Stumbling Stones Schiersteiner Straße 3

These small, brass, memorial plaques (stolpersteine or stumbling stones) commemorate:

* Irma Kaufmann née Kern, born 1901, deported 1942 to Lublin, murdered in Sobibor.
* Otto Klaus, born 1892, arrested 1934, imprisoned in Trier, admitted 1938 to ‘Heilenstalt’ Bendorf/Sayn, died 9 February 1939.

Otto Klaus was a business man in Wiesbaden married to Irma Kaufmann. Their daughter, Inga Weiner née Klaus, remembered him being taken away when she was 9 or 10. He returned in 1938 "a broken man" – missing all his gold teeth and fearful. "Every time the door bell rang – he would HIDE – afraid they would come and get him again." That same year, he was admitted to the only Jewish mental institution in Germany (called the Jacoby Institute). The following February, he died there. No official records of the cause of death or of his burial were seen, though his daughter stated that he was a "victim of hard labour" and thought he had died of a stroke.

In May 1939, Irma Kaufmann arranged for their daughter to be sent on a Kindertransport to England. Inga survived and eventually emigrated to the US. In 1995, she sent her testimony about her parents to Yad Vashem. She died in 2015.

"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."

Photos are by Lauren Weiner, their great-granddaughter.

For more information and pictures, please visit Stolpersteine Wiesbaden (in German).

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Source

• Text: Fedor de Vries & Anne Palmer
• Photos: Lauren Weiner
• Yad Vashem: testimony on Otto Klaus
• Bendorf: Jacoby Institute
• Stolpersteine.eu