Sophiastraat 41

Felix Falk (64) and Käthe Falk-Ollendorff (64) lived at this address for over two years.
Felix was born on November 16, 1879 in Koschmin, Käthe on May 3, 1880 in Oels. At the end of July 1911 they were married in Wilmersdorf, now a district of Berlin. In May 1912 their daughter Nora Renate was born in Geneva.
Felix was an erudite man, the son of a rabbi. After high school he studied philosophy, literature, French history and art history. He had a doctorate, taught and published all kinds of text-critical studies. In 1934 the couple left unsafe Nazi Germany and settled in The Hague. Three years later their daughter Nora also came here. She is listed as a maid on her Jewish Council card.
The couple was forced to move to Gouda in November 1941, away from the coastal region. First to the Fluwelensingel and then in mid-June 1941 to the Sophiastraat 41. They lived in this house for more than two years, while the persecution became increasingly gruesome for the Jews. Even when almost all the Jewish inhabitants of Gouda had already been expelled at the end of April 1943, they lived here for four months.
In January 1943 the young couple Jan and Jeanne Blankert came to live with them upstairs. After her death Jeanne Blankert left a notebook in which she had written down her life history. She also kept a business card congratulating the Falk couple on her birthday on April 3, 1943. Jeanne's daughter recently found the business card and sent it to me. See attached photo. The Stolpersteine, requested for the Falk couple, have just been delivered to my home. Moving coincidence.
According to a report by policeman and Jew hunter Arie Oudenaarden, Felix and his wife Käthe were among the few "Jews and Jews who stayed behind who obtained a residence permit to continue to live in Gouda after April 23, 1943". Felix had been a front-line fighter during the First World War, perhaps this gave the couple some respite. The couple Christiaan and Rinske Souffree-Bokma van de Joubertstraat, friends with the Falks, offered them a hiding place at the start of the raids, but they thought they were protected, wrote Jeanne Blankert.
Felix "and Käthe's additional" residence permit "was unfortunately short-lived. At the beginning of September 1943 they received a summons for Westerbork and had to report to the station. They put a few boxes of things in the attic and asked the Blankerts to keep them for them. They were detained in Westerbork on 7 or 9 September. After a week their deportation to Theresienstadt followed. They were detained in this camp for a year, until they were further deported to Auschwitz in October 1944. Immediately upon arrival they were murdered, it was October 25, 1944.
Daughter Nora, like her parents, went to live in Gouda from The Hague at the end of November 1941, but at a different address. Then in June 1941 she moved to her parents in the Sophiastraat. At the end of July 1942 she married office clerk Sigbert (Arthur) Gerzon. She was detained with him in Westerbork for four months the following month and then released in December. Maybe because of Felix's front-line fighting. After that they lived for a few months with the parents (in-law) in the Sophiastraat.
The young couple had to go to Barneveld, still "relatively privileged" for Jews in mid-April 1943, and were imprisoned at Westerbork at the end of September 1943. A year later, in early September 1944, they, like Nora's parents, ended up in Theresienstadt. Felix and Käthe had already been detained here for a year. The parents had to go to Auschwitz at the end of October. There they were immediately murdered on October 25, 1944.
In the end, daughter Nora and her husband Arthur both survived the war. They were probably among the 1,200 Jews who were ransomed from Theresienstadt in February 1945 through the mediation of a Swiss politician. At the end of September 1945 they came to live in Gouda again. Jeanne Blankert wrote about them in a letter from a month earlier, on 31 August: “Last night the Souffrées came to visit with… Arthur and Nora. They hope to get a house in Gouda. They looked very good, but they also spent six months in Switzerland. They spent another 6 weeks with the old folks in Th.stadt. Then they left with the last transport from Th. left. Was Dr. F. If he had been 65 years old, he would not have hustled away. However, one month was still missing! Is not it awful! Nora was very happy that we had kept all kinds of things well. ”
In 1947 Arthur and Nora had a daughter. The marriage did not last. Nora continued to live in Gouda until she emigrated to Sweden in 1961 with her second husband. In April 1993 she died at the age of eighty in Zierikzee.
Two Stolpersteine in the sidewalk in front of this address now remind us of Felix Falk and Käthe Falk-Ollendorff.

یادشده در اینجا

آیا سنگی در اینجا آسیب دیده یا گم شده است؟ با ایمیل به ما خبر دهید