Hans Lewinsohn

Hans Lewinsohn was born in Berlin on October 1, 1899. His parents were Robert and Margarete Gertrud Lewinsohn.

On December 20, 1930, Hans Lewinsohn married Anna Mathilda Dorothea, née Rückheim and they lived in Berlin Mitte at Blumenstraße 20. (The street no longer exists, it is overbuilt with new buildings).

Hans and Anna had two children, Wolfgang was born on June 30, 1935 and Renate was born on December 23, 1937.

Hans Lewinsohn was arrested by the Gestapo in the open street on December 5, 1942, and was sent to the Berlin police prison. This was now a "common practice", the police force arbitrarily took people into custody on the street, in addition to the fact that Hans was Jewish.

Since 1933, when Hitler came to power, the "Enabling Act" was passed in March. On April 1, 1933, the Nazi regime launched an official action against the Jewish Germans. They announce a nationwide boycott against Jewish businesses. It is the first step in a series of measures directed against Jewish people that will end in the Holocaust.

On March 8, 1943, Hans was deported to Auschwitz, and in the same year he was deported to the Warsaw concentration camp. (The Warsaw concentration camp was built in the summer of 1943 on the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto).

Presumably Hans Lewinsohn was murdered here.

Hans Lewinsohn's wife Anna was non-Jewish; she worked in a law firm in Berlin until the end of the war. Wolfgang and Renate survived the cruel time in hiding.

In 1946 the family managed to move to the USA. They changed their family name to Lewinson and Wolfgang took the new first name Franklin.

Here they built a new life for themselves.

For the laying of Hans Lewinsohn's Stolperstein on July 12, 2023, his son Franklin had come from the USA with his wife Betsy.