Stumbling Stone Dresdener Strasse 95

This small, brass memorial plaque (Stolperstein or stumbling stone) commemorates:

* Fritz Heinrich Wolff, born 1891, "protective custody" 1938 Sachsenhausen, deported 1 March 1943, murdered in Auschwitz.

Fritz Wolff, an engineer and businessman, was arrested in 1933 and imprisoned for 3 months in Spandau for being a communist. The rest of the Wolff family fled to Palestine. He refused and stayed to manage the family’s successful fur business. However, in 1937, the Victoria Insurance Company foreclosed on the business mortgage and he was forced to sell to the German Railway. In 1938, after Kristallnacht, he was placed in so called protective custody (Schutzhaft) in Sachsenhausen and then was released because his brother Herbert Wolff guaranteed him a visa for Syria. Fritz stayed in Germany. He wrote to his brother on 31 May 1939: "I maintain that this whole quarrel is a love quarrel between nations … If there is ever any question about which nation I belong to, the only answer is Germany." He and 3 other Jews were living at Dresdener Straße when they all were rounded up in February 1943 and deported to Auschwitz.

Dina Gold, the grand niece of Fritz Wolf, had a stolperstein installed for him in 2015, after she had written a book about her family and her quest to find out what had happened to him and to the family’s property -- Stolen Legacy: Nazi Theft and the Quest for Justice at Krausenstrasse 17/18, Berlin.

"Stolpersteine" is an art project for Europe by Gunter Demnig to commemorate victims of National Socialism (Nazism). Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) are small, 10x10cm brass plaques placed in the pavement in front of the last voluntary residence of (mostly Jewish) victims who were murdered by the Nazis. Each plaque is engraved with the victim’s name, date of birth and place (mostly a concentration camp) and date of death. By doing this, Gunter Demnig gives an individual memorial to each victim. One stone, one name, one person. He cites the Talmud: "A human being is forgotten only when his or her name is forgotten."

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Source

• Text: Fedor de Vries & Anne Palmer
• Photos: OTFW, Berlin
• Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names
• Stolpersteine in Berlin: Fritz Heinrich Wolff
• Stolen Legacy
• Stolpersteine.eu