Berlin Stories The Kastan, Stargardt, Simon and Kaufmann families
Rosenheimer Straße 40, 10781 Berlin
A photo from happier days in Berlin: Max and Else Simon, née Stargardt (left) with their daughter Helga and son-in-law Hugo Kaufmann (right). In between are Else’s sister Frida and her husband Willi Kastan.
Hugo Kaufmann managed to escape to the US in March 1941. Max Simon took his own life on 15 Oktober 1941. Else Simon, her daughter Helga and Helga’s four-year-old daughter Yvonne Luise were taken from Rosenheimer Straße 40 on 3 February 1943 and deported to Auschwitz.
Claudia Samter lives in Buenos Aires. She came across DENK MAL AM ORT last summer in an article by Susana Fernández Molina in the Spanish newspaper El País.
It took a few weeks and several emails for Claudia and us to realize that three members of her own family had been subjected to compulsory accomodation in Rosenheimer Straße 40 and deported from there to Auschwitz: Else Simon (Claudia’s great aunt), Helga Kaufmann (Claudia’s aunt) and Yvonne Luise (Claudia’s cousin). Since 2016 Marie Rolshoven has been honouring their memory in her apartment with documents from Berlin archives. It looked as if not another single photograph could be found. Up until now. Until Claudia Samter discovered us and opened her photograph album. Thank you Claudia for your trust.
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Thank you Susana Fernández Molina. Without your article and your Citycize project, this would never have happened.
Claudia’s mother, Ursula Samter née Kastan, was only a girl when she escaped with her scout group to Argentina in 1938. Claudia herself will come to Berlin in May to commemorate her lost relatives in the Rosenheimer Straße apartment and tell the daunting story of her mother’s escape.
