The Jewish
Community
of
Laupheim
and its
Annihilation
Book Pages 537 - 551
WALLACH,
Karl,
Mail
order company for undergarments, 42
Kapellenstrasse
Translated by:
Minou Moschtaghi, Katharina Beier, Anna Krogmann, Hannah Kehl, Katharina Kühner
Supervisor: Dr. Robynne Flynn-Diez,
Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg,
Institut für Übersetzen und Dolmetschen
Englischabteilung
DR . ANTJE
KÖHLERSCHMIDT
Kalman, known as Karl, Wallach,
born June 20, 1883 in Bledowa/Galicia, died July 13, 1942 in Auschwitz,
OO
Rosa Wallach, née Schneeweiß,
born April 15, 1886 in Rzeszow, died May 24, 1942 in Laupheim.
- Charlotte Wallach,
born August 27, 1908 in Munich, survived the
Shoa in Hungary
- Leopold/Luitpold Wallach,
born February 6, 1910 in Munich, 1939 immigration to the USA
- Saly Wallach,
born November 16, 1912 in Munich, January 27, 1938 immigration to the
USA
- Betty Wallach,
born May 4, 1915 in Laupheim, died 1944 in KZ Stutthof.
Relative of Rosa Wallach: Louis Snow, born March 15, 1871,
January 15, 1939 immigration to Philadelphia, USA.
First of all, it has to be mentioned that the history of the Wallach family and
their fate during the Shoa are one of the most complex of the Jewish community in
Laupheim. Two of the children and a relative managed to save their lives by
emigrating, while one daughter could survive by hiding from the Nazis in
Hungary. The youngest daughter and the father were deported and murdered. The
mother escaped this fate due to a severe illness which eventually led to her
death in Laupheim. More detailed information concerning the family will be
provided in the course of this chapter.
Because
of their origin, the Wallach couple had an extraordinary position amongst the
Jewish families who had been rooted in
Laupheim over many generations. They were both from Galicia, a Polish-speaking
region which belonged to the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of
the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Kalman Wallach,
usually called Karl, was born on June 20, 1883 in Bledowa and had been living in
the German Empire since 1901. His wife Rosa Schneeweiß was born on April 15,
1886 in Rzeszow where the young couple also got married on October 9, 1907. Then
they moved to Munich where their first daughter, Charlotte, was born on August
27, 1908. Kalman Wallach is listed in the city directory from 1910 with the
address 11 Fraunhoferstrasse and in the city directory from 1913 with the
address 23 Sommerstrasse.
On February 6, 1910, their only son Leopold was born in Munich. The Wallach
family moved to Laupheim in 1913 after their daughter Saly, their third child,
was born on November 16, 1912. It was impossible to find out how they had earned
their living in Munich and why they moved to Laupheim. In fact, they had no
relatives in Swabia. Betty, born on May 4, 1915, was the only one of the four
siblings to be born in Laupheim. According to the
Adress- und Geschäftshandbuch (the
city’s address and business directory) from 1925 the family probably lived in
rented accommodation at 54 Ulmer Strasse.1
Karl Wallach, father of four and only breadwinner of the family, marched into
World War I on August 14, 1915, even though he did not have German citizenship
at that time. This demonstrates how anxious he was to integrate into the German
society and how patriotic he had already become. He served as an officer’s chef
in the field artillery regiment 56 on the Front of Tyrol. After the defeat of
World War I he was a prisoner of war in Italy and it is from here that he
returned to Laupheim in December 1919.2
When applying for the family’s citizenship in
Wurttemberg in the late 1920s, he declared that the family of his wife Rosa
Wallach, née Schneeweiß, had originally lived in Austria before immigrating to
Galicia. Owing to the territorial changes stipulated in the Treaty of
Versailles, Galicia belonged to Poland. Therefore, the Wallach family had Polish
citizenship. In the course of the naturalization process they were released from
their former citizenship and obtained Wurttemberg citizenship in 1930.3
In Laupheim the family earned their living with a so-called mail order
company for undergarments and hosiery which Rosa and Karl Wallach had first
opened at 54 Ulmer Strasse. In 1925 they relocated their shop to Kapellenstrasse
and continued running their business in the erster Stock (second floor)
of the tavern Zum Kreuz. As the illustrated bill shows, they later ran
their shop in their own house at 42 Kapellenstrasse. Their product range
included fabrics but also finished goods such as shirts, trousers, socks, and
stockings. Rosa Wallach worked in the shop as well. According to contemporary
witnesses in Laupheim she spoke only broken German.4
In the 1920s the Wallach family owned one of the few cars in Laupheim, an Opel
“Limousine” (sedan) of the 4-tax-horsepower selection, which was produced
between 1924 and 1927. The car, as well as the purchase of their house at 42
Kapellenstrasse, were their business investments of the so-called Golden
Twenties. In retrospect this demonstrates that their commercial as well as their
financial situation must have been quite positive. Since October 1927 Karl
Wallach also employed Alois Ruf from Schönebürg as his personal chauffeur. The
car was used for business trips to Bavaria where they visited hotels and guest
houses to obtain orders for equipping them with bed linens, table linens and
towels.
