Salomon Weiß, a master stonemason, and his wife Frieda also lived on the first floor from 1936/37 on. They were forced to sublet two of their apartment’s four rooms to other Jewish tenants from 1938 on until their deportation. Who these subtenants were can no longer be ascertained. Salomon Weiß had built up his “sepulchral art workshops” at Lothringenstraße 8 (now Bizetstraße) from humble beginnings to become one of the Jewish Community’s main gravestone suppliers. In 1922, he and his wife had been able to move with their two children to a villa with a large garden at Parkstraße 94. But their life changed when the Nazis came to power. Salomon and Frieda Weiß had to sell their villa in 1935. Following the November pogrom of 1938, Salomon Weiß was forced to hand over his business to a non-Jew. He subsequently liquidated his life insurance policies and tried all he could to leave Germany. His and Frieda’s son Edgar had already emigrated to Palestine in 1937; their daughter Lilli and her husband Walter Brünn, a department store owner, emigrated in 1939/40 to Sweden. Walter Brünn tried in vain to help his over 70-year-old widowed, suicidal father to join them. Lilli could not achieve her parents’ emigration either. In spring 1942, Salomon and Frieda Weiß were deported to the Piaski ghetto. They managed to send a letter to their loved ones, describing their transportation to and the terrible conditions in the ghetto.

The subtenants living in the apartment initially remained there. They included Hans Rosenthal, a tradesman, who also worked as a forced laborer for Ehrich & Graetz. He had been friendly with the Jakubowskis. Their deportation and the death of his elder brother in December 1942 before his own deportation in spring 1943 must have been very hard for him to bear.

Two of the apartment’s rooms were occupied by the Keil family. Johanna Keil had been a street-trader at the time of her marriage. Her husband Reinhard, originally a market trader, worked from 1936 on as a cemetery gardener for the Jewish Community and later as a collector. They had two sons, Horst and Manfred, who were aged 15 and 11 when they moved in here in summer 1941. Manfred, the younger brother, started school at the 5th Jewish elementary school in Pankow and later changed to a school for children with speech defects. Lastly, he attended the 7th Jewish Community School for “difficult and subnormal children” up to 6th grade. His elder brother Horst left state school, probably – like most Jewish schoolchildren – due to antisemitic harassment, and changed to a Jewish school at Kaiserstraße 29/30. After completing the eighth grade, he started training as a carpenter with the Jewish Community. He was then forced to leave his apprenticeship under threat of “capital punishment”, as he wrote in a statement under oath for his compensation application in 1966, and report to the employment office. He was assigned work at the “Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken” (DWM) arms factory in Reinickendorf, where the conditions were grueling and humiliating, just like at Erich & Graetz. Finally, he appears to have worked for a time in the Jewish Community kitchen at Gormannstraße 3. On May 7, 1943, he was arrested in his parents’ apartment. Ten days later the entire family was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Johanna and Manfred Keil were murdered in Auschwitz the following year. Horst Keil survived several concentration camps and emigrated to the United States in 1946. His father Reinhard Keil lived to see liberation in a subcamp of Dachau concentration camp but died a short time later.

Most residents of the building at Charlottenburger Straße 1 were not Jewish. How the Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors interacted is not known in any detail. But one incident was documented: When the court appointed receiver came to evaluate the Jakubowskis’ belongings after they had been deported, he found that their apartment had only been closed but not sealed off as was usual. The caretaker had evidently told him that the “expatriated [sic] had left behind very valuable clothes, fine linens, and rugs”. He was allegedly informed by their former subtenant, Johanna Keil, that the “Jewish aid” had collected the belongings – perhaps a Jewish Community domestic aid whom the Jakubowskis helped. The court appointed receiver then wrote that he presumed the “Jewish aid” was evaluating the items. The receiver’s brief comment at the bottom of the inventory does not allow the precise events to be reconstructed. But it does shed light on the interest of both the non-Jewish caretaker and the court appointed receiver in easily available, high-quality goods, as well as the attempt to pin the blame for their disappearance on an unnamed Jewish person, the “Jewish aid”.

Jeanette Jakubowski