Family Max and Rosetta "Rika" Salomonson

Max Salomonson, born in 1892 in Nordhorn, ran a prosperous business in the Hauptstra;e, but died very early at the age of 41 in 1933. He was married to Rosetta „Rika“, born 1901 in Werlte Frank. Their daughter Ruth was born in Osnabrück in 1929. She first attended the Altendorf school, but in 1938 she had to leave, like all other Jewish students, because of the order that Jews were not allowed to attend German schools.“ Like the other Jüdische Schüler she attended from then on the castle school.

In the pogrom night 1938, the Jüdische Männer of Nordhorn was taken to the camp Oranienburg/Sachsenhausen near Berlin. All the Jewish wives then gathered at Rika Salomonson's house, and they agreed to do everything possible to bring the men back home, which they did in a relatively short time. Perhaps the reason is that almost all Jüdischen inhabitants of Nordhorn had already prepared their emigration papers.

Rika Salomonso ensured in any case that her daughter came as soon üover the border to Almelo  in the Netherlands; 1939 are both registered in Rotterdam – probably with the plan to emigrate to the United States. After the occupation of the Netherlands, however, they were taken to the Westerbork transit camp, from where they were sent to their deaths in Auschwitz in 1942. Mother and daughter died in Auschwitz-Birkenau in the same year.

In 1938, Rika Salomonson had to sell the property in Hauptstraße to an „Aryan“ butcher. Although notarially everything seemed to be legally correct, a great injustice happened: The Salomonson family never received even a penny of the purchase price; because all proceeds in the course of the persecution of the Jews were confiscated by the Reich on the basis of various decrees and used to arm the Wehrmacht.