The property’s builder-owner, Kurt Messerschmidt, lived with his wife Charlotte and their adult son Hans Peter in the first-floor apartment on the left. Kurt Messerschmidt was a Jewish Community official who worked for the Community’s construction department. In fall 1942, Hans Peter married Ilse Moses, a baby nurse, known as Inge. After the wedding, she moved into her parents-in-law’s home with her husband. In March 1943 she and her father-in-law Kurt Messerschmidt were arrested because they worked for the Jewish Community. Hans Peter Messerschmidt and his mother Charlotte Messerschmidt then reported voluntarily to the Große Hamburger Straße assembly camp for deportation. All four were deported on March 12, 1943, to Auschwitz. Hans Peter Messerschmidt – a young, skilled building worker – was made to perform forced labor in Monowitz concentration camp. The other members of the family were murdered in Auschwitz.

Little is known about the Messerschmidts’ subtenants. Records show that a certain Ruth Levy lived in the apartment in May 1939 but what happened to her later is not documented. According to the deportation lists of March 1, 1943, Theodor and Jette Meyer also lived “care of Messerschmidt”. It is unclear how they were related. They were both deported to Auschwitz.

The Reich family – the cigarette manufacturer and later textiles merchant Benno Reich, his wife Herta Lina, and their children Ruth and Manfred – lived in the first-floor apartment on the right from 1920 to 1931. They cultivated friendly relations with the Messerschmidt family. As Benno Reich came from Galicia, the family was violently expelled from the country during the Nazis’ “Polish Action” in October 1938. But by that time, they no longer lived on Gervinusstraße.

The Jewish pharmacist Max Hinzelmann and his Protestant wife Marie moved into this apartment on the second floor in 1937. Max Hinzelmann was dismissed from his job at the Ostend Pharmacy on Frankfurter Allee in 1938. The following year he was forced to hand in all the gold, silver, and jewelry he owned to the municipal pawn office. In his late fifties, Max Hinzelmann divorced his wife and fled to Shanghai. He was severely injured in the bombing of Shanghai in July 1945. In 1947, he returned to his apartment in Berlin and remarried Marie Hinzelmann. Acknowledged as a victim of Nazi persecution, in June 1948 he was awarded the license to run the Charlottenburg station pharmacy, within walking distance from his home. He sold medicines there until the end of his life in 1955.

The Jacoby family lived in this 4-room apartment from 1917 to 1942. Their apartment is the best documented forced home in the property. Some information on the Jewish subtenants and the atmosphere in the apartment can be found in private correspondence that has survived. One former occupant is still alive today (2023). Samuel and Luise Jacoby raised their three daughters, Annemarie, Käte und Charlotte, here. Annemarie Flatauer, the eldest of the sisters, was a psychiatric patient who was killed under the Nazis’s euthanasia program in July 1940. Her sisters fled to England. Annemarie’s daughter Ruth also lived in the apartment with her grandparents until she escaped to London on a kindertransport.

The main tenant of this apartment, Berta Cohn, was a nurse from Spessart in southern Germany. She had moved into the small 2-room apartment with her husband Carl Cohn, a tradesman, in 1934. Carl Cohn died a few years later. Berta Cohn was made to perform forced labor in the “Navigation” arms factory in Tempelhof. She was deported in summer 1942, aged 58, to Sobibor or Majdanek extermination camp and murdered.

Among the subtenants she had been forced to accommodate from April or May 1939 on were Flora Landsberger. She died two years later in the Jewish hospital in Berlin. In May 1942 Henny Becker moved in. Nothing is known of her later whereabouts. Almost concurrent with Berta Cohn’s deportation, the tradesman Max Baruch and his wife Erna were forced to move in. Erna Baruch had managed to send her daughter Edith to Scotland on a kindertransport. The Baruchs were both made to perform forced labor for the arms industry, at the Siemens-Schuckert works in Spandau. In early February 1943, they were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.

