Gerda Harpuder née Lewin

Gerda Harpuder (geb. Lewin) was born 21 November 1905 to Josef and Selma Lewin (geb. Nathansohn) in the Hackescher Markt area of Berlin. She was the older of two children, having a brother Werner (he was able to flee Germany for the United States prior to Gerda). In 1924, she gave birth to her first child Ursula. On 26 December 1931, Gerda married Hans Harpuder in the synagogue on Fassanenstraße in Berlin which was subsequently destroyed on Kristallnacht or Reichspogromnacht. In 1934, her only son, Ralf was born in the Wilmersdorf neighborhood of Berlin. With the repression of Jews in Berlin only increasing, Gerda along with her husband, children, and mother, Selma, fled Berlin in 1939 for Shanghai, China. This was the last open city where they could enter without a visa having been declared stateless by the Third Reich. Her loving husband died in 1945 as a result of an infection caused by parasites due to the squalid conditions in which they lived. In 1947, Gerda, along with Ralf, Ursula, and Selma, were finally able to immigrate to the United States as a result of sponsorship by her brother. In the 1950s she married Victor Stummer, a refugee from Vienna (who was previously imprisoned at Dachau) who she had met in Shanghai. She settled in Los Angeles, California where she continued to live until her death in 1997. While living in the United States, she quickly made friends with fellow European Jewish immigrants who had fled the Nazis and attempted to maintain a European lifestyle. She enjoyed entertaining friends and her daily Kaffee und Kuchen. Until the early 1980’s she continued to cook almost exclusively German food. She liked being called Omi by her four grandchildren.

Documentation of the laying of the stones: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usbo…