Erich and Betty Rosenthal, née Feblowic, moved into their first apartment together, with two rooms and a storeroom, in 1934. Erich Rosenthal died in 1938 and Betty Rosenthal became the sole main tenant. Living only on a modest widow’s pension, in 1942 she started advertising for subtenants herself in the newspaper Jüdisches Wochenblatt.

In June 1938, Betty Rosenthal sublet a room to Edith Rieß, a 24-year-old buffet assistant. About a year later, Edith Rieß emigrated to Latvia, where she lived for almost two years before being deported on June 22, 1941, to a labor camp in Karaganda in the Soviet Union. In 1947 she returned to Berlin and later emigrated to the United States.

In May 1939, a 73-year-old widow named Friedericke Finn, née Charmak, moved in as a subtenant. She lived here for about three years. On August 10, 1942, she was deported from Anhalter Bahnhof station to the Theresienstadt ghetto. 44 days later she was sent to Treblinka extermination camp, where she was murdered in late September 1942, shortly before her 76th birthday.

Ludwig Altenberg, an 80-year-old widower, moved into the apartment on November 1, 1939. In early November 1942, he, too, was notified of his imminent deportation. After 19 days in the Theresienstadt ghetto, on December 9, 1942, he died, aged 83, allegedly of a heart attack.

On October 1, 1942, Bruno Falk moved into the room Friedericke Finn had occupied. Whether he answered Betty Rosenthal’s advertisement in the newspaper Jüdisches Wochenblatt or was allocated the room is not known. He had previously lived for a time in a Jewish Community house at Pestalozzistraße 15. The Gestapo arrested Bruno Falk during the Nazis’ “Factory Action” and deported him on March 1, 1943, to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. His great-nephew Stephen Falk from the United States had a stumbling stone laid outside the building at Holsteinische Straße 2 in his memory.

Leaseholder Betty Rosenthal was deported on March 2, 1943, aged 50, to Auschwitz and murdered. In May 1943, a court-appointed receiver cleared out the apartment and on June 1, 1943, a non-Jewish tenant moved in.

Alfred Clavier, a commercial man, moved into a 3.5-room apartment in the street-facing building with his parents in 1933. He started taking subtenants after his parents’ death in 1938. In response to the Nazis’ increasing antisemitic legislation, his elder brother Hans and his non-Jewish wife Klara Martha Anna (known as Kläre), née Hammer, took over the lease in early April 1939. Hans Clavier owned a furniture store at Badensche Straße 41 and joinery and carpentry workshops at Bernhardstraße 4. In the night of pogroms on 9-10 November 1938, the Nazis wrecked the funiture store and smashed the windows. Hans Clavier was banned from pursuing a trade and his name was deleted from the register of craftsmen. From 1941 on, he was made to perform forced labor, like his brother Alfred, in a transformer factory in Reinickendorf. Kläre Clavier’s death of a heart attack on October 12, 1944, was a double tragedy for her husband Hans: He not only lost his wife but also the protection of a “privileged mixed marriage”, which had saved him from being deported. Hans Clavier went underground and survived in Berlin.

Alfred Clavier henceforth lived as a subtenant in the apartment. From his forced laborer’s wage of RM 28 per month, he paid RM 20 for board and lodgings. The Gestapo arrested him on February 27, 1943, during the Nazis’ “Factory Action”. He was deported along with 1,836 others on March 2, 1943, to Auschwitz, where he was murdered, aged 42.

Anna Gintz, née Groß, and her 10-year-old son Heinz moved in as subtenants in mid-1938. She and her husband had separated and given up their apartment at Prinzregentenstraße 3. In March 1939, she fled with her now ex-husband Herbert and their son to Belgium. Following Germany’s occupation of Belgium in 1940, they were imprisoned in Kazerne Dossin in the SS assembly camp Mecheln. The Gestapo deported Anna and Heinz Gintz on June 26, 1943, to Auschwitz and murdered them. Anna’s ex-husband had already been deported – on January 15, 1943 – from Mecheln assembly camp to Auschwitz and murdered.

Nathan Birawer, the former director of a hardware store association and president of the German scrap metal association at Wilhelmstraße 71, moved in to a furnished room on April 1, 1939. He had been forced to give up his large apartment at Kaiserallee 212 (now Bundesallee) as early as 1935. His two daughters and ex-wife emigrated to the United States before 1938. In 1941, his younger daughter obtained an affidavit of support for him, which he needed to emigrate to the United States, but he could not get a visa. In early November 1942, the Gestapo sent Nathan Birawer to the Jewish home for the elderly at Auguststraße 14/15, where he lived for almost three months before being deported on January 29, 1943, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Nathan Birawer died on November 2, 1943, aged 74, after nine months in the ghetto.

Max Borinski, a 71-year-old former gentlemen’s outfitter moved in on October 1, 1941. He had previously lived in a Jewish Community house at Pestalozzistraße 15. He paid RM 45 for board and lodging. On August 10, 1942, the Gestapo deported him to the Theresienstadt ghetto. 44 days later he was sent from there to Treblinka extermination camp, where he was murdered in late September 1942, aged 72.