In November 1940, the actress Erna Edna Leonhard took the lease on this street-facing, 3-room apartment on the second floor. After Jewish artists were banned from working in “Aryan” theaters, she performed under the stage name Erna Feld, or Leonhard-Feld, in shows arranged by organizations such as the Jewish Cultural Federation. She also worked as a secretary for the Reich Association of Jews in Germany.

Rosa Heimann, a widow, moved into the second-floor, 2-room apartment facing the courtyard in 1933. She was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in August 1942. From there she was deported to Treblinka extermination camp, where she was murdered. Some months before Rosa Heimann was deported, she had taken in the subtenants Julius and Johanna Eisenstaedt. Julius Eisenstaedt was a ladies’ dressmaker. He and his wife Johanna had a daughter named Margarethe, who managed to escape to the United States. In July 1942 the Eisenstaedts were also deported via the Theresienstadt ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp. The now vacant apartment was occupied in November 1942 by their neighbors opposite, Erna Leonhard and her Sohn Leonor. They were deported on March 12, 1943 to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.

Husband-and-wife Adolf and Hedwig Rothschild were among the property’s first tenants. They had moved in around 1918 and moved home several times within the building. They occupied this 3-room apartment from around 1935 on. By the end of his professional life, Abraham Adolf Rothschild had become the branch manager of a bank in Berlin; his wife Hedwig was a trained shorthand typist. They took in their first subtenant before May 1939; a widow named Dorothea Schmoller who had lived on Droysenstraße. She was murdered in January 1942 in Riga. Her son Karl Kurt Schmoller was able to flee to the United States. Husband-and-wife Ferdinand and Marta Kaphan also moved in as subtenants around the same time as Dorothea Schmoller. Ferdinand Kaphan was a wood wholesaler and Marta Kaphan worked as a cook in the Berlin Jewish Community’s charitable food pantry. They were deported in early June 1942 and probably murdered in Majdanek extermination camp.

Ida and Martha Landsberger were also subtenants here. Martha Landsberger crafted art objects. Ida Landsberger was probably her sister. It is unclear whether they were related to Flora Landsberger, who lived on the first floor. Martha and Ida Landsberger were deported in July 1942 to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where they died a short time later. Arthur and Hedwig Rothschild also moved in as subtenants at an unknown point in time. There is no record of whether they were related to the Rothschilds who held the lease on the apartment. All four Rothschilds were deported in early February 1943 to Auschwitz and murdered there.

The apartment remained vacant for a short time before the Jewish physician Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Engel and his Christian wife Erna moved in. They had previously lived on Pariser Straße. Wilhelm Engel died in the Jewish hospital in Berlin on April 20, 1945, shortly before the war ended. Erna Engel stayed in the apartment that had once been a forced home until at least 1950.

Martin Goldstein, a senior clerk, lived in this 2-room apartment until 1938. The Selasnitzky family moved in in February 1939 – even before the antisemitic Law on Tenancy with Jews was introduced. Moritz Selasnitzky was a head of department in the Berlin Jewish Community’s administration. He and his wife Gertrud Wilma and their eleven-year-old daughter Elga Eugenie had previously lived in Prenzlauer Berg. Elga Eugenie was banned from her “Aryan” primary school and enrolled in the Jewish Community’s girls’ school on Auguststraße. She was fourteen when she was deported with her parents, on December 17, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. After almost two years in the ghetto, on October 23, 1944, they were deported further to Auschwitz. Subsequently, the apartment seems to have remained vacant: Records show that rental payments were taken from the Selasnitzky family until January 1945, several months after they were deported.

Mathilde Jonas, a Jewish widow, had moved into Gervinustraße 20 when it was newly built in 1912. This apartment was the last voluntarily chosen home of her adult children Liesbeth and Arthur. It is mentioned in records as the “Jonas Jew home”. Liesbeth Lentschow, née Jonas, specialized in property management. It is likely that she assumed management duties for this property, too. She remained in the apartment with her brother Arthur Jonas after the death of her husband. Liesbeth and Arthur were murdered in early October 1942 in Raasiku, Estonia.

