The sad history of 8 Schillerstrasse

I thought I was done after I wrote and published my book The Golden Daughter. But I wasn’t. I found new information, and it broke my heart.

Most of you know the story of The Golden Daughter - how my mother was snatched by the Nazis from her home in Ukraine, stuffed into a cattle car, and taken to Germany to work as a slave for the duration of the war.

Her first job was as a housemaid for a Dr Horst Schroder and his wife at 8 Schillerstrasse, Wurzburg. I found a document proving the doctor was living there in 1943 when mama arrived as a slave worker. But there's no record of the Schroders living there before 1939 or after 1945.

I wanted to see where mama started her life as a slave worker, so I went to Germany and stood outside 8 Schillerstrasse. I had a guide, historian Alex Kraus. He told me that before the war started, a Jewish family had lived at the house. He believed they fled, or were captured, when the Nazis took over, and that perhaps Dr Schroder received the house - and a housemaid - as a perk for being a loyal Nazi supporter.

Today I found some answers - and what a story they tell. It's the sad story of Ivan (Iwan) and Hilda Schwab, and why 8 Schillerstrasse was the last place they were able to call home.

Memorial markers, or 'stolperstein', are regular features on many German sidewalks. They honour victims of Nazi atrocities. These two are outside 8 Schillerstrasse.

In 1930 Ivan and his wife Hilda, with their daughter Liesl, moved to Wurzburg so he could manage a branch of his parents' textile company.

Schillerstrasse was a congenial place for Jews like Ivan and Hilda. The street, with its imposing 4-storey homes, was home to several Jewish families, mostly merchants. They were part of a community of about 2,100 Jews living in Wurzburg.

But everything changed dramatically when Hitler took power in January 1933. There were anti-Jewish riots in the streets and Jewish businesses were ordered to close.

Ivan Schwab became a leader of the Jewish community, helping Jews get out of Germany. In 1939 he succeeded in getting a passage for Liesl on a ship to London, where she lived through the war and later moved to New York.

But Ivan's activism had drawn the attention of the Gestapo. In 1939 Ivan and Hilda tried to escape, taking a ship, the SS Orinoco, out of Hamburg bound for Cuba. But when the vessel was off the coast of France the captain was told the refugees would not be allowed to disembark in Cuba, or anywhere else. The captain turned round and took the 200 passengers back to Hamburg.

Ivan and Hilda made it back to Wurzburg, but by early 1942 all Jewish families had been forced from their homes and herded together in a cluster of overcrowded buildings at the Jewish Cemetery.

Ivan and Hilda were arrested and deported on 17th June 1943 - the last mass deportation of Jews out of the city. They were taken to Auschwitz. They were murdered there on September 1st. 

Their home had become the property of Dr Schroeder, and I believe Alex Kraus was right in his theory that the Schroders were being rewarded for their loyalty to Hitler.

In March 1945 the house at 8 Schillerstrasse - along with 80 per cent of the buildings in the old town of Wurzburg - was destroyed in an RAF bombing raid. It lasted just 20 minutes but killed 4,500 men, women and children. 

8 Schillerstrasse, after the Allied bombing raid of 1945.

Were the Schroeders living there then? Were they victims of this massive bombing raid? Is that why there are so few records about them?

What is clear is that 8 Schillerstrasse was a home of sorrow for the Schwabs, the Schroeders, and for my mother. But mama survived. I learned her story, but as for the others in 8 Schillerstrasse, their stories are still shrouded in mystery. I’m still searching for their ghosts.