Sally Casper, a master tailor, and his wife Helene (Lene) Casper, née Loszynski, moved in to the street-facing building on June 1, 1942. They probably rented out a street-level store unit. They had previously lived at Barbarossastraße 50 and later moved to Chodowieckistraße 8 in this neighborhood. Stumbling stones laid there in 2012 mark their last voluntary home. Lene and Sally Casper were deported on October 19, 1942, to Riga, and shot in the Rumbula forest immediately after arriving on October 22, 1942. Five of their seven adult children were also murdered: Martin and Siegfried Casper in Riga; Edith Abraham, née Casper, and Walter Casper in Auschwitz; Rudolf Casper in Chelmno extermination camp. Their siblings Harry Casper and Gertrud Kaufmann, née Casper, were the only ones to survive. Their daughters keep their memory alive.

Another apartment on the first floor was occupied by the sisters Hulda and Margarete Glasfeld. They had moved in on October 1, 1938, and worked at home sewing pants and other items of clothing. Hulda last worked for Herbert Rosenow at Schönhauser Allee 166. An almost new motorized sewing machine was one of the most valuable items on the inventory of belongings that was made after she died – alongside a rocking chair, a tennis racket, two beds, a two-door chest with a drawer, a vanity dresser, a book whatnot, and an “unfashionable sofa”. From September 16, 1941, to January 22, 1942, both sisters were jailed in the nearby women’s prison on Barnimstraße for “currency offences”. They were due to be deported on April 14, 1942, to the Warsaw ghetto but died on March 27, 1942, in their home. Their death certificates gave “poisoning (suicide)” as the causes of death. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Weißensee. In May 1942, the Berlin-Brandenburg Chief of Finance issued a receipt for the following valuables that had belonged to the sisters: “RM 410.00, 1 gentlemen’s pocket watch, 800 sterling silver, stamped, 2 wedding rings, yellow metal, 1 pair of spectacles with case. The above-mentioned committed suicide shortly before their evacuation”. Between 1999 and 2001, two commemorative “war stones” were placed on their grave, inscribed with their names and dates and the abbreviation .ת.נ.צ.ב.ה standing for the blessing “May their souls be bound up in the bundle of life”.

In 1939, the Glasfeld sisters sublet a room to Gerta Heysemann, née Scheidemann. Her 14-year-old son Egon lived in France at the time but returned to his mother in Berlin in 1941. Gerta and Egon moved in with Gerta’s second husband, Kurt Marcuse, at Treuchtlingerstraße 4, where Kurt Marcuse lived as a subtenant. On March 28, 1942, all three were deported to the Piaski ghetto. What happened to them then was not documented. It is very likely they died the same year in Piaski or one of the extermination camps in the surrounding area.

Paul and Else Samter, née Hermann, moved in to an apartment on Lippehner Straße with their 17-year-old son Heinz Julius in early 1939. Before being forced to move in here, they had lived at Bismarckstraße 111 in Charlottenburg. Paul Samter specialized in textiles, working among other things as a pattern designer for the company Wemona. In the 1920s he ran the company Bieber & Samter. He last worked as a forced laborer sweeping streets, shoveling snow, and building road sections. The Samters planned to leave Germany and in February 1939 had their names entered on the waiting list at the US general consulate – at places 49,527 to 49,529.

The next day, Else and Paul Samter were deported to Auschwitz. It seems their 20-year-old son Heinz Julius Samter stayed in the apartment, or perhaps moved into the neighboring apartment. A qualified metalworker (Autoschlosser), he performer forced labor for Trima Maschinenbau G.m.b.H. for an hourly pay of RM 0.95. He was deported less than five months after his parents from the assembly camp at Große Hamburger Straße 26 to Auschwitz. His name appears several times in the camp hospital’s register until May 1944, after which he is not mentioned in any records. When exactly he was murdered was not documented.

The Samters sublet a room to husband-and-wife Edwin and Rita Löwenberg, née Goldstein, who had married in 1937. When their deportation became imminent, they hanged themselves, on October 16, 1942, in the apartment. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Weißensee.

