyewitnesses.” For example, in his ancestors' former apartment.