On the road to death – the deportations
Station 24 • Nürnberger Straße 3
In 1941 16 Jewish people remained in Forchheim and were designated to be deported: three of them died beforehand. Ilse Braun returned to Forchheim on September 10th, 1941 to support her parents and grandmother. Thus, since 1941 a total of 14 people were deported. They were, with almost no exception elderly people mainly widowed or single women. Jenny Abraham, Leo Abraham, Gottlieb Braun, Rosa Braun, Flora Heller, Ilse Cilly Braun, Ida Schönberger and Greta Zeidler were deported on November 27th, 1941. The destination of the transportation, which departed from Nuremberg was the concentration camp at Jungfernhof near Riga.
On the same day detective sergeant Hans Luft wrote in his report to the mayor of Forchheim. “While the transportation from the Paradeplatz was taking place a large number of local residents had gathered who watched the transportation process with great interest and satisfaction…. We can be perfectly sure that Forchheim will be free of Jews by Christmas”. The number of Jews remaining in the town and the surrounding administrative area was determined regularly every three months.
A second deportation took place on March 23rd, 1942. The destination was Izbica in East Poland, a ghetto which was used as a transit centre. Those taken were Julius Prager, Sera Rosenbaum and Salie Braun. One month later on April 25th, 1942 Rosa Tiesler was deported to Krasnystaw also in East Poland. To the present day the people named as deported are regarded as “missing” since neither a date nor the circumstances of their deaths are known. The results of investigations, however, seem to indicate that those sent to Riga were shot near to the town or murdered in an extermination camp.
On August 6th, 1942, although ill, Berta Sundheimer was taken. On January 17th, 1944, the last person to be deported was the over 80-year-old Sofie Kotz. Both women were taken to the Theresienstadt ghetto where Berta Sundheimer died on December 6th, 1943 and Sofie Kotz on October 13th, 1944.
An obelisk commissioned by The Forchheim Local History Society was designed by the artist Rudolf Ullmann and erected in 2008 in remembrance of those deported from Forchheim.
