Selma Latz née Pander

Location 
Yorckstraße 60
District
Kreuzberg
Stone was laid
22 March 2014
Born
25 February 1866 in Berlin
Deportation
on 31 August 1942 to Theresienstadt
Murdered
08 September 1942 in Theresienstadt
Selma Latz, née Pander, was born on 25 February 1866 in Berlin. In 1906 she moved into an apartment at Yorck Strasse 60 with her husband, Wilhelm Latz, born on 28 April 1859 in Posen (today Poznań, Poland), who owned the building. They did not have any children. Wilhelm Latz died on 1 April 1921 and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery at Weissensee. His gravestone, which had collapsed and was hidden by earth and leaves, was found by members of the Stolperstein initiative group and re-erected.

Selma Latz remained proprietor of the building until she sold it on 6 January 1923 to a Jewish community association from Innsbruck.

Due to the Nazis’ anti-Jewish measures, in particular the “Decree on the Use of Jewish Assets” of 3 December 1938, the new owners were forced to sell the building to an “Aryan” in 1938.

After the war, the property was placed under the trustee management of Victoria insurance company. Following restitution proceedings that lasted six years, it was transferred back to the Jewish owners on 11 June 1956, as ruled by the Berlin regional court.

Selma Latz lived in a 4-room ground floor apartment at Yorck Strasse 60 until her deportation to Theresienstadt on 31 August 1942. In her “declaration of assets”, which the Gestapo required all deportees to complete, she stated: “I have no tenancy agreement. If the house is sold, my life-long, non-cancellable tenancy arrangement is legally written into the sale agreement.”

In 1938 Selma Latz was evidently forced to take in Jewish subtenants who had been evicted from their previous homes. Margarete Meyer (see Meyer) and Richard and Reha Redelmeier (see Redelmeier) were registered as subtenants of Selma Latz.

Selma Latz was 76 years old when she was deported with one of the “transports of the elderly” to Theresienstadt. Some 100 people were transported in a separate carriage attached to a regular passenger train on 31 August 1942. Only one of those on board survived. Selma Latz died a few days after her arrival in Theresienstadt, on 8 September 1942. Her death notice was issued in Theresienstadt: The doctor in charge diagnosed “enteritis” (inflammation of the intestine).