Wolf Segal

Wolf Segal, known as Willy, was born on 28 March 1873 into a Jewish family in Berlin. He was the eldest child of Charlotte (née Italiener) and Israel Segal. His mother died in June 1880 when he was seven years old. He had two younger siblings – Paul and Jenny – and three half-sisters from his father’s second marriage to Hitzka Hannchen (née Broh) – Lucie, Meta and Hedwig – born between 1885 and 1887.
Willy Segal attended secondary school to the end of the fifth form. He trained to become a salesman and sign-painter and subsequently joined his father’s firm, manufacturing electric neon signs and shopfronts. Israel Segal had set up his business, Schilderfabrik Segal, in the early 1870s. Willy Segal married Gertrud Cohn (*18 October 1875), with whom he had two daughters, Charlotte (*26 July 1902) and Alice (*3 August 1905). He lived with his family in Berlin-Mitte, first at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 17 (now Karl-Liebknecht-Straße) and later for some years at Große Hamburger Straße 30 and Linienstraße 72. In around 1913, the family moved to a 5½-room apartment at Rungestraße 18.
In 1903 Willy Segal and his brother Paul took over their father’s factory at Neue Schönhauser Straße 14. In 1913, the head office was relocated to Alexanderstraße 27 (later 29) and the business considerably expanded in the late 1920s. By the early 1930s, Willy and Paul Segal employed some 20 members of staff and owned several patents for the manufacture of neon signs.
Willy Segal’s daughters both married and in the 1930s his grandchildren Renate (*6 July 1930) and Joachim (*30 June 1935) were born. On 11 January 1932 his wife Gertrud died, aged 56. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Lothringenstraße (now Herbert-Baum-Straße). His second wife, Frieda Königsberger (née Bialostotzki, *19 June 1891) was widowed like him.
After the Nazis came to power, the Segals’ business was badly hit by anti-Semitic boycotts. Paul Segal’s son Hans, who worked there until his emigration to London in 1936, described the persecution in his application for reimbursement: “From 1934 on, the company was affected by a severe boycott caused by the Nazi Party. Eventually the company was featured in an article in the ‘Stürmer’, including photographs of our customers with captions saying something like ‘Germans who do business with Jews’. A later issue of the ‘Stürmer’ ran another article about the company, attacking customers who held respected positions but had the ‘Jew Segal’ work for them. The business was considerably weakened as early as 1934 and badly hit by 1935. From 1935 on, none of our main customers dared place orders with us.” In 1936 the workforce was halved; in 1937 there were only a few members of staff remaining. In March 1939 the business was forcibly closed due to the anti-Semitic legislation in force.
In late November 1938 Willy Segal’s brother Paul emigrated to England and from there to the United States. He died in Philadelphia on 13 September 1941, of kidney disease. His sisters Jenny (whose married name was Finsterbusch, later changed to Busch), Meta (whose married name was Wolf) and Hedwig (whose married name was Rund) also moved to the United States. They all settled in New York, as did five of Willy Segal’s seven nieces and nephews, who all managed to emigrate in time.
Willy Segal’s apartment in Rungestraße was divided into two and Max Rosenberg moved with his family into one part. He was deported and murdered in January 1942. In the same year, Willy Segal’s daughters were deported with their families: Alice, her husband Albert Goss and their seven-year-old son Joachim to Riga on 26 October 1942, and Charlotte with her husband Louis Loeffler and their twelve-year-old daughter Renate to Auschwitz on 14 December 1942. They were all murdered.
On 2 March 1943 Willy Segal was deported on the “32nd transport to the East” to Auschwitz. His date of death is not known but as he was almost seventy he was probably murdered on arrival on 3 March.
His half-sister Lucie (whose married name was Stern) was deported a day after him. She, too, died in Auschwitz. His wife Frieda was deported two weeks later, on 17 March 1943, to Theresienstadt. She was murdered in Auschwitz on 11 March 1944. Her son from her first marriage, Günter Königsberger, survived imprisonment in Auschwitz and later lived under the name Ted Kenig in California. A 60-minute video of an interview he gave to a representative of the Anti-Defamation League in 1992 is available on the website of the Holocaust Memorial Museum.