The property owner, Isidor Lewy, moved into an apartment on the third floor of the street-facing building with his wife Lina Lewy, née Lewy, and their adolescent daughters Hildegard and Charlotte in 1916. Charlotte Lewy moved out of her parents’ home when she married Max Gossels in 1929. After her divorce in 1936, she moved back in at Lippehner Straße with her sons Peter and Werner. To contribute to the family income, Charlotte Gossels opened a massage and beauty parlor in one room of the apartment. Later she performed forced labor. She last worked at the Deuta plant for a weekly pay of only Reichsmark 20. Isidor Lewy died on May 5, 1936.

Shortly after the building was completed by master bricklayer Hermann Kroll, it was bought, in 1905, by Isidor Lewy. His grandson Peter Gossels remembers that Isidor Lewy bought it as a form of old-age insurance after selling his business producing children’s clothing. When Lina Lewy was forced to sell the building three years later, she stayed in their apartment – now paying rent – with her daughters and grandsons. In July 1939, Charlotte Gossels managed to send her sons, then aged nine and six, to France. In September 1941, she emigrated via Lisbon to the United States, where she lived in Boston with various foster families.

After her grandsons Peter and Werner had escaped, Lina Lewy was made to sublet rooms in her apartment to other tenants. One room was occupied by Max Hein, who worked as a forced laborer for Sager & Werner in Charlottenburg. From 1934 to 1938, he had run a cigar store at Schlüterstraße 56. He was deported on March 28, 1942, to Piaski, where he died, probably soon afterwards.

Alfred and Gertrude Minner, née Lindenstrauss, occupied another room in Lina Lewy’s apartment. Alfred Minner, a toy and fancies retailer, and his wife Gertrude, a nurse, had married in 1936. They were deported on November 29, 1942, to Auschwitz, where they were murdered probably shortly after arriving.

Husband-and-wife Daniel and Bertha Baruch, née Lewy, were also allocated housing in the apartment. They gave Lippehner Straße 35 as their address during the national census in 1939, and had previously lived at Chausseestraße 36. Daniel Baruch was taken on May 27, 1942, to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was shot a day later. His murder by the SS was part of the Nazis’ retaliation for an arson attack by two Communist resistance groups on the anti-Soviet propaganda exhibition “Das Sowjetparadies” in Berlin’s Lustgarten. A few days later, Bertha Baruch was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she died on April 10, 1943.

When data for the national census was collected on May 17, 1939, Lina Lewy stated that Klara Kiwi and Georg Jacobsohn, her husband’s nephew, also lived in the apartment. Georg Jacobsohn, alias John, was a film actor who had appeared in several silent movies of the 1920s. He was well known for his portrayals of quirky, gnome-like figures in classic German silent movies, including Fritz Lang’s “Der müde Tod” (1921), “Metropolis” (1927), “M” (1931) and “Dr. Mabuse” (1922/33), and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s “Der letzte Mann” (1924). After being classified by the Nazis as a “racial Jew”, Georg Jacobsohn was shunned by the German arts industry and no longer received any movie roles. He was the first resident of the building to be deported, on October 29, 1941, to the Łódź ghetto, where he died in unexplained circumstances just three weeks later.

Marta Klein, née Pach, lived with her mother Flora Pach, née Marcus, in the apartment next-door to the Lewy family, with whom they were evidently friends. In Charlotte Gossels’ letters to her sons, she often sent her regards to Aunt Klein and Aunt Pach. No information on Marta Klein’s husband or whether they were related to the Klein family who lived on the first floor has been found.

Flora Heimann lived for a time as a subtenant in the apartment. Her last address was the Jewish home for the elderly at Schönhauser Allee 22. From there, she was deported on August 17, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she died eight months later, aged 63.

Erna Fichtmann, née Bargebuhr, also lived here for a time as a subtenant. In 1939, she had been registered as resident at Lippehner Straße 35. She last lived with her husband Arthur Fichtmann, whom she had married in 1939, at Holzmarktstraße 14. They were both deported on September 26, 1942, to Raasiku. Erna Fichtmann was shot, along with all the women, children, elderly, and sick people on the transport, as soon as she arrived.

