Edwin Rewald

Location 
Augustastr. 37
District
Lichterfelde
Stone was laid
15 May 2006
Born
31 July 1897 in Berlin
Murdered
08 January 1944 in Auschwitz
Edwin Rewald was born on 31 July 1897, the second child of Adolf and Tillie Rewald. He had an elder sister, Viola, born in 1894. The Rewald family lived in Berlin-Lichterfelde. Adolf Rewald was a freelance real-estate broker who had achieved considerable prosperity. In his twenties, Edwin married Edith Conitzer and the couple had a son, Heiner (born 1925), and a daughter, Annette. In the late 1920s, Edwin and Edith were divorced. Edith later emigrated to South America with her two children and remarried. Heiner and Annette still live in Mar del Planta and Buenos Aires, Argentina, today.

Probably in 1932, Edwin married Charlotte Schwedt, a non-Jew, and in 1934 their daughter Katrin was born. In November 1938 Charlotte travelled to America to make preparations for the family’s emigration. She acquired affidavits for Edwin, herself and “baby Katrin” as their daughter was named on the document. But evidently Edwin could not be convinced to emigrate – despite the fact that he was performing forced labour and was threatened with imminent transferral to a concentration camp and therefore death – since he and Charlotte were divorced. For some time, Edwin was able to hide out at his parents-in-law’s home at Zikaden Weg in Eichkamp. But, for reasons that are not known, he was discovered and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was killed on 8 January 1944.

Edwin’s parents Tillie and Adolf were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp on 12 June 1941 and died shortly after their arrival; Tillie later that month and Adolf in September 1942.