Around 1939, Alfons Schwerin moved in as a subtenant. The son of a businessman, he performed forced labor for the German arms factory in Berlin-Borsigwalde. He was arrested on February 28, 1943, during the Nazis’ “Factory Action” and murdered in Auschwitz. Another subtenant was Felix Leibholz, who lived in the apartment from around May 1939 on. He managed to go into hiding and survived. When the 89-year-old leaseholder Mathilde Jonas died in the apartment in early December 1940, Felix Leibholz’s sister Else Heinrich, née Leibholz, moved in from Rönnestraße. She was deported on March 6, 1943, aged 64, to Auschwitz and murdered.

The apartment subsequently remained vacant for about half a year. Walter Tornay took over the lease on August 31, 1943. He was in the German army and had likely been given the contract because his previous apartment had been destroyed by bombing.

Cylla Frankenstein and her daughter Bernita moved into this 2-room apartment in May or June 1939. Cylla Frankenstein was a single mother who had been married twice. Her first marriage was to Siegbert Frankenstein, the father of her 1929-born daughter Bernita Charlotte. After their divorce, her ex-husband moved to Amsterdam. In December 1935, Cylla married Moritz Silbermann, a merchant who came from the Posen area, like herself. In 1937 they, too, were divorced and Silbermann fled to Shanghai. Bernita Frankenstein was forced to change school several times and was looked after by her grandmother Lina Dymak – until her deportation a few weeks after Bernita’s 13th birthday, in August 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Six months later, Bernita and Cylla Frankenstein were deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

Husband-and-wife Adolf and Hedwig Rothschild first occupied this apartment after moving into the property around 1918. They later moved within the building. Their story is told above (Building B, 3rd floor, left).

In October 1933, Hans Kaempfer, an office clerk, and his wife Martha, née Imm, moved into the apartment. They had married just a few months previously. Theirs was a so-called “mixed marriage”: Hans Kaempfer was categorized as Jewish; his wife was not. They did not have any religion entered on their marriage certificate. In August 1938, Hans Kaempfer was ordered to take the additional name Israel and Martha was registered – probably against her will – as a Jewish Community member. In February 1941, Martha Kaempfer officially left the Berlin Jewish Community and her husband joined. It is likely that the couple hoped to gain official recognition of Hans Kaempfer’s protected status as a “privileged” Jew in a “mixed marriage” by the withdrawal of Martha Kaempf. The couple managed to stay in their apartment until after the war.

Julius Treuherz, a merchant, was the last person known to be deported from the property. He was deported on June 16, 1944, to the Theresienstadt ghetto and from there, some months later, to Auschwitz. The deportation list notes that he had previously lived at Gervinusstraße 20 A, but not in which apartment. Julius Treuherz had married Else Elise Emilie Gerber in Berlin in 1911. According to the marriage register, she was also of the “Mosaic” faith. It seems he later married a second time, as the remark “n.m.best.Mi.E.” (shorthand for “nicht mehr bestehende Mischehe” = “no longer existing mixed marriage”) is entered alongside his name on the deportation list. Exactly when Julius Treuherz moved into the building is not clear but in May, 1939, he had lived at Rudolstädter Straße 1 in Wilmersdorf. A certain Fritz Treuherz, who had one non-Jewish parent, was also registered as resident here. It is very likely he was Julius Treuherz’s son.

According to data collected during the national census of 1939, Selma Isenberg was another resident of the property at Gervinusstraße 20. She had previously been registered nearby on Sybelstraße. It is likely she earned her living as a housemaid in various homes. She is named on the Jewish factory owner Max Häufler’s registry card as a domestic worker or subtenant at further addresses in the area: Kurfürstendamm, Hohenzollerndamm and, from 1937 on, around the corner at Sybelstraße 18. After 1939, Selma Isenberg evidently returned to her home region, Hesse. There, she was required to hand in valuables to the local pawn office, had money seized from her, and was dispossessed of the land she and her siblings owned. In June 1942, Selma Isenberg was deported from Kassel to Sobibor extermination camp.