(„Laupheimer
Verkündiger“,
January 17, 1925)
(Lauph.
Verkündiger,
January 17, 1925) (city
address and business directory
1925)
Karl Wallach (left) next to his Opel
Laubfrosch (Archive Ernst Schäll)
Apart from that they had been supplying the people from surrounding villages
with white goods. A former customer from Wain still praised their quality in
the 1960s. For many inhabitants of Laupheim’s rural area this kind of
shopping was typical and easy since a lot of them did not have a car and
therefore were clearly limited in their mobility.
Nevertheless, the economic problems caused by the world economic crisis of
1929 also affected the region of Laupheim. Therefore, in December 1930 Karl
Wallach had no other choice but to dismiss his chauffeur Alois Ruf who had
already told his children about the antisemitism that Karl Wallach had had
to face during their trips.
5
As already mentioned, Rosa and Karl Wallach each bought one half of the
house at 42 Kapellenstrasse (since 1968 number 41) in June 1928 from Leo
Mörsch, a foreman from Laupheim. At that time the property comprised the
house and a courtyard of 212 square meters (2,282 ft²) as well as a
vegetable garden of 40 square meters (430 ft²). However, the house itself is
much older and was probably built around 1861. The purchase price amounted
to 14,000 German gold mark which they paid by raising different mortgages as
is still common today. The Gewerbebank
Laupheim, today’s Volksbank
Laupheim, and the Israelite parish in Laupheim granted them a mortgage of
6,000 German gold mark.6
42/43 Kapellenstrasse back then … 43 Kapellenstrasse today
The four children of the Wallach family, Charlotte, Leopold, Saly, and
Betty, had a carefree childhood in the Jewish community of Laupheim and all
attended the Jewish Volksschule
(basic primary school and secondary school) on Radstrasse and later changed
to the local Real- und Lateinschule
(secondary modern school and Latin school) where they also had Christian
classmates. Obviously, education played a crucial role for the Wallachs.
In contrast to Leopold and Betty, not much is known about Charlotte’s and
Saly’s further lives.
Charlotte
The only thing we were able to find out about the oldest daughter Charlotte
was that she worked as a clerk at the company Steiger in Burgrieden at the
end of the 1920s. The picture, which was probably taken during that time,
shows her as an elegant young woman standing in front of the old Jewish
houses on the Judenberg hill in
Laupheim. Characteristic for these houses were the annexes which were added
to provide more living space for the growing families.
Leopold
According to his classmate Josef Braun (1909-2004), Leopold Wallach was a
“highly talented pupil” who completed the Mittlere Reife
(intermediate school certificate) in 1926 as “the best of the class” at the
Latein- und Realschule in Laupheim. Afterwards he attended the
Oberrealschule in Ulm where he passed the Reifeprüfung (high
school leaving examination) as stated in the newspaper Laupheimer
Verkündiger from March 2, 1929. Leopold Wallach was known for wearing
round glasses all his life which always made it easy to recognize him,
especially in photos. It should also be mentioned that he obtained the
academic title Dr. phil (PhD) on November 12, 1932 with his studies
Studien zur Chronik Bertholds von Zwiefalten at the Faculty of
History at the University of Tübingen.
