Sophie Feldmann came from a Breslau merchant family. She lived with some of her children in the residential building at Tabbertstraße 14. Her husband had died in 1925. Her youngest daughter Alice Ruth Feldmann was an unmarried office worker. Her daughter Charlotte Feldmann had married Günther Skotzki, who also ran a factory on the grounds, in 1926. Günther was the youngest child of a Breslau textile merchant named Philipp Skotzki. After his death in 1917, his wife Berta Skotzki carried on the family business with her two sons.

In 1934, Sophie Feldmann’s son Fritz Feldmann married Berta Lindheimer. The newly-weds moved in together at Tabbertstraße. Two years later, Berta Feldmann’s widowed mother Rega Lindheimer also moved to Oberschöneweide. Sophie Feldmann’s younger sister Berta Skotzki moved in at Tabbertstraße in 1938. In November 1938, Fritz Feldmann died aged 42. It is unclear whether he committed suicide or died of a heart attack. His widow Berta Feldmann fled with her mother in July 1939 to Brussels, where she remarried. She was arrested in Belgium and taken to Malines transit camp near Antwerp. From there she was deported on August 4, 1942, to Auschwitz and murdered.

Alice Ruth Feldmann died on November 12, 1939, of tuberculosis. She had been admitted to the Westhospital in Charlottenburg a few weeks before her death, even though Jewish people were officially banned from being treated in “Aryan” hospitals. Sophie Feldmann committed suicide on January 15, 1942. After the death of her sister, Berta Skotzki returned to Breslau. She was deported on July 26, 1942, with another sister of hers to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she died. Her three children had fled to Palestine, the United States, and Cuba.

Ernst Friedenstein and his elder sister Jenny Friedenstein were evidently subtenants living at Tabbertstraße 14. Ernst Friedenstein was deported on March 3, 1942, to Auschwitz and probably murdered there. By that time, Jenny Friedenstein had already been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto and was no longer alive.

Heinrich and Gertrud Cohn, née Weiß, who had married in 1901, lived together on Tabbertstraße. Heinrich Cohn died in March 1942 in the Jewish hospital. A year later, his widow was deported with their daughter Bertha Danziger, née Cohn, and her four-year-old son Denny to Auschwitz. It is most likely that all three were murdered on arrival.

Fanny Salm, née Lehmann, moved to Berlin after her divorce in 1926. She had two children who lived in an orphanage in Cologne. Around 1939 she worked as a housemaid for Sophie Neumann. Fanny Salm was deported on January 19, 1942, to the Riga ghetto. It is not clear whether she was murdered on arrival or made to perform forced labor, but she did not survive. Neither did her son Rolf Sam. Her daughter Erna Salm managed to escape to Australia in 1938.

From 1890 on, the Schöneweide area along the river Spree became the location of several major industrial plants. One of the first here was the electricity company AEG, which built Germany’s first three-phase power station in Oberschöneweide in 1897. Soon afterwards, a battery works and a cable-manufacturing plant were also built here, earning Oberschöneweide the nickname “Elektropolis”, standing for the electrified city. Thousands of people were made to perform forced labor in the industrial plants in Oberschöneweide. In August 1941, AEG announced that it was looking for replacement staff following the “planned discharge of Jewish workers”, meaning their impending deportation.