Siegbert Rotholz

Location 
Axel-Springer-Str. 50
Historical name
Lindenstr. 48 / 50
District
Kreuzberg
Born
14 September 1919 in Berlin
Verhaftet
15 July 1942 in Berlin
Excecuted
04 March 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee
Siegbert Rotholz was born on 14 September 1919 in Berlin. Until his marriage in 1941, he lived with his extended family in a basement apartment at Romberg Strasse 11 (until 1938, Meyer und Mendelssohn Strasse), near Alexanderplatz.

Siegbert Rotholz was actively involved in Jewish youth organizations from a young age. In 1933 he joined the Zionist youth league “Habonim”, which was forced to disband in November 1938. Barred from higher education on account of his Jewish background, after leaving school Siegbert Rotholz performed unskilled work in an upholstery business and worked as a porter in the clothing industry. He then completed a 2½-year agricultural apprenticeship (”Hachsharah”) outside Berlin in order to prepare for his emigration to Palestine. But he did not succeed in emigrating. He returned to his hometown in 1938 where he was assigned work on demolition sites and in the coal trade.

In October 1940 Siegbert Rotholz met Lotte Jastrow. She too had a Jewish background. The couple married on 10 December 1941. After their marriage, they shared an apartment with Lotte’s mother, Cäcilie Jastrow, at Linden Strasse 48-50.

By spring 1941 Siegbert and Lotte Rotholz had become involved in the discussion and training group around Heinz and Marianne Joachim, which was connected to the Herbert Baum Communist resistance group. An arson attack by members of the group on the Nazi propaganda exhibition “The Soviet Paradise” on 17 May 1942 led to the group’s exposure. Lotte Rotholz and her husband Siegbert were arrested along with other members.

Siegbert Rotholz was executed on 4 March 1943 in Ploetzensee prison, Berlin. He was 23 years old. His wife Lotte Rotholz, who had been sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, was deported to Auschwitz on 14 October 1943 on the “44th transport to the East”. Her date of death is not known. Siegbert Rotholz’s parents, Eva and Markus Rotholz, and his elder sister Irma Joseph, née Rotholz, and her four children were murdered in Auschwitz. His younger sister Charlotte, born on 27 October 1922 in Berlin and married to Heinz Behrendt since 1940, was deported to Minsk on 14 November 1941 and murdered there in 1942. Her husband survived. He was liberated in 1945 on the death march from Dachau to Flossenbuerg.