Max Levy

Location 
Auf dem Grat 43
District
Dahlem
Stone was laid
03 March 2015
Born
01 December 1883 in Leipzig
Deportation
on 03 March 1943 to Auschwitz
Murdered
in Auschwitz

Max Levy was born on December 1st, 1883 in Leipzig. He was probably the fur and leather trader Max Levy, in Leipzig. In Berlin he was later listed in the address books as a manufacturer or merchant. He must have come to Berlin sometime before or during the First World War and is mentioned in the 1919 address book with the Adam family on Mommsenstrasse in Charlottenburg.

His wife Erna Levy, née Adam, born on November 6th, 1893, gave birth to their first daughter Ellen Sophie in 1919. In the year the second daughter, Hella, was born (December 6, 1921), Erna Levy acquired the property we are standing in front of here: On Ridge 43.

According to the current owners, the house was built in 1923.

After the pogrom on November 9, 1938, all Jews had to sell their real estate. According to the land registry, the property was sold by Mrs. Erna Levy in April 1939. Until 1941, Max and Erna Levy appear in the address books at this address, in 1942 only Erna and a doctor. However, it is questionable whether they were still kept accurately during the war.

In a 1939 census we found the older daughter, Ellen, working as a kindergarten teacher. She probably attended the seminar for Jewish kindergarten teachers and after-school teachers on Wangenheimstrasse, but unfortunately there are no more documents about this.

The daughters must have started school in 1926 and 1928. If, like many of their contemporaries, they did not later go to the Jewish Gymnasium, we assume that they were students at the Gertraudenschule, because this was the girls' secondary school closest to them. Unfortunately, there are no more documents from this period at either school. The Gertraudenschule is today's Gail S. Halvorsen School, previously the Alfred Wegener School.

The entire family then appears again in the deportation lists. On March 3, 1943, Max, Erna, Ellen and Hella were deported from Moabit train station to Auschwitz on the 33rd Osttransport in wagons with 1,732 people. The last address given was Stuttgarter Platz 6, but the family was never registered there. We couldn't find out whether this was a so-called "Jewish house" or whether they could stay there with friends. They arrived in Auschwitz on March 4th.

In a telex, labor leader Schwarz complained to the SS Main Office for Economic Affairs and Administration: If the transports from Berlin continue to arrive with so many women and children, along with old Jews, I don't expect much in terms of deployment. Above all, Buna needs younger and stronger people.”

Only 517 men and 200 women on this transport were found fit for work. The family never appears in the camp lists.