An emotional double-whammy for our second Stolperstein Sunday…
The story of Martin & Sonja Fleischmann, a father and daughter living on Stockholmer Straße in Wedding, really rams home the tragedy of Jewish life in Nazi Berlin.
Sonja Fleischmann lived with her parents in a flat at Stockholmer Straße 29. Her father Martin was Jewish and he owned a prosperous textile company. Her mother Elli Fleischmann was ‘Aryan’.
Sonja’s story, much like her life, is short and tragic. History simply records her fate as follows: “Following a verbal altercation with local Hitler Youth members, Sonja was brutally beaten in front of her house and died shortly afterwards from her injuries.”
Most likely, Sonja’s ‘crime’ was simply being the daughter of a successful Jewish businessman. Still, the fact that a verbal altercation was enough to get an 8 year old girl killed in 1935 shows that Jews could be killed on a whim long before the official state policy of mass-murder was enacted.
If suffering the loss of Sonja wasn’t enough, Martin & Elli faced increasing levels of persecution over the next years. Elli was constantly under pressure to divorce Martin, and in 1938 Martin was forced to close his business.
From 1941 he was forced to work as a tailor sewing buttons for Wehrmacht uniforms. He earned a paltry sum of 50 pence per hour, working 10 hours a day.
Martin was saved from deportation only due to his marriage to an Aryan; nevertheless, after September 1941, he was required to wear the Jewish star and subsequently could only receive minimal food rations. From 1942 he received no coal rations at all.
In May 1944 their son Michael was born, but only two months later Martin’s story would come to a tragic end.
On the 21st of July (one day after the Stauffenberg attempt on Hitler’s life) a group of local SA men attended a meeting on nearby Koloniestraße, and one of them, Erwin Benkendorf, vowed to kill Martin before he was sent to the front.
He fulfilled this vow.
The SA men dragged Martin out of his flat to the nearby Soldiner Brücke, where they brutally assaulted him. Martin was left unconscious on the banks of the river Panke below.
As the beating took place a group of onlookers assembled, and even the Police turned up, but no one intervened. After the assault, Martin was taken to the local Jüdisches Krankenhaus, and when Elli visited him she could barely recognise him. On the 1st of August Martin died from his injuries.
Elli and baby Michael survived the war by hiding in Berlin – the pair only returned to their family home on Stockholmer Straße after the war.
Martin’s killers were eventually brought to justice, with two men from the group – Erwin Benkendorf and Willy Böhme – spending 6 and 7 years in prison respectively.
Martin’s son Michael said that long after the war he still felt persecuted for being the son of a Jew, detailing how he often faced threats and even physical beatings from boys he reported to be the grandchildren of his father’s murderers.
For Sonja’s complete story (in German) visit her entry on the Stolpersteine homepage
For Martin’s complete stories (in German), visit his entry on the Stolpersteine homepage
(this is a repost from Instagram from March 24th, 2024)