Stumbling Stone Freiheitsstraße 1

This memorial stone (Stolperstein or stumbling block) commemorates:
* Netty Dreier née Fuchs, born 1889, deported 1942, Theresienstadt, murdered in Auschwitz.

Netty Fuchs and Max Dreier, both born in Poland, moved separately to Germany, where they married and had three children. Max Dreier ran a cattle business. As life became more difficult under the Nazis, the children emigrated – Ludwig and his wife to South Africa in 1936, Martin to England in 1939, and Edith and her husband to Sweden. Max and Netty Dreier remained in Cottbus.

In April 1942, Max Dreier was deported to the Warsaw Ghetto. Yad Vashem shows he was also in Sachsenhausen and that he was murdered in Berlin on 24 July 1942.

Netty Dreier was on the last transport from Cottbus: she was taken to Theresienstadt on 25 August 1942. Two years later, she was deported again – this time on the ninth of 11 transports out of Theresienstadt between 28 September and 28 October that carried over 18,000 people to their deaths in Auschwitz. The train she was on left Theresienstadt with 1,500 people on 19 October 1944 and arrived in Auschwitz the next day.

The USHMM website (see source below) has correspondence between Max and Netty and their children, including a postcard from Netty written in her last month in Theresienstadt.

"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: wie-wolf
• Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names
• LR Online, 22 July 2014: Abschied ohne Wiederkehr und einsames Sterben
• Yad Vashem Deportation Database
• Stolpersteine.eu