Heinrich Freundlich (27.6.1863 Weisendorf / Kreis Höchstadt – 14.3.1943 KZ Theresienstadt), Pauline Freundlich (6.5.1873 Fellheim – 16.10.1942 KZ Theresienstadt), Leo Freundlich (22.1.1902 München – 25.11.1941 Kaunas / Lithuania)

Biographies
Written by Edith Raim

Jewish familiy of fabric dealers

Heinrich Freundlich | StadtAM

Heinrich Freundlich came from Middle Franconia and moved to Munich in 1894, where he had been running a fabric business, Heinrich Freundlich OHG, on the third floor at Nußbaumstrasse 12 since 1901. In 1894 he married Pauline Heilbronner, who came from Fellheim in Swabia. The marriage produced three sons, two of whom, Julius and Hugo, died as children. The youngest son, Leo, was born in Munich in 1902 and worked in his father's fabric business on Nußbaumstrasse.

After the November pogrom, Jews were forbidden from engaging in trade, so the Freundlich family had to look for a new livelihood. They were able to do this for a short time by renting out rooms until the trade office intervened and took away this opportunity to earn money from them on September 16, 1939. They had to leave their apartment at Nußbaumstrasse 12, where the family had lived since 1901, and lived at Georgenstrasse 99 since July 18, 1939. In 1941, Leo Freundlich married the widow Hilde Klebe, née Zunz, who was 13 years older than him. Even immediately before the deportations, marriages were still concluded because the couples hoped that together they would be able to better withstand the extreme pressure of persecution.

However, on November 20, 1941, Leo and Hilde Freundlich were deported to Kaunas and, like all the other Munich Jews on this transport, were shot there five days later. The parents Pauline and Heinrich Freundlich had to move from the apartment on Georgenstrasse to the barracks camp at Knorrstrasse 148 on February 27, 1941 and lived in the internment camp at Clemens-August-Strasse 9 from November 18, 1941. On June 23, 1942, the Freundlich couple was deported to Theresienstadt. The living conditions there led to the couple's early death: Pauline Freundlich died on October 16, 1942, Heinrich Freundlich on March 14, 1943.

Leo Freundlich | StadtAM

Pauline Freundlich | StadtAM

Sources

Stadtarchiv München (Hg.): Biographisches Gedenkbuch der Münchner Juden, 1933-1945, Bd. 1, München 2003.

Cite

Edith Raim: Freundlich, Heinrich, Pauline and Leo (published on 28.11.2023), in: nsdoku.lexikon, edited by the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, URL: https://www.nsdoku.de/en/lexikon/artikel?tx_nsdlexikon_pi3%5Baction%5D=show&tx_nsdlexikon_pi3%5Bcontroller%5D=Entry&tx_nsdlexikon_pi3%5Bentry%5D=205&cHash=4ef4380871a7fc9dcc1e43dbaa1e6180