The main tenants Marta Klein and Flora Pach were deported on July 13, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Flora Pach died there on October 29, 1942. Her daughter Marta Klein was deported further on December 18, 1943, to Auschwitz.

After the Abrahams were deported, husband-and-wife Isaak and Mirjam de Vries, née Schulenklopper, took over the lease for the apartment. They had previously lived at Metzer Straße 28. They had been expelled in 1940 from Leer in East Frisia, where Isaak de Vries had carried on his parents’ livestock business and also had a cement factory. Later, the de Vries’ daughter Frieda Hamacher, née de Vries, also lived in the apartment with her son Jonathan. She was the youngest of four children. No information has survived on her husband. Mirjam und Isaak de Vries were deported on September 14, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where Isaak de Vries died on June 3, 1943. Mirjam de Vries was deported further on May 16, 1944, to Auschwitz and probably murdered on arrival. Frieda Hamacher and her son Jonathan were deported less than five months later to Auschwitz, where they were probably murdered on arrival. Jonathan Hamacher was only three years old; the youngest deportee from the building.

Up to six subtenants lived in the apartment at the same time. Carl and Fanny Hartogsohn, née Hartogsohn, probably moved in in 1940. They came from Emden in East Frisia, where Carl Hartogsohn had carried on his father’s business as a butcher and cattle dealer. On November 10, 1938, Carl Hartogsohn was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was held until mid-January 1939. In February 1940, the secret state police (Gestapo) ordered the Hartogsohns and their 12-year-old son Philipp to leave their hometown. Carl and Fanny Hartogsohn moved to Berlin, where they initially found accommodation at Am Bahnhof Westend 2. Later, they moved from there to Lippehner Straße. Their son Philipp went to the Jewish school of horticulture in Ahlem near Hanover. In October 1941, the Nazi authorities closed the school to use it as an assembly camp for deportees. Philipp then joined his parents in Berlin. Carl, Fanny, and Philipp Hartogsohn were deported on February 3, 1943 to Auschwitz, where they were murdered. The Hartogsohns’ younger daughter Auguste (Gustel) managed to escape in March 1940 on the last legal migrant ship to Palestine, but her elder sister Esther was also murdered in Auschwitz.

Husband-and-wife Ludwig and Else David, née Zlotnicki, probably moved in as subtenants in 1940, around the time they married. In 1939, Else David was registered as resident in her mother’s apartment at Fehrbelliner Straße 3 under the name Else Lefebré, née Zlotnicki. Ludwig David, a sales representative, had lived at Nettelbeckstraße 25 in Schöneberg until 1939, and later as a subtenant at Gaudystraße 21. On February 3, 1943, Ludwig and Else David were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered. In 2013, two stumbling stones were laid in Käthe-Niederkirchner-Straße to commemorate the Davids – but mistakenly outside number 25 rather than number 25.

Marianne Cohen and her brother Isaac Cohen moved into the apartment as subtenants in January 1942. They, too, came from the Leer area in East Frisia. Whether they knew the de Vries family from their home region is not known. Isaac Cohen was a manual laborer. He had been arrested, probably during the pogrom in November 1938, and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp for some weeks. On February 3, 1943, Marianne and Isaac Cohen were deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

Husband-and-wife Max and Lucie Klein, née Hopp, lived with their son Manfred on the first floor of the side building. After the November pogrom of 1938, Lucie Klein’s brother Nathan Hopp and his wife Ruth Hopp, née Seide, moved in as subtenants. Until the pogrom, Nathan Hopp ran several ladies’ fashion stores in Südende. Later he ran the store “Leopold & Hopp” with his brother-in-law Leo Leopold at Greifswalder Straße 192. On March 6, 1940, Nathan and Ruth Hopp escaped with their ten-month-old daughter Tana to Brazil.

