Martha Sussmann

Martha Sussmann was born in 1879, the daughter of Siegmund Sussmann, an apron manufacturer. Siegmund was a descendent of one of Berlin’s oldest Jewish families, who settled here in 1671. He had three daughters: Martha, Margarete and Else, whose daughter Alice also had two daughters, Ruth and Gittel. Like her sister Margarete, Martha did not marry. She worked as a confidential clerk for the company AEG. She and her sister also managed the apartment building in which they lived. Their father had bought it in 1882 to mark the birth of his third daughter, and hoped it would provide his two unmarried daughters with a secure income. After the early death of Else in 1925, and that of her husband Martin Silbermann a few years later in 1929, Martha and Margarete took custody of their daughter Alice, born in 1909, who lived with them until her marriage in 1936. Margarete died the same year and Martha lived alone for some years. However, Alice returned to live with her aunt, along with her two daughters, after her divorce from her husband. On 4 September 1942, Martha Sussmann was deported to Theresienstadt where she died only a few months later, on 24 January 1943.