Address from the lord mayor of Nuremberg, