Wolff, Fritz Heinrich

"Whenever the question of my ethnicity is put to me, I can still only describe myself (as) belonging to the German people."
May 31, 1939 (excerpt from a letter from Fritz Wolff to his brother Herbert in Palestine)

Fritz Wolff was born on October 4, 1891, the second son of the Kommerzienrat Victor Wolff. Victor Wolff owned one of the largest and most successful fur trading houses in Germany, H. Wolff AG, with headquarters at Krausenstrasse 17/18 in Berlin-Mitte.

Fritz Wolff took up engineering studies. He detested the luxurious lifestyle of his parents and brother and joined the Communist Party. After the Reichstag fire in 1933, he was among those arbitrarily arrested and held for three months in "protective custody" in Spandau Penitentiary along with KPD and SPD members and deputies as well as prominent writers and intellectuals. During his imprisonment, his brother Herbert left Berlin and fled to the safe country of Palestine, where his wife and three children followed him a few months later.

After his release from prison in May 1933, Fritz and his non-Jewish wife Charlotte Schwarz moved to Hermsdorf, where Charlotte died of cancer in the apartment on Stolper Weg in December 1933. In early 1934 Fritz moved to Bernau-Eichwerder to Scheffelstraße (parcel 450) and in 1938 to Zepernick to Bachstraße 8. Fritz remained in Berlin to oversee the main office of the family business at Krausenstraße 17/18. In the meantime, the building had been rented to well-known Jewish textile merchants. When Victoria-Versicherung (founded in 1853 as Allgemeine Eisenbahn-Versicherungs-Gesellschaft) cancelled the mortgage prematurely in 1937, Fritz Wolff was forced to hand over the building to the Reichsbahn.

In consequence of the Reich Pogrom Night on November 9/10, 1938 (also known as "Kristallnacht") Fritz was arrested again and taken into "protective custody" on November 22 in Sachsenhausen as prisoner No. 13677, category: Jew. He was released on December 6, 1938, on the condition that he leave Germany. His brother vouched that he could obtain for Fritz a visa for the French protectorate of Syria. Instead of emigrating, Fritz moved to Dresdener Straße 97 in early 1939. A photo from the early 1920s shows the house as Fritz knew it before it was destroyed toward the end of the war. Fritz was living here in a shared apartment when the census was taken in May 1939. Among the documents was a "Supplementary Card for Information on Ancestry and Previous Education," which had to be filled out for all persons belonging to the household. All residents of the apartment in Dresdener Straße - including Fritz Wolff - stated that they had four Jewish grandparents.

To date, no clue has been found as to where Fritz Wolff was employed as a forced laborer. He lived at Dresdener Straße 97 until he was picked up as part of the "factory action" on February 27, 1943, deported to Auschwitz on March 1, and murdered.
Fritz Wolff was proud to be a German. His unswerving loyalty was repaid with persecution and murder.

---

This text was written by:
. Dina Gold (grandniece of Fritz Wolff) 
Translation:Mary Bianchi