Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
Werner Michaelis Götz
Werner Michaelis Götz
Born: 23/08/1904
Died: 27.05.1943
Installation location:
Andréstraße 39Stumbling stone laying on:
17 May 2022
Life path
Werner Michaelis Götz was born in Penig, the son of a merchant. Richard Götz, his father, moved to Chemnitz in the spring of 1910, where he founded a factory for brush goods. From autumn 1913, he lived with his parents and his older sister Paula Margaretha in Glauchau, where his father died on 9 December 1914. In spring 1915, his mother and her children returned to Chemnitz, where they lived from then on at Andréstraße 39.
Werner M. Götz attended the municipal secondary school there and then completed a commercial apprenticeship. He remained unmarried for the rest of his life. After the death of his mother in 1932, he worked as a labourer. In May 1938, he offered two rooms for rent so that he could live off the income. During the November pogrom of 1938, Werner Götz was taken into "protective custody" and deported to the special pogrom camp in Buchenwald. He was released there on 14 January 1939. This was followed by forced labour at the Richard Theyson brickworks in Borna.
On 3 July 1939, he received a "security order" from the Nazi financial authorities, which meant that he no longer had free access to his assets. In order to be able to emigrate, he sold his dining room during this time. However, his plans to emigrate were cancelled due to the imminent outbreak of war. On 27 March 1940, he therefore registered for Ahrensdorf, where a Jewish retraining camp was located. From there, he was sent to a forestry assignment in Ruhlsdorf near Luckenwalde the very next day. From 12 July 1940, he was in Markendorf near Paderborn, where there was also a Jewish retraining and deployment camp. He lost all his underwear, clothing and boots in a barrack fire.
On 1 March 1943, the residents of the retraining camp were arrested and deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Werner Götz allegedly died there a few weeks later of "typhus", as his sister Margaretha Geller was told after the end of the war. In memory of Werner Michaelis Götz, his sister and her husband Max Geller had an obituary printed in the German-Jewish exile newspaper "Aufbau" in October 1946.
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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