Georg Herrmann was the owner of an iron works and machine factory at Buchholzer Straße 62–65. He bought the villa at Platanenstraße 114 and moved in with his family sometime after World War I. In 1920, he was registered as resident at Platanenstraße 67. From May 1939 on, Georg Herrmann sublet rooms in the villa to Jewish tenants. In the declaration of assets he completed shortly before his deportation, he stated that he lived with his wife Rosa, née Wolff, their daughter Ruth, and his sister Erna Herrmann. Rosa Herrmann’s mother Therese Wolff, née Moy, also lived in the household. Therese Wolff was the first of the family to be deported. She was sent on September 14, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she died a month later. Georg, Rosa, Ruth and Erna Herrmann were deported on October 19, 1942, to Riga, where they were murdered immediately after arriving.

On April 8, 1940, husband-and-wife Moritz and Johanna Marx, née Catz, moved from Oranienstraße 121 into a partly furnished room of the villa in Pankow, far from their familiar surroundings in Kreuzberg. Moritz Marx had run a textile samples company at Oranienstraße 122. Ruined by the Nazis’ antisemitic economic policy, it was deleted from the commercial register in 1939. Not quite two years after Moritz and Johanna Marx moved in at Platanenstraße, on January 19, 1942, they were deported to Riga, where they were both murdered.

From 1939 on, the Berwin family occupied two rooms on the third floor of the building. Ernst Berwin, his wife Katharina, née Goldberg, and their children Barbara and Alexander had been evicted from their home at Parkstraße 27 in Pankow. The entire family was deported along with the Herrmanns, who lived on the second floor, on October 19, 1942, to Riga. Ernst, Katharina and Barbara Berwin were murdered there as soon as they arrived. 16-year-old Alexander Berwin was deported further to the Kovno ghetto and, on August 1, 1944, to Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered on January 11, 1945.

Sometime after May 1939, Aron Arthur Studinski and his wife Fanny, née Salomon, moved into an apartment in the basement at Platanenstraße 114. They had previously lived nearby at Wackenbergstraße 61/65. The Studinskis were evidently forced to take in subtenants in their basement apartment: Leon Freier, who had lived in the Hakhshara camp at Landwerk Steckelsdorf-Ausbau in Rathenow, and Julius Sommerfeld with his non-Jewish family.

No record has survived of what happened to Julius Sommerfeld and his wife. Leon Freier was deported to Stutthof concentration camp. Against all odds, he survived. Aron and Fanny Studinski were deported to Riga and murdered as soon as they arrived on October 22, 1942.

Two unfurnished rooms were sublet to Bernhard Isaacsohn, his wife Helene, née Simonsohn, and her adult daughters Lilli and Lotte Isoldt. The Isaacsohns seem to have moved in on June 20, 1941, from Nelkenstraße 1 in Lichterfelde. Bernhard and Helene Isaacsohn were deported on February 2, 1943, from the Jewish hospital on Auguststraße, which the Gestapo used as an assembly camp for sick and elderly Jewish people from 1941 on. Bernhard Isaacsohn died in the Theresienstadt ghetto immediately after arriving on February 7, 1943; Helene Isaacsohn a few weeks later, on February 25, 1943. Lilli and Lotte Isoldt were both deported to Riga and murdered as soon as they arrived on September 8, 1942.

Georg Herrmann wrote in his declaration of assets that he sublet accommodation for RM 30 per month to “Frau Dr. Helene Sara Leroi”. She was probably the same Dr. Helene Leroi, née Fürst, who had been registered as resident at nearby Waldstraße 50 in May 1939. She had gained a doctorate in political sciences in 1922 but from 1939 to 1942, she worked as a forced laborer. When she received notification of her imminent deportation, an acquaintance named Stephanie Hüllenhagen, née Kaiser, offered to hide her.

In January 1943, Helene Leroi moved into Stephanie Hüllenhagen’s 1-room apartment at Bellermannstraße 14 in Wedding. The situation was especially risky as they only had use of a shared toilet on the landing, making it virtually impossible to hide from the other residents. But nobody informed on Helene Leroi and she survived Nazi persecution. Later, Stephanie Hüllenhagen commented: “I just thought, if I let all that happen, I’m guilty too.” (Source: Aktives Museum, Mitgliederrundbrief No. 50, Dec. 2003, p. 6).

Niederschönhausen in the district of Pankow was known for its many parks and green spaces. Several health centers and welfare facilities were located here, some of them Jewish. The General Building Inspector’s plans to develop the area resulted in the forced sale of many Jewish-owned properties.