Stolperstein Laying Ceremony on September 27, 2026

Stolpersteine commemorate people who were persecuted by the Nazis at the last place they chose to live. There are more than 1,160 Stolpersteine in the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.

These seven new Stolpersteine will commemorate the Israel family.

Stolpersteine for Isidor, Ernestine and Meta Israel will be laid at Kottbusser Damm 5.

Isidor Israel was born in 1875 in the village of Wluki, 20 km from the town of Bromberg (then in the Prussian province of Posen, now Bydgoszcz, Poland), into a Jewish family. He became a tailor. He married Ernestine Meyer. Ernestine, born in 1879 in Fordon (now a district of Bydgoszcz), also belonged to the Jewish community.

The couple lived in the village of Damerau (now Dąbrowa, Poland), 20 km from Bromberg. Their daughter Meta was born there in 1908.

The Israel family moved to Berlin in the early 1920s, as the area around Bromberg had been ceded to the Republic of Poland following the end of the First World War, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Isidor Israel ran a textile shop in Friedrichshain.

Their daughter Meta trained as a nursery school teacher and after-school care worker. In 1934, the family moved into a two-room flat at Kottbusser Damm 5.

The discrimination, disenfranchisement and persecution of Jews following the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933 also affected the Israel family.

On 3 October 1942, Isidor and Ernestine Israel were deported from Berlin to the Theresienstadt ghetto as part of the so-called ‘3rd large transport of the elderly’. Living conditions in the ghetto were almost unbearable (cramped accommodation, cold, hunger, appalling sanitary conditions, rampant disease, lack of medicines). Isidor Israel died there on 11 May 1944. Ernestine Israel was deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp on 16 May 1944 and murdered.

Meta Israel was most recently employed as the head of the nursery run by the Jewish Cultural Association of Berlin at 3 Friedenstraße in Friedrichshain. She was deported to Riga on 26 October 1942 as part of the so-called 22nd Eastern Transport. Meta Israel was murdered immediately upon arrival on 29 October.

Stumbling Stones are being laid at 11 Jessnerstraße in memory of Samuel, Paula, Manfred and Inge Israel.

Samuel Israel (brother of Isidor) was born in 1887 in the village of Friedrichsbruch (then in the province of West Prussia, now Bruki Unislawskie, Poland), 28 km north-east of the town of Bromberg (now Bydgoszcz, Poland), into a Jewish family. He trained in a commercial trade and served as a soldier in the First World War. In 1919, he and Paula Klahr married in Bromberg. She was born in 1896 in the village of Zolondow, which was also near Bromberg (now Żołędowo).

After the end of the First World War, the area around Bromberg was ceded to the Polish state under the Treaty of Versailles. Samuel and Paula Israel moved to the small town of Schlawe (then in the Prussian province of Pomerania, now Sławno, Poland). There, their son Manfred was born in 1920 and their daughter Inge in 1924. The Israels ran a thriving haberdashery and shoe shop in Schlawe.

The systematic disenfranchisement and persecution of Jewish men and women by the Nazis also affected this family: from 1933 onwards, they suffered from the growing boycott of Jewish businesspeople, and so the family decided to emigrate.

Manfred Israel emigrated to the Netherlands in 1938 and to Palestine in 1939. In the same year, Samuel, Paula and Inge Israel left their home in Schlawe. They went to Berlin to await the granting of their emigration permit. But this was never to happen.

The Israels’ last place of residence was a sublet at 49 Kronprinzenstraße (now 11 Jessnerstraße) in Friedrichshain. Samuel, Paula and Inge Israel were deported from Berlin to Riga on 27 November 1941 as part of the so-called 7th East Transport. Upon their arrival on 30 November, they were shot by members of the SS in pits that had been dug in advance in the forests of Riga-Rumbula (the Rumbula massacre).

On the same day, Stolpersteine will be laid in Mitte and Weißensee for other family members.

Research and biographical compilation:

• Christiana Hoppe, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Stolperstein Initiative