Berthold Wolff

Berthold Wolff Park

Berthold Wolff (born February 26, 1901 in Simmerath ; † December 24, 1949 in Aachen ) was a textile merchant of the Jewish faith who was active in charities in Stolberg for a long time .

Berthold Wolff, high school graduate of the Goethe-Gymnasium in Stolberg, ran a successful textile shop in Steinweg. He was very popular because of his social commitment. Every year he dressed a poor girl and a poor boy for communion . In the Great Depression he had potatoes to the needy population split pound packs. He granted partial installments to unemployed and destitute families.

Wolff's path in life is exemplary of the fate of the small Jewish community in Stolberg in the first half of the 20th century , as it ceased to exist despite extensive assimilation through persecution during the Nazi era . The attempt by the SA to enforce the nationwide boycott of Jews in front of Wolff's shop on April 1, 1933, hurt him deeply. Because of the increasing persecution by the National Socialists, he left Stolberg in good time before the Reichspogromnacht in early 1938, after he had to sell his textile business well below value. He was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp . Later he came to Belgium , where he survived the war. Wolff died in Aachen and is buried in the Jewish cemetery "Trockener Weiher" in Stolberg.

Wolff's popularity has contributed to the fact that the fate of the Jewish community in Stolberg has increasingly entered public awareness since the second half of the 1980s . Today a green area on Rhenaniastraße is named after him as Berthold-Wolff-Park . Here in November 1941 the Gestapo had set up a camp for 121 Jewish forced laborers on the premises of Kali Chemie AG , who until June 1942 had to do 12 hours a day of forced labor in the neighboring factories and harassment of the local German employees who also worked as overseers , were exposed. The perpetrators have not been charged or convicted for their crimes.

literature

• Manfred Bierganz: The story of suffering of the Jews in Stolberg during the Nazi era. Stolberg 1989
• "... moved to Auschwitz" Stolberg: Stations of Nazi terror and persecution in a small town in the Rhineland. A documentation of Group Z - Future without xenophobia, fascism and war