He completed his studies at the Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin with
his thesis Leopold Zunz und die Grundlegung der Wissenschaft des
Judentums: Über den Begriff einer jüdischen Wissenschaft, which he
finished in 1936 and published in 1938.
In the 1950s he continued working on both theses, as he specialized in
Jewish studies throughout his entire career.
“Thereupon I (Leopold Wallach - author’s note) enrolled in two fields of
study: a) I studied History and Philosophy at the universities of Berlin
and Tübingen and b) at the same time I studied Jewish Philosophy at the
Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin, Artilleriestrasse. In November
1932, I obtained the title Dr.
phil (PhD) in History at the University of Tübingen and a few
years later the Rabbinic Diploma at the mentioned university.”
7
1931: Leopold
Wallach, right
(Hyneck,
Mrs.
Zorn)
Saly
Saly successfully finished the final exam at the Latein- und Realschule
in Laupheim in March 1929 and after that she apparently started working in a
commercial profession. According to the Oberamt of Wurttemberg she
worked as a clerk in a company based in Ulm. The city’s directory of Jewish
inhabitants from the year 1933 states that Saly was unmarried at that time
and lived at 9 Marktplatz in Ulm.
Saly Kenig, née Wallach, is registered in the directory of emigrated Jewish
citizens of Ulm. In accordance with her brother’s statement, she managed to
immigrate to the USA in 1938 and to have an affidavit issued for her brother
Luitpold so that he could leave the country as well, whereas their parents
and their younger sister Betty were less fortunate.
8
Betty
Betty is the family’s youngest child and the only one born in Laupheim. She
probably went to the Jewish Volksschule on Radstrasse from 1922 to
1926. During her schooldays, i.e. from 1924 onwards, the school was
continued as a private institution by the teacher Wilhelm Kahn and under the
direction of Wurttemberg’s Israelite senior assistant professor. The number
of pupils had become too few for the school to be a publicly financed
denominational school, which also explains how it was possible to combine
four different grades into a single one.
After having attended the Volksschule she changed to the
Realschule (junior high school) where Latin classes were offered. A
Schulbericht über den Stand des Religionsunterrichts im Schuljahr 1926/27
(school report on the status of religious education in 1926/27) by the
previously mentioned teacher Kahn (filed away in the state archives of
Sigmaringen) points out that the Israelite religious education was taught in
combined classes from grade 1 to 3 and 4 to 6. In total six pupils, three
boys and three girls, from the first to the third grade of the mentioned
school participated in the Israelite religious education. Aside from Betty
Wallach, a girl named Gretel Bergmann, who was one year older and in the
third grade, was also part of this group. Not only were they taught
religious and biblical history but also Hebrew, i.e. reading and writing as
well as translating prayers. The final grade of this class was part of the
report card.
Betty Wallach (second/front left) and her class mates of the
Realschule in front of
the school building on Rabenstrasse, fall 1927.
(Photo: Bilderkammer, museum)
This picture from 1928 shows the harmonica orchestra of the Realschule.
Betty, smiling mischievously, is standing next to Mr. Braun, the
Studienassessor (antiquated term for an official teacher who has not
completed the second state exam). The photograph proves how normal
collaboration between Christian and Israelite children was at that time.
During the academic year 1928/29, Betty was the only Israelite child in the
third grade, which consisted of 16 pupils altogether. She was very talented
in languages and got her best grades in German and French. Mrs. Braun
remembered Betty as “an especially kind girl” who helped her classmates
learning French. According to the regular education scheme of 5 to 6 years,
Betty must have finished the Realschule in 1930/31 or 1931/32. At
that time, it was no longer possible for her to complete further
professional training.
9
The photograph shows the entire Wallach family in the 1920s. Rosa and
Karl are sitting and Betty is standing next to them. In the background
from left to right: Saly, Charlotte, Louis, and Leopold Wallach. Rosa
Wallach’s relative, Louis Snow, probably lived together with them for
some time until he immigrated to Philadelphia/USA in January 1935.
