Carola “Carla” Koppel (18.5.1903 Munich – 25.11.1941 Kaunas, Lithuania)

Carola Wagner, known as Carla, was born in Munich, the only child of businessman Albert Wagner from Berlin and Selma née Wassermann born in Neu-Ulm. Her father died aged only 30, when she was only 18 months old. From then on, she and her mother lived with the family of her mother’s younger sister in Schwabing. Carla Wagner trained as a commercial (office) clerk and at the age of 20 she married businessman Carl Koppel in Munich. Initially she lived with him in his home town of Altona, where the upper middle-class and religiously orthodox Koppel merchant family had its home. The children Günther, Alfred and Walter were born there. In December 1931 the family moved to Munich .

Her husband, Carl Koppel, soon built up a successful trading business in dried fruit, fresh fruit and preserved vegetables. From 1935 the family lived at Maximilianstraße 15. Another three children were born: Hans, Ruth and Judis. As a result of the November Pogroms, the Koppel family were forced to move into a “Jew house” at Thierschstraße 7. Carl Koppel was first interned in Dachau Concentration Camp and then in Stadelheim prison and was forced to make a declaration to leave the country as soon as possible. The commercial ban that applied to all Jews ruined the family economically. In mid-1940, Carl Koppel was able to emigrate, arriving in Brooklyn, New York after a detour via Russia and Japan. From there he attempted desperately, but ultimately unsuccessfully, to get exit visas and affidavits (declarations of guarantee) for his wife Carla and the four children remaining in Munich. The two sons, Alfred and Walter were able to leave the country via a Jewish children’s relief organization, they had already lived for two years with one of Carl Koppel’s sisters in Berlin, and from there they were able to join their father just in time in 1941 before the ban on leaving the country came in and deportation started. The eldest son Günther had trained as a cabinetmaker with the Israelite Religious Community and had stayed in Munich to support his mother and be a father substitute to the younger siblings.

Carla Koppel finally found a job in the office of the Munich Israelite Religious Community and therefore placed the three little children in the Antonienstraße Children’s Home for the last few weeks. On November 20, 1941, Carla Koppel together with 17-year-old Günter, five-year-old Hansi, four-year-old Ruth and two-year-old Judis were sent to Kaunas in the first major Munich deportation, where they were murdered on November 25.