Stumbling Stone Lessingstraße 10

This memorial (Stolperstein or Stumbling stone) commemorates :

* Dr. Rudolf Caspary, born 1893, deported 1944, Auschwitz, ???

Dr. Rudolf Caspary was a Prussian district court judge until his right to practice was revoked in 1933 or 1935. He was described by a Holocaust survivor as "an educated and intelligent conversationalist and a man of great spiritual reserve." He obtained and gave two official blank identity documents for that survivor, Herbert Strauss, the author of In the Eye of the Storm, and for Herbert’s friend, Ernst Ludwig Erlich. Both young men managed to escape to Switzerland in May-June 1943. After being arrested, Dr. Caspary was deported on 09 March 1944 on the 50th Osttransport from Berlin to Auschwitz. On arrival, 26 of the 32 deportees were sent to the gas chamber, and the rest were sent to forced labor. Only one of the original 32 is known to have survived the war.

Dr. Rudolf Caspary’s name is on the Memorial Plaque for Judges and Public Prosecutors at Kronenstraße 73-74 in Berlin-Mitte.

"Stolpersteine" is an art project for Europe by Gunter Demnig to commemorate victims of National Socialism (Nazism). Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) are small, 10x10cm brass plaques placed in the pavement in front of the last voluntary residence of (mostly Jewish) victims who were murdered by the Nazis. Each plaque is engraved with the victim’s name, date of birth, and place (mostly a concentration camp) and date of death. By doing this, Gunter Demnig gives an individual memorial to each victim. One stone, one name, one person. He cites the Talmud: "A human being is forgotten only when his or her name is forgotten."

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Source

• Text: Fedor de Vries & Anne Palmer
• Photos: Doris Antony
• In the Eye of the Storm: Growing Up Jewish in Germany, 1918-1943 by Herbert Arthur Strauss, pp. 239 -241
• Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names
• Yad Vashem Deportation Database
• Stolpersteine.eu