The time after 1933
According to a decree issued by the Ministry of the Interior on August 21,
1933 the proceedings for withdrawing unwelcomed naturalizations that
occurred between November 9, 1918 and January 30, 1933 had already begun in
November 1933. In Laupheim this proceeding was conducted against both Karl
Wallach and his family and against the Czech, Artur Grab, and his family.
The administrative result is no longer on file, though the fate of both
affected families is well known.
In 1936, after obtaining the Rabbinic Diploma, Leopold Wallach was appointed
the last district rabbi of Göppingen by the Israelite Oberrat in
Stuttgart. He held this position from 1937 to 1939. On November 9/10, 1938,
during the so-called Reichskristallnacht, he was detained and
deported to the concentration camp in Dachau. The same happened to his father Karl Wallach in Laupheim.
Like 16 other Jewish men, he was arrested by the SA in Laupheim and brought
to the burning synagogue where they were harassed and afterwards held in
prison overnight before they were eventually deported to the Dachau
concentration camp. It is very likely that Karl Wallach met his son Rabbi
Leopold Wallach there. On December 17, 1938 Karl Wallach, as well as Max
Obernauer and Siegfried Kurz, were finally released from Dachau on the
condition that they emigrate as soon as possible.
Leopold’s sister, Saly, helped him to immigrate to the USA in August 1939.
Initially he worked as a transport worker who helped to unload ships and
then from 1940 to 1948 he was employed as a rabbi in different American
parishes.10
Karl Wallach demonstrably endeavored to collect all the documents needed for
immigration, e.g. a tax clearance certificate from the tax authority in
Laupheim. However, that became more difficult after the
Reichsprogromnacht in November 1938. As stated in the following
instructions, the Wallach’s business was one of the last to be dissolved on
December 22, 1938 due to the Aryanization of the German economy:
From the Chamber of Industry and Commerce Ulm to the Landrat
(head of the district authority)
in Biberach on December 8, 1938:
“I. In reference to the order concerning the exclusion of Jews from the
German economy of November 23, 1938 and in reference to the express
letter no. III Jd 9416/38 of November 26, 1938 issued by the
Reichsminister of Economics.
In compliance with the above-mentioned, the dissolution and liquidation
of Jewish retail businesses, mail order companies, and order offices
shall be carried out as soon as possible. …
II. In the district of Biberach
the following businesses are affected:
2.
Kalman Wallach, textiles business in Laupheim, 42 Kapellenstrasse. The
business is to be dissolved. It is not considered necessary for securing
the population’s supply in this area.
The position of expert is planned to be taken on by Max Wetzel, owner of
the company Richard Wetzel in Laupheim.”
11
The sale of their house on July 25, 1939 to the master butcher Hatzelmann
and his wife for 14,000 Reichsmark can surely be seen in connection
with this decree. The purchase price was offset against their mortgage debt,
which, strictly speaking, makes the sale a foreclosure. The anti-Semitic
campaigns since 1933, starting with the boycott of Jewish businesses and
ending with the complete exclusion of Jews from the German economy, had
taken away the Wallach’s financial livelihood. The purchase agreement for
their home granted them the right to keep using the two rear rooms and the
kitchen on the second floor during the following three months for a monthly
rent of 20 Reichsmark. In case they had not left the country by then
or had not found another suitable accommodation, the contracting partners
would have discussed prolonging the tenancy after that period. Despite their
efforts, Betty, Rosa, and Karl Wallach did not manage to emigrate. In
October 1941, the city of Laupheim forced the Wallach couple to leave their
home and resettled them to the shacks at 3 Wendelinsgrube.
The years from 1932 until 1941 reflect Betty Wallach’s unsteady and eventful
path of life, which led her back to Upper Swabia time and time again from
abroad and other German places. The repressive Nazi regime documented her
migration precisely. Accordingly, Betty Wallach stayed in Laupheim in 1934.
In December 1934 she left for Italy and returned in November 1935.
From April to October 1937 Betty lived in Stuttgart before she returned to
her parents in Laupheim.
On July 20, 1939 the tax office in Laupheim reported to the
Gestapo in Stuttgart that she had
applied for a tax clearance certificate to arrange for departure to New
York, USA, in which Betty and her parents weren’t going to be successful. In
April 1940, Betty moved to Herrlingen in order to work there as a domestic
servant. Already in June 1940 she returned to Laupheim.