On October 21, 1942, Kurt Herrmann moved into Max Borinski’s room. He was protected from deportation by his non-Jewish wife. He had previously lived as a subtenant at Walter-Fischer-Straße 4 (now Fechnerstraße), until the main tenant was deported and he was forced to look for new lodgings. In April 1943, he was admitted to the Jewish hospital at Iranische Straße 2, where he died on April 27, 1943.

Samuel Gustmann, known as Sally, an exchange broker, moved in as a subtenant on December 15, 1943. He, too, was protected from deportation by his non-Jewish wife Anna Gustmann, née Briese. From 1939 on, she lived alone in the apartment they had shared at Eisenzahnstraße 6 in Wilmersdorf. In 1939, Sally Gustmann was registered as resident at Hektorstraße 21 and later lived at Prinzregentenstraße 6. In summer 1944, Anna Gustmann was bombed out of her home and also moved into the Claviers’ apartment at Holsteinische Straße 2. Samuel Gustmann survived in Berlin.

Margarethe Göttling, née Salomon, was the main tenant of a 3.5-room apartment on the fourth floor of the street-facing building for which she paid RM 95 rent. Baptized and raised a Protestant, she was initially able to conceal her Jewish background

On May 28, 1943, Margarethe Göttling was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. On October 1, 1943, her apartment in Berlin was cleared and rented out to a new tenant. Margarethe Göttling survived the ghetto and returned to Berlin, completely emaciated, on August 12, 1945. After six weeks in the Jewish hospital, the court ruled she could move back into her old apartment at Holsteinische Straße 2.

Jenny Rochocz, née Berger, had moved into a large apartment at Potsdamer Straße 82c (now no. 179) in 1919, where she had lived until her business, a laundry and factory for poplin and rubber jackets, was “Aryanized”. In 1935, she moved into a 4.5-room apartment on the third floor of the building at Holsteinische Straße 2. Her son Rudolf Rochocz, a commercial clerk, and his wife Henriette, née Kaiser, also lived in the apartment until their attempted emigration in May 1939 to Paraguay. Prevented from disembarking in South America, they were sent back to Europe but managed to jump ship in France and escaped Nazi persecution.

Whether Jenny Rochocz chose to sublet furnished rooms in her apartment or was forced to do so is not known. But it is certain that her widow’s pension of RM 47.70 per month was far from sufficient to pay the rent of RM 120.

Husband-and-wife Leib and Berta Losch moved in here in mid-February 1939. They had previously lived at Ottokarstraße 2a in Tempelhof. Around the time Rudolf and Henriette Rochocz emigrated, on May 1, 1939, they moved to Barbarossastraße 40.

Ludwig and Jenny Cassirer née Boksch were subtenants of Jenny Rochocz for only three months. According to the tenants’ registration book, they moved to Düsseldorfer Straße 60, care of Levit, on August 2, 1939. In June 1942, they moved again, with their youngest daughter Hanni and her grandchild Ellen, to a 1.5-room apartment with use of a shared kitchen and bathroom at Marburger Straße 5. From there, Ludwig and Jenny Cassirer were deported on September 10, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where they both died in October.

Abraham and Kunigunde Jacob moved into one of Jenny Rochocz’s rooms on March 1, 1939. Until 1935 they had rented out a large apartment at Stromstraße 69 in Moabit. Before they moved into Jenny Rochocz’s apartment they had lived at Berkaer Straße 3 with their youngest daughter Gertrud Bergmann, who was planning to emigrate to Palestine. Their eldest daughter Margarethe Charlotte, known as Marga, Roesberg, née Jacob, from Dresden and later Cologne, also lived in Jenny Rochocz’s apartment for a short time between early November and December 1939. She emigrated with her husband Max Roesberg to Chile in late December 1939. Her mother Kunigunde Jacob died three months later, on March 20, 1940, of cardiac insufficiency in the Jewish hospital. Abraham Jacob was deported some two years later, on August 12, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. From there he was sent to Treblinka extermination camp and murdered.

A 62-year-old pharmacist named Martin Kottlarzig moved into the Cassirers’ room on November 30, 1939. He had been forced to move several times since 1938, living at Nassauische Straße 9/10, Pfalzburger Straße 74 and Gasteiner Straße 14. He was the first to be deported from Holsteinische Straße 2, on November 27, 1941. He was sent to Riga and shot in the Rumbula forest. On February 1, 1942, Louis Bodky, a former judicial councilor, moved into Martin Kottlarzig’s room. He paid RM 40 for board and lodging. He had previously lived in a private home for the elderly at Passauer Straße 18.

On August 12, 1942, the Gestapo deported Louis Bodky to the Theresienstadt ghetto. He lived another 41 days before he died on September 23, 1942, aged 81. The apartment’s main tenant, Jenny Rochocz, was deported some three weeks after Louis Bodky, on September 5, 1942 – shortly after her 60th birthday – to Riga, where she was murdered three days after arriving.

