Oppenheim family
The von Oppenheim family is a well-known banking family from Cologne. They have distinguished themselves by their commitment to the emancipation of Jews in the Rhineland and Prussia. Furthermore, they made significant donations to the city of Cologne, including the construction of the synagogue in the Glockengasse, donations to the Cologne Cathedral and commitment to the infrastructure of the city of Cologne.
City walk Scheunenviertel (Berlin)
Around the Barn Quarter - An Eastern European Jewish Workers* History
City walk Leer (East Frisia)
We begin the tour on the traces of Jewish life in the city of Leer here in Heisfelder Straße 44, at the place where the large synagogue used to be. The first record of Jewish life in the town of Leer dates from 1611, and it is highly probable that the required number for a minyan (ten male worshippers) was first reached in 1650, which can thus be regarded as the founding year of the community. The Jewish community in Leer was the third largest in East Frisia. They still exist, the traces in the city that bear witness to Jewish life, but one has to look for them.
Samuel Steinfeld
Born in Breslau, Samuel Steinfeld began working as a vegetable wholesaler in Deblin, Poland. During the German occupation, his closest relatives were murdered. After the war, he stayed in Berlin and Dresden, trying to establish an economic existence. What we know about him comes mostly from his estate, which is in the archive of the Jewish Museum Berlin.
Martin Friedländer
Martin Friedländer was born in Berlin, the son of a Jewish merchant, followed a similar professional path as his father from 1934 onwards and began a commercial career in the clothing industry. Because he physically attacked a Gestapo informer who had betrayed his sister s hiding place, he was arrested in 1943, tortured, and obliged to do forced labor in railroad construction and garbage collection s. While one of his sisters and her child did not survive the Holocaust, Friedländer was liberated from Auschwitz.
Helene Zahn
Helene "Lola" Zahn (henceforth called Lola) is a communist and economist born in Hamburg in 1910 and daughter of the Russian-Jewish Lazar Golodetz and his wife Malka. She survived the Nazi period by emigrating to France and the United States, after which she went to the Soviet Occupation Zone/German Democratic Republic out of political conviction.
Charlotte Wolff
Charlotte Wolff was a versatile woman who demonstrated great strength, intelligence and courage in her life. During the second half of the 1920s, she worked as a doctor at the Berlin Charité. When she had to stop her work in 1933 due to the Nazi regime, and was arrested by the Gestapo - on suspicion of espionage as well as wearing men's clothing - for a short time, she fled to France. Since Charlotte Wolff was not allowed to work as a doctor in France, she earned her living by analyzing the character of people's hands.
Werner Händler
Werner Händler: A Voice of the GDR
Werner Händler (1920-2008) was an important radio journalist of the German Democratic Republic. He worked his entire professional life for the radio of the German Democratic Republic. As a political commentator, foreign and Bonn correspondent, he explained the world to his GDR audience and the GDR to foreign listeners*. Händler saw himself as a political journalist of the GDR. In doing so, Händler always remained true to the SED party line.