In the same year in September, the Gestapo gave her the permission to
move to 54 Beyerstrasse in Ulm. According to Betty’s request from July 23,
1940 she should become the domestic servant and nurse of an 85 year old
Jewish woman named Fanny “Sara” Schlesinger from Ulm, who was born on July
31, 1855. She had been diagnosed with gastric and colon cancer and therefore
needed somebody to take care of her. The mayor of Ulm informed the
Kreisleitung of the NSDAP
(regional authority of the Nazi Party) that “If we refuse the request,
there is a risk that either an older person of German blood will have to
take care of the old Schlesinger or that she will have to be hospitalized.”
Finally, the request was approved. On the basis of current knowledge, it
seems as if Ulm was Betty’s last place of work and residence before her
deportation. On August 22, 1942, the 87-year-old Fanny Schlesinger was also
deported from Ulm to Theresienstadt on the third transport.12
Resi Weglein, a Jewish woman from Ulm who survived the Holocaust, remembered
that the 26 year old Betty Wallach was among the Jewish people who were
called together at the Schwörhaus in Ulm on November 28, 1941. A bus
transported them and their luggage first to the Killesberg in
Stuttgart where Jews from all over Wurttemberg were held in a camp. In
addition to the 20 Jews from Ulm, there were two more from the nursing home
Heggbach and 19 Jews from Laupheim, among which her parents, Rosa and
Karl Wallach, were originally supposed to be. The Gestapo herded them
together in the hall “Ehrenhalle des Reichsnährstandes“, where they
had to sleep on mattresses arranged in 8 rows with 125 people each. During
the night of November 30, trucks brought them to the main station where they
were crammed in unheated waggons. In the early morning, the train left the
northern railway station in Stuttgart with 1,013 Jews from Wurttemberg. The
Gestapo guarded the train during the ride eastwards which lasted
three days and nights. On December 4, 1941, it arrived at the railway
station Skirotawa in Riga. SS members brought the Jewish deportees to the
Jungfernhof camp, which was located 2 to 3 kilometres (about 1.5 miles)
away from the railway station. A smaller number of people were brought to
the Riga Ghetto. Being a young and healthy woman, Betty Wallach withstood
the inhumane living conditions for years. She also escaped the countless
firing squads. On August 6, 1943 Betty and other female prisoners of the
Reichsjudenghetto Riga were probably handed over to the KZ Stutthof,
which is located 35 kilometres away from Gdańsk.
The camps of the Baltic States were evacuated by the advancing Red Army. “In
spring 1944, a gas chamber was built (in the KZ Stutthof, author’s note),
which was used to delouse clothes and from that summer on also to gas
people. However, the gas chamber in Stutthof was small and did not have
sufficient capacity. Therefore, the Jewish people were gassed in
hermetically sealed waggons of the local railway leading to the camp.”
Already in a letter dated December 23, 1946 Lotte Borek-Wallach from Vienna
informed Katharina Harder in Laupheim about the for her inconceivable news
that “my little sister Betty was deported to Riga and then gassed in
Stutthof”. Her brother Luitpold Wallach confirmed this in an essay from
1982.13
After their forced relocation in October 1941 to the shack at 3
Wendelinsgrube, Karl and Rosa Wallach were already listed for the first
deportation of Jews from Biberach to Riga with the transport numbers 803 and
804. Due to Rosa’s severe illness, the Nazis allowed her and her husband to
stay in the shack at 3 Wendelinsgrube.
It was the place where Rosa Wallach passed away half a year later on May 24,
1942 without having received any medical attention. She was buried in the
Jewish graveyard in Laupheim (grave S30/1).
For Karl Wallach the postponement meant being able to care for his ill wife
and to say goodbye to her. However, there was no escape, neither for him nor
for the other remaining Jews in Laupheim. Karl Wallach, together with Arthur
and Luise Grab from Laupheim, and 10 other inhabitants of the nursing home
Heggbach were brought to the train
station Westbahnhof in Stuttgart
on July 10, 1942 from where they were deported to the Auschwitz
concentration camp on July 13, 1942. According to a statement of
Wurttemberg’s Israelite religious community from February 18, 1948, the
train has come to be regarded as lost after its departure from Chemnitz.