Nathan Hopp’s niece Edith Baruch, a dressmaker by profession, also lived in Max and Lucie Klein’s apartment. She participated in training in the Hakhshara center on the Skaby estate in Friedersdorf to prepare for emigration. She last worked as a forced laborer for the German arms industry. She was deported via the assembly camp at Große Hamburger Straße 26 on June 28, 1943, to Auschwitz, where she was murdered six months later.

Sally and Ernestine Steinhardt, née Markus, seem to have moved in at Lippehner Straße 35 in 1937. Before his retirement, Sally Steinhardt had worked as a tailor. On August 15, 1942, Ernestine and Sally Steinhardt were deported to Riga, where they were shot three days later, along with 1,002 others, in the Rumbula and Bikernieki forests. The company Gottfried P. Noack, based nearby at Greifswalder Straße 209, bought their furniture. Their youngest son Erwin Steinhardt, a manual worker, who had lived in his parents’ apartment with them, last lived at Paretzer Straße 10 in Wilmersdorf. He and his wife Sophie Steinhardt, née Steuermann, were deported from there on March 3, 1943, to Auschwitz. Until then, he had worked as a forced laborer for the company Oswald Coler. A stumbling stone has been laid outside Paretzer Straße 10 to commemorate Sophie Steinhardt.

Martin Moritz Lewinnek and his non-Jewish wife Emma Pauline Lewinnek, née Kugler, were among the longest-term tenants at Lippehner Straße 35, having moved in as early as 1912. Emma Lewinnek worked as a buffet chef (“kalte mamsell”) in the municipal kitchens. Martin Lewinnek had many occupations over the years. He is listed in the telephone books as a butcher, coachman, businessman and trader, and lastly as a manual worker. Working as an assistant to the prize-winning harness racer Johannes Hänschen Frömming, he became known as “Horse Jew”. Working at the municipal stockyard, he was accused of “trafficking” and “illicit slaughtering”. In summer 1940 the Gestapo arrested him, interrogated and tortured him for several weeks. After his release, he was forbidden from entering the stockyard and was made to clear rubble from bomb sites. Martin Moritz Lewinnek died on October 20, 1941, of tuberculosis, a “broken man, who no longer even had the strength to commit suicide. His corpse was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Weißensee.” (Source: Knut Elstermann: Gerdas Schweigen, Berlin 2005)

The Lewinneks’ adult children also lived in the apartment to the end: Gerda Lewinnek was a dressmaker and seamstress by profession. From 1940 to 1942, she worked as a forced laborer for I. G. Farben on Hauptstraße in Lichtenberg, spinning parachute silk. From late 1944 to April 20, 1945, she and her younger brother Norbert Lewinnek were imprisoned in the assembly camp at Schulstraße 78, where they were interrogated and beaten by the camp manager, Walter Dobberke. After the war, they assisted in his arrest by Soviet soldiers. Norbert Lewinnek had trained to be a furrier. In 1948, he emigrated with his mother Emma Lewinnek to Australia, where they started a new life in Sydney. Gerda Lewinnek married her childhood friend Bully Schott in June 1945. In 1950, they also emigrated with their one-year-old son Martin to Australia. Their son Martin J. Schott attended the unveiling of the memorial doorbell panel in 2019. His daughter Lucy, born in 1983 in Sydney, was finally granted German citizenship in 2020, after a six-year wait.

Husband-and-wife Siegfried and Rosa Flachs, née Coper, moved in at Lippehner Straße 35 in 1939. Siegfried Flachs was a master butcher. He had been forced to give up his kosher butcher’s shop at Hufelandstraße 49 (now 3) in 1933. He had then moved his business to Lippehner Straße 36. When his tenancy agreement was terminated in 1939, he and his wife moved in to the house next door. Their 24-year-old son Heinz Flachs managed to flee to England in 1939 with the help of the Jewish aid organization. After the war, he changed his name to Harry Fletcher and lived and worked in London as a sales representative for leather goods.

