List of stumbling blocks in Wittstock / Dosse

Stumbling blocks for the Mendelsohn family, who were able to emigrate to Shanghai

In the list of the stumbling blocks in Wittstock / Dosse existing memorials are listed in the framework of the project pitfalls of the artist Gunter Demnig been in Wittstock / Dosse have been displaced. They are dedicated to the victims of National Socialism , all those who were harassed, deported, murdered, emigrated or driven to suicide by the Nazi regime.

On March 24, 2014, Gunter Demnig gave a lecture in the city about the stumbling blocks. The transfers took place the next day. Students from grammar school and from the Dr. Wilhelm Polthier Oberschule quoted texts about the pogrom night in Wittstock / Dosse and laid flowers on the stumbling blocks.

Jewish history of Wittstock and Rossow

Jews are said to have lived temporarily in Wittstock as early as the late Middle Ages. From the second half of the 18th century, Jewish families settled permanently in the city. Around 1810 a Jewish cemetery was laid out in front of the Kyritzer Tor. The area was surrounded with a wall. The Jewish community is said to have reached its highest level around the middle of the 19th century. From 1857 there was a prayer room in the center of the city on St. Marienstrasse. The walls of the house synagogue were decorated with wall frescoes with blue floral ornaments. These paintings are among the last evidence of Jewish life in Wittstock. At the end of the 1920s, only eleven Jewish citizens lived here, which is why the prayer room was abandoned. At the beginning of the 1930s there were still three shops in Wittstock that were run by Jews; in 1938 only one was left. After the National Socialists came to power in January 1933, the Jewish cemetery was desecrated. The last two Jewish families who lived in Wittstock, the Mendelsohns and the Rehfischs, were forced to emigrate. They were able to escape to Shanghai.

In 1952 a memorial stone was erected on the former cemetery area, which had been leveled. In 1958, numerous documents on the city's Jewish history were lost in a fire in the city archive. In 2014 five stumbling blocks were laid.

The Jewish history in the village of Rossow , which has been part of the Wittstock commune since 2003, has not yet been processed .

Laying stumbling blocks

image	inscription	address	Short biography
	ERICH MENDELSOHN JG LIVED HERE . 1901 'PROTECTIVE' 1938 SACHSENHAUSEN ESCAPE 1939 SHANGHAI SURVIVED	Marketplace	Erich Mendelsohn
	HERE LIVED JILLY Mendelsohn GEB. WARSAW JG. 1902 ESCAPE 1939 SHANGHAI SURVIVED	Marketplace	Jilly Mendelsohn b. Warsaw
	HERE LIVED LORE Mendelsohn JG. 1936 ESCAPED 1939 SHANGHAI SURVIVED	Marketplace	Lore Mendelsohn
	HERE LIVED GERHARD Rehfisch JG. 1901 'SCHUTZHAFT' 1938 SACHSENHAUSEN ESCAPE 1939 SHANGHAI DEAD 12.8.1940	Marketplace	Gerhard Rehfisch
	HERE LIVED Hedwig Rehfisch GEB. FUCHS JG. 1876 ESCAPE 1939 SHANGHAI SURVIVED	Marketplace	Hedwig Rehfisch born Fox

Commemoration

On the occasion of the return of the so-called Reichskristallnacht , the alliance “Wittstock shows its colors” invited to a memorial event in front of the Stolpersteine ​​on November 9, 2016. Subsequently, the film Zug des Lebens by Radu Mihaileanu was shown in the Catharina-Dänicke-Haus (House of Encounters) , a tragic comedy about the persecution of Jews under National Socialism. There were also commemorative events in 2017 and 2018.

Web links

Commons : Stolpersteine ​​in Wittstock  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Project website by the artist Gunter Demnig

Individual evidence

1. ^ City of Wittstock / Dosse: Worthy remembrance of Nazi victims , March 26, 2014
2. ^ Stadt Wittstock / Dosse: First stumbling blocks against forgetting in Wittstock , accessed on August 4, 2019
3. ↑ ^{a b} From the history of the Jewish communities in the German-speaking area Wittstock / Dosse (Brandenburg) , accessed on November 27, 2018
4. ^ City of Wittstock / Dosse: Never again racism, never again indifference! , November 7, 2016

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