On October 24, 1942, a court-appointed received cleared out the apartment. About a week later, the Neuweg family from Landsberg took over the apartment. Margarethe Neuweg, née Blume, was not Jewish and so protected her husband Dr. Arthur Neuweg, a dentist, and her “mixed-race” sons, 18-year-old Gerhard and 15-year-old Kurt, from deportation.

Arriving in Berlin in autumn 1938, the Neuwegs moved into an apartment at Berliner Straße 4 in Wilmersdorf, formerly occupied by a Jewish family who had emigrated to the United States. In 1941, Arthur Neuweg and his sons were ordered to wear yellow stars. Shortly afterwards, Arthur Neuweg’s non-Jewish wife was jailed for four months to pressurize her to divorce her husband. After their subtenant Clara Seeler was deported in August 1942, they, too, had to leave the apartment. The Neuwegs lived for a time in the Davidsohn boarding house at Jenaer Straße 5, before they were instructed to move into the apartment where Jenny Rochocz had lived, on November 2, 1942. During the Nazis’ “Factory Action”, Dr. Arthur Neuweg and his sons were arrested by the Gestapo and taken to an assembly camp. They were released when the police found that Dr. Neuweg’s wife and the boys’ mother still lived with them. With the approval of the Berlin dental center, Heidelberger Platz, in April 1943, Dr. Arthur Neuweg applied to start work immediately in a dental laboratory run by a non-Jewish dentist. The employment office responsible for Jews at Fontanepromenade 15 refused his application. Instead, he was made to perform forced labor from April 20, 1943, as a channel digger for the Berlin municipal drainage company. Weakened by the heavy manual labor, he collapsed on May 22, 1943. An appointed physician ordered that he immediately stop work and be discharged.

In May and June 1943, Hans-Jakob Frost, a tradesman, lived for six weeks as a subtenant of the Neuwegs. Hans-Jakob Frost’s wife Laura, née Wolff, had been deported from their previous lodging, a furnished room care of Schmal at Meinekestraße 26, in December 1942. Hans-Jakob Frost was spared deportation for the time being. His daughter Nelly Töldte, née Frost, stated for the family’s compensation files in 1950 that her father had been “consistently blackmailed by the Gestapo and specifically by the Gestapo official Willy Warnstädt [...] He said that if he and his frontmen got this money, they could postpone the transport to Theresienstadt. If the money wasn’t paid, immediate evacuation was certain.” (Source: Nelly Töldte, née Frost, LABO, BEG-Akte Reg.-No. 363 900). In late 1942, Hans-Jakob Frost moved into a room in the Bernhard boarding house at Pariser Straße 32a in Wilmersdorf. But in spring 1943, the manageress Gertrud Karpel was deported and the boarding house was closed.

Hans-Jakob Frost then moved in with the Neuwegs. Despite his payments of considerable sums of money, the Gestapo deported him on June 16, 1943, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. He wrote in a last letter to his son-in-law Erich Töldte on June 5, 1943:

Hans-Jakob Frost survived almost ten months in the Theresienstadt ghetto. He died on March 28, 1944, aged 73. The Neuwegs lived for a year and three months at Holsteinische Straße 2 – until they were bombed out on January 30, 1944, and had to move to Hauptstraße 76 in Friedenau. All four lived to see the end of the war here.

The Dienstag family – Margarete and Dora Dienstag and their parents – moved into a 3.5-room apartment in the street-facing building in 1935. After their parents died, the adult sisters Margarete and Dora remained alone in the apartment. At around the same time, Simon Abraham Neumann, a tailor, his wife Helene, née Eisenberg, and their five-year-old daughter Margot moved into one room. In early March 1939, Margarete Dienstag emigrated to the United Kingdom, and her sister Dora to Palestine. The Neumann family were now forced to look for another apartment. In May 1939, they moved in care of Bussak at Mommsenstraße 53 in Charlottenburg. The family’s last known address was Wilmersdorfer Straße 54. Simon Abraham Neumann was arrested by the Gestapo during the Nazis’ “Factory Action”. He was deported on March 3, 1943, to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. Helene Neumann fled to Hungary, her country of origin. From there she was deported to Auschwitz, where she and her daughter Margot were murdered. After the Dienstag sisters emigrated, a non-Jewish family named Dorn took over the apartment.

Leo Leiber Kupfer, a tradesman, his wife Regina, née Alpoden, and their 13-year-old daughter Ingeborg came to Berlin from Storkow in late 1935. They found their first apartment in Berlin at Holsteinische Straße 2. Stripped of their German citizenship because they were Jewish, they were now stateless. On May 24, 1939, when they could no longer afford the lease on the apartment at Holsteinische Straße 2, they moved in as subtenants of someone named Reichwald at Elberfelder Straße 7 in Moabit. The Kupfer family emigrated in mid-November 1940 to Yugoslavia. Subsequently, a non-Jewish family named Unger took over the apartment.