Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz

Magdalena Noll, née Buschner

Born: 26 July 1903

Died: 18/08/1972

Godfather: Dr Jürgen Nitsche

My grandmother Magdalena Noll was born in Reichenbach in Vogtland. Her birth was probably illegitimate. Her mother, a Social Democrat, died of tuberculosis at an early age and her father, a Jewish merchant, was said by the family to have "emigrated to Palestine" at the beginning of the Nazi era. Magdalena, whom her friends called Magda and we in the family called Mamascha, attended a teacher training seminar in Dresden and had to take a job as a foreign language correspondent during the inflation period. In addition to German, she spoke fluent English and French.

In 1926, she married my grandfather, the pharmacist Hans Noll, and in the same year their daughter Margarete, who later worked as a translator, was born. Their son Dieter, who became a well-known writer, was born on New Year's Eve 1927. The literary talent in the family undoubtedly came from Mamascha, who read fiction books in various languages throughout her life and wrote narrative prose herself, only fragments of which survived the Nazi era.

During the Nazi era, the family was threatened with economic ruin, as my grandfather was no longer allowed to run a pharmacy due to the note in his file "Mrs Jew" - the couple therefore divorced by mutual consent in 1938. In a curriculum vitae available in the Saxon State Archives, Magda Noll wrote that she divorced Hans "in order to preserve his profession and thus good educational opportunities for our children." Nevertheless, her son Dieter had to leave the Musisches Gymnasium in Frankfurt in the same year.

Magda Noll initially lived with the children in Ohlau in Silesia, while her husband continued to support the family and spent his free time with his wife and children. He was therefore charged with "racial defilement" and "sham divorce". In 1942, he managed to lease a pharmacy in Chemnitz. Magda was expelled from her flat in 1941, she was homeless for a while and lived in changing accommodation with friends. She was forcibly conscripted by the Leitmeritz labour office in northern Bohemia and assigned to a haulage company.

In May 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo for the first time, accused of embezzling two wagons of coal. In December of the same year, she was arrested again and, as she later wrote, "interrogated for days and nights". At the beginning of 1945, after another denunciation, she was picked up by the Gestapo for the third time and taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp. She survived the concentration camp, including the typhus epidemic that broke out in Theresienstadt after the liberation - the family said it was thanks to my grandfather, who had vaccinated her against typhus and other diseases as a precaution shortly before her arrest.

I experienced my grandmother Mamascha, who married her husband Hans for the second time after the war and spent the rest of her life in Chemnitz, as a humorous, literary storyteller of interesting, sometimes harrowing tales. She had a difficult, at times terrible fate, and I am happy that the city of Chemnitz wants to place a stumbling block in her memory. She was an extraordinary, courageous woman and deserves a symbol of remembrance. I would like to thank the city of Chemnitz and the historian Dr Jürgen Nitsche, whose studies have revealed the story of her suffering, which was also unknown to me for a long time.

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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