14
After 1945
Leopold Wallach, who now called himself Luitpold, had to write a new thesis
since his German PhD was not accepted. Afterwards, he started his career as
a Professor of the Classics in the Department of Classics at Illinois State
University in Urbana. Now being a Medieval Latin philologist and historian,
he published studies on the Carolingian history and literature among other
things. In 1957 Luitpold Wallach published a new and improved version of
“Die Chronik des Berthold von Zwiefalten” about whom he wrote his
thesis in 1932. Two years later he defended the subject of his thesis in the
publication “Liberty and letters – The thoughts of Leopold Zuns” at the
Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin.
Karl
Wallach.
Rosa
Wallach.
On his sixty fifth birthday in 1975, international colleagues published the
“Monographie zur Geschichte des Mittelalters” in Stuttgart and
dedicated it to Leopold Wallach to show their respect for the scholar.
After the war, Luitpold Wallach kept on travelling around Europe and also
Germany for research purposes. Some of his journeys repeatedly led him to
Laupheim where he visited familiar and trustworthy people such as the Halder
family and Josef Braun with whom he stayed in contact. Luitpold Wallach
married late and did not have any children.
Both of his sisters lived in the USA. It remains unknown whether they have
ever returned to Germany. According to Charlotte herself and her only
brother, she had survived the time of the Nazi regime in Hungary without
having been discovered but she had also suffered tremendously. Charlotte
spent the first year after the war in Vienna. One of her letters from Vienna
to the Halder family was signed with Lotte Borek-Wallach. In 1947 she
immigrated to the USA, just like her brother Luitpold and her sister Saly,
who had survived as well. However, according to her brother, she never fully
recovered. Unfortunately, no further information about Saly’s life in the
States could be gathered.
Notes about Wallach:
1) City Clerk’s Office Laupheim, family register V, p. 298; letter from the
city archive Munich of January 9, 2003;
Adress- u. Geschäftshandbuch
Laupheim, 1925, p. 16.
2) Weil, Jonas: Verzeichnis von Kriegsteilnehmern
der israelitischen Gemeinde Laupheim (register of combatants of the
Israelite community in Laupheim), Laupheim 1919, p. 78.
3) City archive Laupheim FL 1041.
4) “Laupheimer Verkündiger”, December 21, 1923 and January 17, 1925. Museum
for the history of Christians and Jews, Castle Grosslaupheim.
5) Conversation with Alois Ruf’s son, Walter Ruf, Schönebürg on August 9,
2003.
6) Grundbuchamt (land registration
office) of the city of Laupheim no. 359 a.
7) Lebenszeichen. Juden aus
Württemberg nach 1933 (Signs of Life.
Jews from Wuerttemberg).
Published by Walter Strauss. Gerlingen 1982, p. 329.
8) Keil, Heinz: Documentary about the persecution of Jewish citizens from
Ulm/Danube, 1961.
9) City archive Sigmaringen, Wü 42; Emmerich, Rolf: BETH HASETER,
“das Haus des Buches“ – Die jüdische
Schule in Laupheim.
From: Schwäbische Heimat 2000/1,
p. 76; conversation with Josef Braun and his wife in August 2004.
10) Cf. note 7, municipal archive Biberach 034/Az 7613/6.
11) Municipal archive Biberach 034/Az 7613/6.
12) ibidem; city archive Ludwigsburg PL 32.
13) Weglein, Resi:
Als Krankenschwester im KZ
Theresienstadt, Stuttgart 1990, p. 15 et seqq. Schmidt, Hartmut:
Zwischen Riga und Locarno. Berlin,
2001, p. 130 et seqq.
14) Municipal archive Biberach: 034/Az 6104 3-7.
15) Bast Karl (Ed.): Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters.
Beiträge Luitpold Wallach gewidmet.
Stuttgart 1975.
Photo credits:
Museum for the history of Christians and Jews, Castle Grosslaupheim.
Archive Ernst Schäll, Laupheim.
Archive Michael Schick, Laupheim. Municipal Archive Biberach 036/F7613/4.
