Gertrud Gerson née Lilienfeld

Gertrud Gerson, née Lilienfeld, lived in the house at Rolandstrasse 2, built in 1899, with her husband Carl and their three children Walter, Horst and Maria.
Carl Gerson was one of the first doctors in the new Schlachtensee country house colony and also had his practice in the house.
Gertrud and Carl Gerson were both of Jewish descent but converted to Protestantism. Carl Gerson served as an officer in the First World War and his son Walter also went to war at the age of 18. Both men had German nationalist sentiments.
After Carl Gerson's death in 1925, the family kept themselves afloat by renting out rooms.
The daughter Maria trained as a teacher and worked in the profession until 1932. However, she was fired because of her Jewish origins. Because of the lack of earning opportunities and the growing pressure on her family, she emigrated to the USA in 1937.
The son Horst became an art historian and lived in The Hague from 1933, where he got a job in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorical Documentation. Since he and his wife Ilse categorically rejected National Socialism, they applied for Dutch citizenship, which was granted to them in 1940. As a Jew in Nazi-occupied Holland, Horst Gerson was at risk and had to hide in the house several times.
The eldest son Walter lived with his wife Dora and their children in Göttingen, where he held a position as head of the state youth education center. He lost his civil service position, but was initially allowed to work as a doctor. With the support of his fraternity brothers from his student days, a fictitious “Aryan certificate” was created in which it was claimed that his father was not Jewish, so that Walter was henceforth considered a “half-Jew”.
Old photos served as “evidence”; The heads were cut out and, according to fascist racial theory, they were measured to determine that the shape of the head did not have any supposed “Semitic characteristics”.
Gertrud Gerson was forced to sell her house in 1938 and moved to Göttingen to live with her son Walter. They assumed that the “Aryan certificate” for Walter Gerson would protect the entire family because they trusted the old fraternity brothers, e.g. T. held high Gestapo positions.
So they were deeply shocked when Gertrud Gerson received the request to “join a transport of old Jewish people (…),” as Walter Gerson's wife Dora wrote in a letter on August 20, 1942. Walter Gerson traveled to Berlin and spoke to the highest Gestapo office, where, as Dora Gerson's letter states, “unfortunately he was convinced of the irreversibility of this measure. (…) Mom was touchingly composed.”
Three postcards from Theresienstadt have been preserved and are owned by the great-granddaughter Inga Gerson. None of them were written by Gertrud Gerson herself, two were by a roommate Bertel or Bertha Müller. In the second card dated December 10, 1943 she writes: “You have now received the sad news that the lb. Ma suddenly died due to a stroke, we were all so incredibly sorry, especially me. Everyone liked her, she was always happy and always modest.”
This recognition would be a fitting epitaph for Gertrud Gerson.