Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
Marianne and Roland Rotstein
Marianne Rotstein, married name Meyer
Born: 11.09.1920
Died: 07.02.2008
Roland Rotstein
Born: 16 June 1932
Died: 20/09/2012
Installation location:
Ludwig-Kirsch-Straße 1Stumbling stone laying on:
6 May 2021
Life path
Marianne and Roland Rotstein were siblings of Siegmund Rotstein, the honorary citizen of the city of Chemnitz who died on 6 August 2020. Their parents were Jankel Hersch and Liddy Rotstein. The family lived in the house at Alexanderstraße 1 from 1922.
As a Jew with Polish or former Polish citizenship, the Rotstein siblings' father was arrested at the beginning of the Second World War and deported to the "Generalgouvernement", occupied Poland, on 20 February 1940, where he died of starvation in the Warsaw ghetto on 13 September 1942. Her mother was forced to look after the five children alone.
Marianne, a saleswoman by profession, initially worked in the "Lyon Modejournale und Schnittmuster" shop in the city centre. She later worked as a domestic help. From 1940, she was in Jewish labour camps in Brandenburg. Presumably in March 1943, she was sent to the Neumühle civilian labour camp near Straußberg. On 5 January 1945, Marianne, who had been imprisoned in a Berlin prison since 10 October 1944, was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on the 115th transport. She survived and returned to the heavily destroyed Chemnitz on 9 June 1945. In April 1946, the then 25-year-old emigrated to New York via Berlin and Deggendorf in Lower Bavaria with Auschwitz survivor Lutz Meyer, her future husband. In 1971, Marianne Meyer visited her hometown again for the first time. She died at an advanced age on 7 February 2008 in a retirement home in Long Branch (New Jersey/USA) and was buried in a cemetery in Woodbridge (New Jersey).
Roland, who had been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto with his brother Siegmund in February 1945 at the age of 12, first had to continue his school education, which he had interrupted in the summer of 1942. The board of the Jewish community therefore enrolled him at the Jewish School in Berlin in autumn 1947. After graduating, he learnt the profession of a cook in the Jewish hospital there and was employed as such by the Jewish community in Berlin (West) for a while. He later became self-employed in the catering industry.
Roland Rotstein lived in Lower Saxony for a long time. He died on 20 September 2012 in Berlin and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Chemnitz.
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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