Stumbling stones in Chemnitz

Hugo Benda
Born: 02 November 1887
Died: 04.05.1936

Marie Benda, née Krug
Born: 01.01.1897
Died: 19/06/1960

Ilse Benda, married name Rau
Born: 29/09/1928
Died: 28/12/2016

The Benda family was one of the Jewish families who had lived in Chemnitz for decades and helped to shape Jewish life.

The merchant Josef Benda moved to Chemnitz in the autumn of 1886. Until then, the shoe merchant had lived in Münchengrätz (Bohemia). Together with his wife Cäcilie Sandheim, he had three sons: Hugo, Willy and Hans. All three were Jewish soldiers on the German side in the First World War. Hugo Benda founded a woollen goods factory in 1921 with two other merchants under the name Benda & Co. After the death of one partner and the departure of another, Hugo Benda became the sole owner. As such, he converted the company into a mechanical woollen goods factory and sold men's waistcoats and sports socks nationwide under the trademark "Stabil Qualitätsware". The three-storey residential and commercial building at Zieschestraße 13, in which the factory premises were located, became the property of the company around 1923.

On 3 January 1924, Hugo Benda married Florentine Louise Marie Krug. Four years later, his wife gave birth to a girl in the state women's clinic.
into the world. She was given the first name Eugenie Margot Ilse. The family found a suitable flat at Henriettenstraße 50 around 1932.

Immediately after the transfer of power to the NSDAP on 30 January 1933, murderous violence against opponents of the regime and Jews also began in Chemnitz. Some of them were deported to the notorious "Hansa-Haus restaurants" in the city centre and abused there.

When a nationwide "boycott of Jews" was called for on 1 April 1933, Hugo Benda was arrested off the street and detained and abused for three days. It is not known whether the factory owner was tortured in the "Hansa House". The "Jewish boycott" had clear consequences. Sales figures fell drastically. Hugo Benda was forced to file for bankruptcy on 11 June 1934. The proceedings only lasted until 9 July 1934, when his workers marched in front of the residential building on Kaßberg and bid farewell to their patron, "silently with their caps pulled down", writes Ilse Rau, née Benda, in her autobiography "Meine Mara-Jahre" (My Mara Years). The company entry was only removed from the commercial register on 27 April 1937.

By this time, Hugo Benda was no longer alive. He had died of cancer on 4 May 1936. Although he had been admitted to a municipal hospital, as a Jew he was denied the necessary radiotherapy. His daughter was not present at his burial in the Jewish cemetery - for fear of being attacked. From then on, Ilse lived with different working families at the former Benda textile factory.

She initially attended the André School for Girls on the Kaßberg. When the Jewish pupils had to leave the primary schools at Whitsun 1938, Ilse also became a pupil.
Ilse also became a pupil in the "Jewish special classes". There she met the teacher Leo Elend, with whom she remained in contact until his death on 8 March 1939.

As a "Geltungsjüdin", Marie Benda was banned from working. She had to give up her middle-class flat in Henriettenstraße and was forced to move to the "Jews' house" at Theaterstraße 34, where she had to share a flat with the community nurse Edith Kahn.

Shortly after the Kristallnacht in November 1938, Marie and Ilse fled Chemnitz. In Berlin, they hoped to attract less attention and stayed temporarily with her sister-in-law.

Marie Benda looked for ways to escape Hitler's Germany. She found helpers near Aachen who took her and Ilse across the green border to Belgium in June 1939.

They both survived the war and the German occupation illegally in Brussels. Ilse mastered the new bilingualism, received support from Belgian teachers and passed her A-levels there.

At the age of twenty, Ilse Benda returned to Germany to marry Walter Rau, whom she had met as an occupying soldier in Belgium.
The marriage produced nine children. At the age of 80, she wrote down her memories. They were published in 2016 under the title "My Mara Years", just a few months before her death in December 2016.

Her mother Marie Benda returned to Germany in 1950, where she died five years later.

Author: Dr Jürgen Nitsche

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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