Zwangsräume
Antisemitische Wohnungspolitik in Berlin 1939–1945
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16.10.2023
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Karlshorst grew in the early 19th century into a popular suburb of Berlin. The two-storey terraced house at what was then Prinz-Heinrich-Straße 6 overlooked the railway line between Berlin and Frankfurt (Oder).
In the 1930s and early 1940s, the house was owned by Valeska Levy, who lived here with her husband Max Levy. Six Jewish people were already housed here before 1939. After 1939, a further nine Jewish people moved in – probably under coercion. Ten Jewish residents were deported from here. Only one of them survived.
Valeska and Max Levy lived in a six-room apartment. After 1939, they took in several subtenants. In October 1940 Nanny and Max Wiener moved into two of the furnished rooms. On June 1, 1942, Margot and Rudolf Nothenberg moved in with their young son Gerd to two other rooms in the apartment. It is likely that Margot Nothenberg (née Levy) was related to Max Levy.
Margarete Goldstein lived in another room in the apartment. She and Nanny Wiener were the last remaining Jewish tenants. On March 1, 1943, they were both deported to Auschwitz. About a month later, bombing damaged the apartment’s windows. As Margarete Goldstein’s room had been sealed off, the new owner of the building, Alfred Mätzner, wrote to the authorities asking for permission to enter it to assess the damage.
“The room last occupied by subtenant Goldstein is locked. Due to bomb damage the window has opened and a pane of glass been smashed. I have the key in a sealed envelope. The room has not been cleared. (Neither has the Wiener room). May I enter it?”
This apartment was probably owned by Irmgard Riegner. She emigrated to the United Kingdom in early 1940. The apartment was the kind known as a Kochstube – a single room containing a small kitchen.
Husband-and-wife Leib and Rahel Charytan moved in here in March 1940. The previous year they were registered as resident in Wilhelmshaven (Eastern Friesland), 500 kilometers away. Leib Charytan was arrested, probably during the November pogroms of 1938, and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
A month later he was released. Rahel Charytan was taken to Auschwitz on March 2, 1943 and murdered. Ten days later her husband was also deported to Auschwitz and murdered there on May 19, 1943.
The district of Lichtenberg, to which Karlshorst belonged, had comparatively few Jewish residents. In 1933, barely one percent of the population of Lichtenberg were Jewish. They counted 2208 people. By May 1939, the number of Jewish residents had fallen further to 563. By 1941, when the Nazis’ deportations started, only 340 Jewish people still lived in Lichtenberg.
Johanna A. Kühne
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16.10.