Siegfried and Rosa Flachs shared their apartment with four subtenants: Sally Mendelsohn moved in in 1939. Husband-and-wife Max and Wilfriede Neumann, née Crohn, moved in in 1941. Wilfriede Neumann was a milliner and manual worker; her husband Max Neumann was a gardener. The fourth subtenant was Margot Schlesinger, née Kohn. All the occupants of the apartment were deported on February 3, 1943, to Auschwitz. Wilfriede Neumann was murdered on March 1, 1943, in Auschwitz. Stumbling stones have been laid to commemorate her in her birthtown Staßfurt and outside Hektorstraße 15 in Berlin. The apartment on Lippehner Straße was, then, most likely not the last place she chose to live. Margot Schlesinger was also murdered in Auschwitz.

Part of the Abrahams’ apartment apparently extended to the side wing of the house. Paula, Della and Edith Scheidemann lived there as subtenants. Paula Scheidemann, née Hermann, came from the Danzig area. Her niece Gerta Heysemann also lived in the building for a time - as a subtenant with the Glasfeld sisters on the first floor. Little is known about Paula Scheidemann’s life. Her husband was buried “away from home”. She herself died in the Jewish Hospital on December 19, 1941. How Paula Scheidemann and Della Scheidemann, also née Hermann, were related is not known. After her husband’s death in 1923, Della Scheidemann had run the Emil Scheidemann textile and shoe store in Riesenburg, West Prussia. Forced to give up the business and sell her house in 1939, she moved to Lippehner Strasse in Berlin in early 1940. Her 20-year-old daughter Edith Scheidemann, a seamstress, joined her in March 1941. On November 27, 1941, Della and Edith Scheidemann were deported to Riga and shot immediately after arriving, along with over 1,000 other men, women and children, in the Rumbula forest.

Adolf and Regina Gutkind, née Löwenthal, moved into the building in 1913. Towards the end, their daughter Margarete Gutkind was also registered as resident here. Adolf Gutkind had various occupations between 1913 and 1941. In the telephone directories of these years, he is listed as a merchant, clerk, tradesman, salesman, and construction worker. Margarete Gutkind was a manual worker who performed forced labor at the Siemens-Schuckert cable-manufacturing plant in Gartenfeld. She was deported to Auschwitz on February 3, 1943. Adolf Gutkind performed forced labor for Pertrix in Schöneweide, a company that produced dry-cell batteries and flashlights for the Wehrmacht, and fuse batteries for Luftwaffe fighter planes. Regina and Adolf Gutkind were deported to Auschwitz three weeks later via the assembly camp at Große Hamburger Straße 26.

In 1939, 86-year-old Max Schwerin moved in with the Gutkinds as a subtenant. His wife Malwine Schwerin, née Orlewitz, probably also lived in the apartment. The couple’s last address was the Jewish home for the elderly at Schönhauser Allee 22, from where they were both deported on July 29, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Max Schwerin died there on September 8, 1942. Three weeks later, Malwine Schwerin was deported further to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered.

Another subtenant was Salomon Blaschkauer, who left the Jewish Community in 1941. He was arrested on February 5, 1943, and taken into “protective custody” in the Berlin police prison. Between September 15 and November 12, 1943, he was mentioned 16 times in the prison’s sick book. The entries indicate the duration and effects of his imprisonment: He was very likely made to stand for long stretches, as he was treated for edemas, chafing wounds on his lower legs, and water in his feet and lower legs. Salomon Blaschkauer seems to have died in prison under unknown circumstances. What happened to him was not documented. He is the only former resident of the house included among the 83 named on the memorial doorbell panel on whom no information has been found regarding his date, place, or cause of death.

The Gutkinds also sublet a room to Manfred Kant. He worked as a forced laborer for BEWAG in Wilmersdorf. He was deported on February 19, 1943 via the assembly camp at Große Hamburger Straße 26 to Auschwitz.

Herrmann Kempe also occupied a room in the Gutkinds’ apartment from August 1939 on. He had left the Jewish Community in 1929. He last worked as a baker with a steam bakery cooperative at Rittergutstraße 16-26 (now Josef-Orlopp-Straße 32-36) in Lichtenberg. This cooperative was forced to close in 1935. In his declaration of assets, Herrmann Kempe stated he was “now disabled”. He was deported on January 25, 1942, to Riga.

