Reminder of immeasurable suffering

Marianne Wintgen stands in front of the house on Koeniginstrasse, holds two red roses in her hand and gently touches the commemorative symbol for Paul Hirsch. He was a family friend and was murdered by the Nazis in the Third Reich. Like the Landauer couple, who also lived in the building near the English Garden. Wintgen lives in Berlin, the 78-year-old made a special trip to Munich on this autumn day to inaugurate the plaque she applied for. Because it is important to her to remember her family friend with dignity.

Whitsun 1942. Helene Wintgen wants to visit her good friend Paul Hirsch in a sanatorium near Koblenz. But the sanatorium has been swept empty. A haunted house. The whole sanatorium was evacuated, it is said when Helene Wintgen inquired in the village. She suspects evil. What she didn't know at the time: All 271 Jewish patients were deported by train to the Sobibor extermination camp. There Paul Hirsch and the other people were murdered by the SS immediately after their arrival on June 19, 1942 - they were victims of the Nazis' euthanasia program. In her memoirs, Helene Wintgen writes: "We hope that Paul Hirsch did not survive the transport."

Marianne Wintgen is the granddaughter of Helene Wintgen.

Hirsch's sad fate would have been forgotten forever if she hadn't found letters from her grandmother's estate one day.

In the documents one learns a lot about the biography of the Munich Nazi victim.

Paul Hirsch lived with his mother for a long time in the house on Koeniginstrasse, on which the commemorative sign has now been affixed.

He attends the Wilhelms-Gymnasium.

He studies in Göttingen and is doing his doctorate in physics.

There he met Helene Wintgen, Marianne Wintgen's grandmother.

Hirsch is a versatile man, a passionate violinist, writer and travels a lot. The National Socialists do not like his casual lifestyle. At the end of the 1930s, he began to be ailing. physically and mentally. In April 1941 the Nazis abducted him to a sanatorium near Koblenz. It's a journey of no return. Paul Hirsch was 56 years old when he died. The portrait of Hirsch's mother Auguste is also immortalized on the facade of the house. She emigrated to the Netherlands in August 1939 and died in Arnhem on April 2, 1942 at the age of 85. Only two of her five children survive the Holocaust.

The neat Art Nouveau building at the Englischer Garten - it is now an office building - breathes a tragic history. Franz and Tilly Landauer also lived here. The first commemorative signs were dedicated to the couple a good three years ago. At the time of the memorial act, Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) said: “A respected family, genuine Munich residents.” But they were harassed during the Nazi dictatorship and Franz Landauer, brother of the former FC Bayern President Kurt Landauer, was deported to the Dachau concentration camp. In 1939 the couple managed to emigrate to the Netherlands. Reiter: “How difficult it may have been for them to have to leave their hometown Munich.” The Landauers initially consider themselves safe. After the Nazis' invasion, they again fell into the clutches of their persecutors. Franz Landauer succumbs on 10.July 1943 at the age of 60 the precarious living conditions in the Dutch internment camp Kamp Westerbork. Tilly Landauer was murdered on October 15, 1944 in the Auschwitz extermination camp. She is 57 years old.

The Landauers and the Hirschs - now four mementos on this house wall in Schwabing announce the tragic fate of the former residents.

Commemorative plaques that make you pause, but which to this day still cannot make the immeasurable suffering of the victims comprehensible.

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Today this building near the Englischer Garten is an office building.

Photo: Jens Hartmann

© Jens Hartmann

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Paul Hirsch was murdered by the Nazis.

© PRIVATE