Heinz Eugen Almus

Location 
Dortmunder Straße 13
District
Moabit
Stone was laid
20 September 2013
Born
30 September 1925 in Berlin
Deportation
on 04 March 1943 to Auschwitz
Murdered
05 June 1943 in Auschwitz
Heinz-Egon Almus was born in Berlin on 30 September 1925, to Oskar and Margarete Almus, née Feder. His parents came from Bohemia, then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and married in Hohenelbe (now Vrchlabí) in 1920 before moving to Berlin. Here, they set up a wholesale business for ready-to-wear ladies clothing, “Oskar Almus & Co.”, near Hausvogteiplatz. They lived in an apartment at Dortmunder Straße 13 in Berlin-Moabit. Heinz-Egon’s older sister Vera Ruth was born here, two years before his birth.
From the few records of the Almus family during this period it emerges that the children enjoyed a sheltered upbringing free of material hardship, as part of Berlin’s educated middle class. As well as their parents, the children had an aunt, Jenny Stiassny, née Almus, and an uncle, Alfred Almus, in Berlin. Heinz-Egon’s sister Vera Ruth later said that both their parents – and indeed the entire family – were very interested in music. They not only had an electric record player and a large collection of concert and opera recordings in their home but also a piano and a violin for playing at home. Heinz-Egon was a member of the Jewish Community choir during his school years. In 1932, he was enrolled in the local elementary school in Bochumerstraße.
The gradual introduction of measures to persecute Jews from 1933 on – or all those considered Jewish under the Nazi state’s Nuremberg Laws – soon hit Heinz-Egon and his family. The Nazi regime’s special decrees and laws increasingly stripped them of their rights. As business owners, Heinz-Egon’s parents were also targeted by antisemitic campaigns, boycotts and rioting in the city after 1933. Heinz-Egon and his sister were directly impacted by measures affecting the school system. As soon as the Nazis came to power in 1933, they issued a “Law against Overcrowding in German Schools and Universities”, drastically reducing eight-year-old Heinz-Egon’s chances of continuing his education. A decree of 1935 aimed to ensure “as complete racial segregation as possible” in schools. Heinz-Egon’s sister later stated that he changed schools around this time, aged ten. According to his student record card, he changed to the first year (or sixth grade) of the Menzel Oberrealschule on 17 April 1936 and from here, on 19 March 1937, to a Jewish Community high school.
Vera Ruth later said of her parents’ professional situation: “In 1936 or 1937 my father was forced by the Nazis to give up his business premises and lay off his employees. He and my mother continued to run the business on a small scale until November 1938.” They had a room in their new apartment in Stromstraße especially converted to do so. Vera Ruth went on: “In November 1938 he [Oskar Almus] was sent to Dachau concentration camp [Note: He is stated as having been imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the Gedenkbuch memorial book] and released, in poor health, in late December 1938. My mother suffered a nervous breakdown. As both our parents were unwell, they were not able to emigrate. - I escaped to England with a kinder-transport while my parents stayed in a furnished room in Berlin, Solingerstr[aße].” Oskar and Margarete Almus had been forced to give up their apartment in Stromstraße and moved with Heinz-Egon first to a smaller apartment in Solinger Straße and finally, in 1941/1942, to one at Jagowstraße 1.
In the 1940s, Heinz-Egon’s parents were made to perform forced labour – his mother in the Krone Preßwerk GmbH plant at Frankfurter Allee 288 in Lichtenberg and his father in the Daimon battery and torch factory within Elektrotechnische Fabrik Schmidt & Co at Sellerstraße 13 in Berlin-Wedding. Heinz-Egon worked for the Berlin opticians’ association Arbeitsgemenschaft Berliner Optiker. In the early 1940s Vera Ruth received a postcard in England, sent from her brother through the Red Cross, saying that he hoped to become an optician and was already in training. It was the last personal sign of life she received from him.
Heinz-Egon Almus was arrested with his parents in late February 1943, during the Nazis’ “factory campaign” to deport the last remaining Jews officially living in the capital, and taken to an assembly camp in Berlin. From here, 17-year-old Heinz-Egon and his parents were deported on 4 March 1943 with the “34th transport to the East” to Auschwitz extermination camp, where his parents were murdered, probably immediately on arrival. Heinz-Egon was initially selected for labour in the concentration camp and murdered some weeks later, on 5 June 1943.
Heinz-Egon’s sister Vera Ruth, who later married and took her husband’s name Schragenheim, survived in exile in England. She became a nurse and lived in Israel after the war with her husband and children.