Minna Herrmann née Fichtmann

Location 
Keibelstr. 4 -5
Historical name
Keibelstr. 3
District
Mitte
Stone was laid
June 2005
Born
17 August 1900 in Berlin
Deportation
on 04 March 1943 to Auschwitz
Murdered
in Auschwitz
Minna Fichtmann was born on 17 August 1900 in Berlin. Her first husband was a lathe operator named Hans Krause. Their son Heinz was born on 7 May 1921. In 1932 Minna filed for divorce and moved with her son from Kurfürsten Straße 155 to Marienburger Straße 7 in Prenzlauer Berg.
In around 1935 she moved in with her brother Hugo Fichtmann at Watt Straße 3. She and her son lived in one of the apartment’s three rooms and the maid’s chamber. In 1938 she and her brother and son moved for a short time to Adlershof. On 6 April 1938 she married her second husband, a tobacco worker named Alfred Herrmann (*17 July 1899). He too was divorced and had two children from his first marriage, Ingeburg (*25 February 1927) and Wolfgang (*2 May 1928). The family lived for a period in an apartment on Torgauer Straße in Schöneberg before moving to Keibel Straße 3 (where number 4 now stands). Alfred Herrmann took his daughter Ingeburg out of the children’s home where she had been staying and the five of them lived together in a 2-room apartment.
In late 1942 Minna, Alfred, Ingeburg and Wolfgang Herrmann were seized by the Gestapo and taken to the assembly camp at Große Hamburger Straße “during a house campaign” as Ingeburg described it in her application for compensation. “We were soon released from the assembly camp as my father had declared we were of mixed blood. When we got home from the camp, we found our apartment almost completely empty; apart from the kitchen, almost everything was gone. My parents organized substitute furnishings from, I believe, the furniture store of the Jewish Community.” At around the same time, on 25 December 1942, Minna Hermann’s brother Hugo Fichtmann took his own life.
During the Nazis’ “factory campaign” in late February 1943, Alfred, Ingeburg and Wolfgang Herrmann were again arrested by the Gestapo at the workplaces where they performed forced labour. Minna Herrmann’s son Heinz was already imprisoned in a concentration camp by that time. Ingeburg and Wolfgang were taken to the clearance camp on Rosenthaler Straße. Their mother, who was not a Jew, collected them from here a short time later. Alfred Herrmann was deported to Auschwitz on 2 March 1943. At around the same time, Minna Herrmann was arrested on the street. She was deported to Auschwitz with the “34th transport to the east” on 4 March 1943. She and her second husband Alfred were murdered in Auschwitz. Her date of death is not known. Her son Heinz survived and returned to live in Berlin after Germany’s liberation.