Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz

David Josef Bauer

Born: 22 June 1883

Died: presumably in 1942

Gitel Bauer, née Weingast

Born: 24.09.1889

Died: between 1942 and 1945

Leopold Bauer

Born: 18.12.1912

Died: 18/09/1972

Adela Bauer, married name Haldane

Born: 19.09.1915

Died: 15.04.1984

Max Bauer

Born: 31 July 1917

Died: between 1942 and 1945

Klara Bauer, married name Margulies

Born: 16.08.1919

Died: 03.01.1994

The watchmaker David Josef Bauer lived in the Kingdom of Saxony from 1913/14. Before settling in Chemnitz, he lived in Plauen with his wife and first-born child. Josef Bauer, as he later called himself, was born in the village of Ruzdwiany, then in the Austrian crown land of Galicia. As a result, he had Austrian citizenship. In September 1911, he married Gitel Weingast, six years his junior, in the village of Hleszczawa, which belonged to the same province. His bride came from there. The couple had four children, the first of whom, Leopold, was born in the town of Skalat.

It is not known how long Josef Bauer lived in Plauen. His wife, who also called herself Gusta, left Plauen in the spring of 1915 to live with her husband in Chemnitz. He had initially set up as a watchmaker at Turnstraße 19 before later finding a suitable flat at Friedrichstraße 14. There he opened a watchmaker's workshop. In the years that followed, their children Adela, Max and Klara were born. After the fall of the Habsburg monarchy, the Bauers became citizens of the new Polish nation state.
Josef Bauer subsequently moved his business to Maxstraße 7, which he had expanded into a watchmaking, agency and commission business. He later moved with his family from Annaberger Straße 21 to Reichenhainer Straße 8. However, he was not only a successful businessman, but also a supporter of Chemnitz's East German Jews. He supported the Linath Hazedek Association, which was founded by them in 1921 with the aim of maintaining a prayer room, helping sick members of the association and providing ritual mourning assistance in the event of death. From the summer of 1922 to the beginning of 1923, he was the 2nd chairman of the association.
Leopold, who called himself Leo, was initially one of the Chemnitz leaders of the Association of Jewish Youth Clubs in Germany. As such, he had an influence on the later world view of Stefan Heym, who still called himself Helmut Flieg at the time (1927). Heym mentioned him in his autobiography "Nachruf" (Obituary). Leo Bauer committed himself to the ideas of social democracy a year later. In 1931, he became a member of the German Socialist Labour Party before joining the KPD the following year.

Adela and Max became involved in Hechaluz, the umbrella organisation of Zionist-Socialist youth organisations in Chemnitz. At the end of 1934, they enrolled on Hechaluz courses aimed at promoting the training of future Palestine pioneers. Max stayed in Chemnitz, while Adela later emigrated to Shanghai. At this time, Leo had long been in France, where he had emigrated to in 1933.

On 28 October 1938, the Bauer couple were arrested in Chemnitz as part of the "Poland Action". Together with their children Klara and Max, they were taken by the Reichsbahn to their supposed homeland, where they found a temporary residence in Tarnopol. The family initially lived "unmolested" in the provincial capital before it was placed under the administration of the Soviet Union. In July 1941, the city, once home to 18,000 Jews, was occupied by Hitler's Wehrmacht. From September 1941, the family had to "live" in the Tarnopol ghetto set up by the Nazis. Only Klara survived thanks to the help of a German major and later hid in the forest.
Adela was able to leave Shanghai in August 1947 and emigrate to the USA. Klara also emigrated to the USA in 1949. Leo had survived both internment in France and imprisonment in Switzerland and returned to Germany in 1945.

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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