Stumbling stones in Chemnitz
Salomon and Rachela Kupfermünz
Salomon Kupfermünz
Born: 20 October 1878
Died: 1943
Godfather: Dr Hans-Joachim Strauß
Rachela Kupfermünz, née Zmigrod
Born: 18.01.1883
Died: 1944
Sponsorship: Pupils of the Montessori School Chemnitz
Installation location:
Innere Klosterstraße 6Stumbling stone laying on:
6 May 2021
Life path
Mr and Mrs Kupfermünz (also Kupferminz) lived in Chemnitz from the end of 1912. They came from Congress Poland, as the Russian-occupied part of Poland was called from 1815. Salomon Kupfermünz, a buyer by profession, had married Rachela Zmigrod on 16 December 1902 in the town of Bendzin. Salomon's younger sister Cipora was married to David Federmann, the owner of a kosher bakery, who was to go down in the history of Chemnitz's eastern Jews.
When the couple decided to move to Chemnitz, they already had five children. Salomon Kupfermünz initially set up as a baker in the industrial city. His wife traded in sacks. In 1919, he opened a hosiery and textile goods shop. He also offered goods made of artificial silk. A few years later, Salomon Kupfermünz even had the textile wholesale business entered in the commercial register under the name Salomon Kupfermünz & Co KG. His brother Michael Mendel Kupfermünz, who still lived in Bendzin, was his business partner. He used a room in the 8-room flat at Innere Klosterstraße 10, where he now lived with his large family, as an office. In the middle of the Great Depression, however, Salomon Kupfermünz had to give up his business. The couple were unable to recover from this stroke of fate. The seizure of power by the National Socialists strengthened their resolve to leave the country.
It has not yet been possible to establish whether the whole family emigrated to France in August 1933. Due to a law there, according to which all foreigners without employment had to leave France again, the couple moved to Poland. It seemed impossible for them to return to Germany.
From then on, they lived in Bendzin. At the beginning of the war, there were almost 25,000 Jews living in the town, who later had to "live" in a ghetto. The ghetto was evacuated by the Nazi occupiers in the summer of 1943. Salomon Kupfermünz was killed during this time. Rachela Kupfermünz was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and murdered there in 1944. The building at Innere Klosterstraße 10, which once housed the well-known Strauß bookshop, was completely destroyed during the Allied air raids on the city of Chemnitz in spring 1945.
Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
It is a project against forgetting: stumbling stones have been laid in Chemnitz every year since 2007.
Embedded in the pavement, the memorial stones commemorate the tragic fates of fellow citizens who were persecuted, deported, murdered or driven to their deaths during the National Socialist regime.
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