The Stern family of Hirsch and Fanni Stern played a role in the story of the Jewish community of Themar through two connections: the marriage of Hedwig Baer, the daughter of Samuel and Jette Baer, to Adolf Abraham Stern; and the marriage of Hedwig and Abraham’s son, Hermann, to Selma Bär, née Schloss.
The Stern family lived in the village of Gleicherwiesen from sometime in the late 1700s; where they lived before that time is as yet unknown. The patriarch of the Gleicherwiesen family was Hirsch Stern, b 1789 in Gleicherwiesen. He married Fanny Fradel Cahn, the daughter of Gump Cahn from Simmershausen. In the first decades of the 1800s, Hirsch and Fanny had three children: Hannchen, the eldest, about whom we know virtually nothing; Löser (Lazarus) Hirsch; and Marcus Max Hirsch, the youngest child whose birthdate —17 September 1826 — we know. Both sons left Gleicherwiesen: Löser Stern remained in Sachsen-Meiningen/Thüringen, moving to Hildburghausen in 1865, while Markus Max went to Coburg in Bavaria. While most of Löser’s family remained in Germany until well into the 1930s, Markus Max’s family members emigrated much earlier going to the United States.
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Löser married Marianne Gutmann, also born in Gleicherwiesen, and they formed a family of seven children. They lived in Schlossgasse 6. After Löser’s death in 1869, the eldest son, Abraham Adolf, b. 1851, continued his father’s business. Abraham’s first wife was Karoline Lang, with whom he had three daughters. After Karoline’s death in 1886, Abraham married Hedwig Bär of Marisfeld. Abraham and Hedwig had five children, of whom three died in childhood. Abraham Stern died in 1906 and his wife Hedwig in 1920.
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Of Adolf Stern’s children, we know most about Marta Stern and her stepbrother, Hermann. Marta, b. 1879, the daughter of Adolf and Karoline, married non-Jewish shoemaker August Gerau from Mühlhausen; August had an established business in the Lower Market Street in Hildburghausen. In 1911, the Geraus had a daughter whom they named Anneliese.
Hermann Stern, b. 1891, was the son of Adolf and Hedwig. He attended grammar school in Hildburghausen and then went into business. In 1917, he married Selma Bär, née Schloss, the widow of his cousin Emil Bär. Hermann moved to Themar in order to run the small department of S. J. Baer on the Themar market square. Hermann fought in the First World War during which he lost a leg. In 1919, he and Selma had a son, Adalbert.
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In January 1933, when the Nazi Regime began, Marta, August, and Anneliese lived in Hildburghausen, and Hermann and Selma lived in Themar and Adalbert, or Bert as he was called, was attending school in Coburg at the Hirsch.
On 25 September 1933, tragedy struck the family: Hermann Stern, age 42, died. His son Adalbert returned from Coburg to be part of the funeral procession from Themar to the Jewish cemetery in the nearby village of Marisfeld. Selma remained in Themar; in July 1933, her parents, Samuel and Philippine (née Reis) Schloss and sister, Rosa Schloss, moved from the village of Oberwaldbehrungen, where they were the only Jewish family, to Themar where they rented an apartment at Georgstrasse 3. Selma continued to manage Kaufhaus Stern with the help of her daughter, Elly and son-in-law, Arthur Plaut. In October 1935, Philippine, age 74, died and was buried in the Marisfeld Jewish cemetery.
In Hildburghausen, on 5 July 1937, Anneliese Gerau married Adolf Rehbock, b. 1886 in Gehaus, an attorney and head of the Jewish religious community in Hildburghausen. On 20 August 1938, they had a child, a boy, whom they called “Machol Peter.”
In the Reichspogromnacht of 09/10 November 1938, two members of the Stern family were rounded up and hauled off to the purpose-built concentration camp at Buchenwald near Weimar: Adolf Rehbock from Hildburghausen, and Arthur Plaut from Themar. Adalbert Stern managed to evade capture by keeping on the move during the night rather than staying in one place.
We know that Marta and August Gerau tried to escape from Germany: the emigration index card in the archive of the Jewish Community of Leipzig tells us that they were hoping that “second cousins/Grosskusine in USA” (blue arrow lower left) — the descendants of Max Hirsch Stern — would support their immigration. Emphasis was also laid on the fact that August Gerau was “Arier!/not-Jewish”.
There is no similar evidence that Anneliese and Adolf Rehbock, or Selma Stern (and her sister Rosa) in Themar applied to emigrate. Selma’s children did make plans: in 1939, before World War II began, her son-in-law, Arthur Plaut, was able to enter England with a temporary transit visa, planning to travel further to the United States. Adalbert Stern also immigrated into England before World War II. Elly Plaut was the last able to leave; in she and her young daughter, Hanna Karola, travelled via to the United States. Arthur joined them in 1942.
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In October 1941, when emigration was banned and the deportations began, the Geraus and the Rehbocks were in Hildburghausen, Selma Stern was in Berlin. Selma was the first to be deported: on 25 January 1942, she was one of 1051 Jewish men, women, and children deported from Berlin to Riga, the 10th transport to the East.
On 19 September 1942, Adolf and Anneliese Rehbock, and their four-year-old son, Machol, were part of the deportation of 364 men, women, and children deported to Theresienstadt Ghetto. The family remained in the ghetto until March 1944, when Adolf died on 25 March. Then it was only a matter of time, until Anneliese and Machol were transported to the killing centre at Auschwitz Birkenau to be murdered by gas. As the stamp at the arrow indicates, Machol was transported on 9 October 1944 from Theresienstadt Ghetto to Auschwitz Killing Centre where he was immediately murdered by gas. The card for Anneliese has the same information.
Martha Gerau was taken into custody in January 1943 and was sent to Suhl Prison, from there to Breitenau in March, and finally to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, where she was killed in “unexplained circumstances” in the same year.
August Gerau was briefly in prison. His second marriage was to Elsbeth Gellert. He remained a merchant even after the war and died on July 8, 1963 in Hildburghausen. Gerau’s daughter, Anneliese Rehbock, whose husband and little son Makal (Peter) died in 1942 on the transport to Theresienstadt. Adolf Rehbock died in Theresienstadt in March 1944.
Because of the direct connection to the Themar Jewish community we know most about the family of Löser and Marianne Stern.
Possibly the new issue also provides an incentive for other amateur historians to use it as a foundation for further research on the destinies of Jewish families, says Karl-Heinz Roß.