Alfred Roth

The Roth family line in Germany goes back 500 years from the time Sephardic Jews departed Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. They established themselves firmly in the culture and country of Germany. Even as borders shifted over the centuries, they were, and always considered themselves, Germans... and Jews. Rabbis, judges, musicians, composers, professors, inventors, business people – they could not have imagined that their success and deep roots in this country could be so quickly taken away… and virtually erased.

Alfred Roth, born 1871 in Konitz, West Prussia, and Elsa Hinrichsen, born 1942 in Berlin, married in 1899. Elsa’s parents, Laura and Emil Hinrichsen were first cousins, not uncommon in those times. Laura and Emil had three children. Elsa’s two brothers migrated – one to Peru and the other to Johannesburg, South Africa long before the war broke out. Elsa’s father Emil had an import-export and insurance business or whom his son-in-law Alfred worked and later Kurt, Alfred’s and Elsa’s son. The business was situated in a large building in Schützenstr. 40-42 and for many years they all lived together at this address and continued that business until 1936 when the Nazis forced them to close.

When many others, including Kurt and his wife, fled the Nazi regime in the mid-to late 1930’s, Alfred and Elsa chose to stay, not believing what they were hearing, quite confident in their stature in their community, not choosing to leave it all behind. Ludwig, Kurt’s older brother, stayed behind as well.

We know very little about what happened in the intervening years. With the business shuttered in 1936, how did they live and what was life like for Elsa and Alfred between then and 1942? We do know that the authorities – or their sudden poverty – forced them to move into one single room at Cuxhavener Straße in 1939, in an apartment they had to share with the main tenant and three other Jews. Alfred and Elsa were lost thereafter – Alfred deported to Theresienstadt on July 28, 1942 and exterminated less than one month later on 16 August 1942. Elsa was sent to the same place on the same date but was exterminated on the 26th of September 1942 at Treblinka. Ludwig was deported and imprisoned from October 3 through 9th, 1942 at Westerbork. He was then sent to Auschwitz, and ultimately to Groß-Rosen where he was declared dead on February 7 in 1945.

The Stolperstein ceremonies in Berlin on September 30, 2022 were attended by Alfred’s and Elsa’s granddaughter and grandson, together with their spouses, their children and one of the five grandchildren.