Commemorative plaque on the Grünebaum house

After the city of Paderborn had Plexiglas plaques with information on the history of the buildings installed on various listed buildings at the end of the 1990s, the GCJZ initiated such a plaque for the former Steinberg & Grünebaum department store at Rathausplatz 7 in 2001. After experiencing marginalization in the city, Ludwig Grünebaum’s imprisonment in the Buchenwald concentration camp and the forced expropriation of their business, the members of the family were able to flee to the USA between 1937 and 1939 in time to avoid deportation by the National Socialists.

After the VerbundVolksbank OWL purchased the former Steinberg & Grünebaum department store on Rathausplatz from the Pötz community of heirs, who had acquired it during the Nazi era by expropriating the property of Jews, the eventful history of the Grünebaum house was shown in an exhibition in the summer of 2024 with the support of the city and district archives. In addition, the previously barely visible Plexiglas plaque on the front of the former department store was replaced by a plaque (image) with new text in a different location on the building. 30 descendants from four generations of the Grünebaum family from the USA, Israel and Germany traveled to Paderborn for the opening of the exhibition.