Paul Levy

Location 
Albertinenstraße 31
District
Zehlendorf
Stone was laid
22 October 2012
Born
17 November 1876 in Stettin / Szczecin
Deportation
on 26 February 1943 to Auschwitz
Murdered
in Auschwitz
Paul Levy: Railway Engineer in the Middle East and Germany

Born 17 November 1876 in Stettin
Murdered 26 February 1943 in Auschwitz

Paul Josef Levy trained as an engineer in Danzig and left his native land in 1904 to join a mammoth construction project in the Middle East, the Hejaz Railway, where he was responsible for rolling-stock. The section from Damascus in today’s Syria to Medina in Saudi Arabia was inaugurated on 1 September 1908.

He married his cousin Ida Levy (1884–1974) on 19 May 1906. They initially lived in Constantinople, then until 1908 in Damascus, later in Beirut. At the end of 1911 Levy returned to Germany as a senior railway official. He fought on the Eastern Front in the First World War and was awarded the Iron Cross.

Levy was promoted after the nationalisation of the German railways in 1920, and subsequently served as head of workshop operations in Altona, where he lived as a faithful member of his congregation. He was promoted to the grade of a railway director in 1930 and moved to Wuppertal in 1933.

In 1935 he was sent into early retirement along with other Jewish railway officials. With his second wife Charlotte (1882–1943) he moved to Albertinenstrasse 31 in Berlin-Zehlendorf. They found themselves unable to emigrate. From November 1942 they occupied just two sub-let rooms at Nestorstrasse 54 in Wilmersdorf. As his last occupation before deportation Levy listed “machinist”. Together with about one thousand others they were deported on 26 February 1943 from Moabit Goods Yard to Auschwitz.