The Story of Emanuel and Frieda Schömann

Introduction – the Schömanns – visiting Stuttgart

In 1905, Emanuel Schömann moved from his home in the Mosel area of western Germany to the prosperous, industrial city of Stuttgart.

There, aged 32, he established a successful business, Schömann & Stern, with business partner Ludwig Stern. The firm manufactured men and boy’s woollen clothing, selling their products across Germany.

In Stuttgart, he also met Frieda Schloss. They married and had three children, one of whom, Elsie, was my maternal grandmother.

What follows is a record of some of the key places that Emanuel and Frieda knew between the years 1923 and 1942. Together with my wife and children, I visited these places this summer, the latest in my family to do so, as individually and collectively we explore this chapter in our histories.

We were guided by Herr Jupp Klegraf, a retired academic of philology, who has played a vital role in documenting, honouring and memorialising those people from Stuttgart murdered in the Holocaust.

World War I – a family home – the growing threat

At the outbreak of World War I, Emanuel joined the German army as a gunner. He was soon wounded and was unable to serve further. Later in life, he assumed his record of war service might count in his favour.

In 1923, the family moved to a ground floor apartment in Heidehofstrasse, an affluent part of Stuttgart. Records show that by this time he had sold his part-ownership in the clothing business.

Heidehofstrasse, 9: a family home befitting a successful businessman and war veteran.

The Schömanns lived here until 1932, a year before Hitler came to power. The changes in legislation that would begin to persecute Germany’s Jews were yet to be enacted, but a National Socialist narrative that blamed ‘Judeo-Bolsheviks’ for Germany’s struggles post-WWI was gaining traction.

A new home – letters from Stuttgart – a family in flight

The move round the corner to Gerokstrasse, in 1932, may have been a personal choice for Emanuel and Frieda, but it was made in an atmosphere that was darkening.

Gerokstrasse, 63: replaced now with a modern home; the house to the left is more typical of the style when the Schömanns lived here.

Today, as then, the area is quiet and smart. My mother has letters, in dense German script, written at the time by my great-grandparents to family abroad. When translated, they will surely give an insight into how life, even for a well-established family like the Schömanns, will have been increasingly fraught and dangerous.

Indeed, conscious of the risk of staying, their three children managed to flee Germany in time. Fred and Erika made it to the USA (though Erika left it late, leaving only on 25 August, 1939, less than a week before the borders closed). Elsie, my grandmother, went to Switzerland, with her husband Robert Goldschmidt, a scientist from Cologne. It was in Lausanne that my mother was born.

The final home – persecution – the Stolpersteine

In 1936, the Schömanns moved to their last family home, in Doggenburgstrasse. Again, due to his war wound, Emanuel sought a ground-floor flat and one close to a tram line. However, anti-Jewish measures soon meant he was prevented from using public transport.

Doggenburgstrasse, 8: the ground-floor flat was the last place that Emanuel and Frieda would call home.

It is another peaceful, residential street. A small school is around the corner. It is a family area. Herr Klegraf showed us a remarkable photograph from 1938 of my mother’s sister, Annette, a toddler at the time, on the lap of her grandparents during a visit from Switzerland to Germany. The Nazi-sanctioned travel permits show that Robert and Elsie had gained permission to travel back to Stuttgart. This document points to what, in hindsight, seems a foolhardy trip. The photo shows the smiles of proud grandparents.

The view over Stuttgart from Doggenburgstrasse.

Outside the house are the two Stolpersteine, the “stumbling stones”, that honour Emanuel and Frieda. The Stolpersteine project began in Germany and has spread across Europe. It is fueled by small local groups. Herr Klegraf is a coordinator for the Stuttgart North group. He and his colleagues negotiate with the authorities for the stones to be placed. It is, he argues, a harder job than it should be. The group is not short of money but finds bureaucratic sanction harder to come by.

Passers-by literally stumble upon the stones, which are a few inches square and laid into the pavement to mark the homes of those killed in the Holocaust. You may be walking along a street and one catches your eye. You stop. To read the text you have to bend down or, as Herr Klegraf said, you have to bow down. That bow is a brief moment in which you honour the dead.

‘Here lived Emanuel Schömann, born 1873. Deported 1942 Theresienstadt. Died in transit.’ / ‘Here lived Frieda Schömann, born 1879. Deported 1942 Theresienstadt. Murdered 1944 in Auschwitz.’

Transit camp – Killesberg – Jewish memorial

The Schömanns lived at Doggenburgstrasse for six years but by 1942 the Nazis were requisitioning property from the Jewish population. Suddenly, on 20 April, 1942, they were forced to move to Haigerloch, south of Stuttgart, finding themselves, in effect, in a transit camp.

Two months later, they received a Gestapo order requring them to present themselves, with just a suitcase, at a hall in Stuttgart’s famous Killesberg park on 20 August, 1942, together with more than a thousand other, largely elderly, Jews from Baden Wurtemburg.

A memorial now stands in Killesberg, which from 1941 onwards was used to coral people ahead of the mass deportations to Riga, Auschwitz, Theresienstadt and Izbica.

The memorial in Killesberg to the more than 2,000 Jews who were deported from Stuttgart.

Train station – the wall of names – Holocaust

Two days later, before dawn, Emanuel, Frieda and 1,076 others, were marched a couple of miles to the Inneren Nordbahnhoff.

There are a number of tracks at the station which then, as now, was overlooked by flats. When the deportees arrived at the station, trains were stationed on all the tracks near the flats to conceal what was happening on the far platform.

The station has now been turned into a memorial site to commemorate the names of those murdered by the Nazis.

The memorial wall listing the names of those Jews and Roma from Stuttgart and surrounding areas who were deported to the concentration camps.

When the first deportation took place in late 1941, to Riga, there may have been some doubt in people’s minds about what lay ahead. On 22 August, 1942, Emanuel and Frieda will have been in no doubt about what lay ahead on “Sonderzug” 505. Details of that journey, from Haigerloch to Theresienstadt are chronicled here.

A record of the ten transports that left Stuttgart between 1941 and 1945; vandals have already defaced the memorial in places.

Our journey with Herr Klegraf culminated at the train station. 

Emanuel would not survive his final journey and died in a goods carriage on his way to Theresienstadt.

Frieda did survive that journey and, widowed, spent almost two years in Theresienstadt. On 16 May, 1944, she made one final journey, this time to Auschwitz. The date of her death is unknown.

The track on the far left is where the train will have left from. The memorial wall is on the platform.

Final thoughts

There are of course many more facts to this story. These few words and pictures offer merely a snapshot.

Finally, I want to acknowledge Herr Klegraf. During the three hours he spent with us crossing Stuttgart, he never once felt the need to preach or lecture, finding all the eloquence needed in the facts, the locations, the Stolpersteine.

I can’t say whether or not Herr Klegraf would approve but, as we drove away from Stuttgart, the word that came to mind to describe his dedication to the Stolpersteine and wider memorial project was ‘heroic’: an act of moral courage on behalf of a wider good.