Jacob family story preserved with Stolpersteine memorial
Our best source on the history of the Jacob family, including Rosa Paechter and her mother Friederike Meyer Paechter, is the narrative published on the city of Berlin website about the stumbling stones of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district. The text is based on an article by researcher by Heinz Burghardt. I will quote it in full.
Leo Jacob was born on May 16, 1878 and was the eldest son of merchant Nathan Jacob. He grew up with five (half) siblings in Prussian Holland until the family moved to Berlin around the turn of the century.
Leo Jacob married Rosa née Paechter in Berlin on October 9, 1909 . She was born on May 5, 1883 in Crossen / Oder and was therefore 10 years younger than her husband. She brought her own assets into the marriage and collected art. On August 13, 1910, daughter Ilse was born, the first of her three children. The birth certificate lists the family's residential address as Pestalozzistrasse 50. The family later lived in (Berlin-) Charlottenburg, Waitzstrasse 6. The son Fritz was born on November 6, 1912, and his brother Alfred was born on June 27, 1916 as the youngest child. The apartment on Waitzstrasse had six rooms and was furnished in a middle-class manner. Rosa's mother, Mrs. Friederike Paechter, née Meyer, who was born on May 28, 1860, lived in the farmer's room.
Leo was a third partner in the company Jacob & Mannheim OHG , together with his brother Julius Jacob and Julian M. Mannheim. It was a textile wholesale company that also manufactured underwear, aprons and bathing products. The company's headquarters were at Heiligengeiststrasse 15. The company had a larger business space on the street front. Due to the November pogrom in 1938, the company was closed “from one day to the next”.
On March 31, 1939, Rosa Jacob gave her bank two envelopes containing jewelry for safekeeping. After the obligation to hand over jewels and jewelry, Rosa instructed the bank on October 26, 1939 to hand over the locked deposits to the city pawnshop and to credit the proceeds to her account; It is no longer possible to verify whether this happened.
Leo and Rosa Jacob had an account at Deutsche Bank, from which amounts were transferred to the Jewish Cultural Association of Berlin in May and June 1942, as well as the amount of 400 RM in September 1942 with the note “retirement home catering”. These were probably payments for the deportation to Theresienstadt. The remaining amount of her account amounting to 1,046 RM was transferred to the special account “H” of the Reich Association of Jews on October 15, 1942.
Leo and Rosa Jacob as well as 82-year-old Friederike Paechter were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on September 23, 1942 on the 65th “Alterstransport”. Rosa Jacob died there on October 26, 1942; Leo died two months later on December 25, 1942. Friederike Paechter succumbed to the inhumane living conditions in the camp on September 23, 1943.
The children Ilse, Fritz and Alfred Jacob managed to leave Germany in the 1930s. When Alfred, the youngest of the siblings, was denied further professional work in Germany, he was able to emigrate to Johannesburg in 1934 at the age of 17. His brother Fritz was also able to make his way to South Africa. In 1946, Ilse, who had gone to Basel in 1936, finally followed her brothers from Switzerland to South Africa. The three children tried to persuade their parents to leave Germany. But they didn't succeed. Leo and Rosa must have said that things couldn't get any worse; Perhaps they also didn't want to abandon Leo's mother, who was too frail to emigrate.
Alfred Jacob moved to England in 1961 and became a British citizen in 1964.
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