Cäsar Loewinsohn also lived in the Gutkinds’ apartment. He had run a pharmacy in Elbing on the Baltic coast until 1936. When he was banned from the pharmacy sector, he and his wife Gertrud Loewinsohn, née Moses, moved to Berlin, like many others. Cäsar Loewinsohn died on August 15, 1942, the day he had been due to be deported, in the Jewish hospital.

Julius Salinger, a master tailor, and his wife Marie Salinger, née Cohn, moved into an apartment at Lippehner Straße 35 at an unknown point in time. Between 1905 and 1933, the Salingers had lived at Neue Königstraße 59 near the Georgenkirche church. At the time of the national census, their widowed daughter Margarete (Grete) Belitzer, née Salinger, also lived in the apartment. Their elder daughter Ella Gumpel, née Salinger, and her son Erich Salinger did not live with them initially. Marie Salinger died on April 18, 1939, in the apartment. In December that year, Margarete Belitzer moved with her sister Ella Gumpel to Immanuelkirchstraße 14. Julius Salinger was admitted in 1942 to the Jewish Community hospice at Auguststraße 14-15. From there he was deported on October 3, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where he died two weeks later. The sisters Margarete Belitzer and Ella Gumpel were deported on October 26, 1942, from Immanuelkirchstraße to Riga, where they both died four days later.

Friedrich Moses, a sewer, was born on June 25, 1889, in Breslau. At the time of the national census in 1939, he was registered as resident in Julius Salinger’s apartment. He subsequently moved to a first-floor apartment at Schwedter Straße 21. No information has been found in the files on his family or wife. He worked as a forced laborer for Nordland G.m.b.H. at Kurfürstenstraße 15, and was deported on April 2, 1942, to the Warsaw ghetto. His son Wolfgang Moses, born on November 19, 1924, also in Breslau, lived with him in the Salingers’ apartment in 1939. A trained cutter, he moved, aged 17, to Wilsnacker Straße 3 after his father was deported and from there to Rosenstraße 2-4 (the home and building of the former Jewish Community welfare office and youth welfare office, where the “Rosentraße protest” took place from late February to early March 1943 after the Nazis’ “Factory Action”). Wolfgang worked as a forced laborer for Genschow & Co at Bouchestraße 12 in Treptow. He spent his last hours in Berlin in the assembly camp at Große Hamburger Straße 26, from where he was deported on December 14, 1942, to Auschwitz.

Moritz Schmuckler, a tradesman from Posen, lived at Lippehner Straße 35 at the time of the national census of 1939. In which apartment he was a subtenant is not known. Later he moved to Holzmarktstraße 37 and from there to Winsstraße 18. Moritz Schmuckler was deported on April 2, 1942, to the Warsaw ghetto.

Around 1986, the photographer Harf Zimmermann (a resident of the building from 1986 on and co-founder of Ostkreuz photographic agency) shot a portrait of Frau Seelig with an old large format camera on the balcony of her apartment on the fifth floor of the street-facing building. She last worked as a doorkeeper at VEB Treffmodelle, Greifswalder Straße 212 (premises at the end of the street, built by architects Moritz Ernst Lesser and Ernst Ludwig Freud, a son of Sigmund Freud, originally for Jewish manufacturer Szlama Rochmann’s “Problem” cigarette factory). Her name can still be seen on one of the cellar doors and etched into the ventilation grille in her tiled stove. Little more is known about Frau Seelig. Interestingly, the name Seelig appears in the Berlin directory for the first time in 1943 – the same year that numerous apartments became vacant after the Jewish occupants were “evacuated”. On October 5, 1943, Fuß, the court appointed receiver responsible for clearing out the Samters’ apartment (Heinz Samter was deported some five months after his parents, on June 28, to Auschwitz), reported that the keys to the empty apartments had been handed in to Seelig, Side building I, right.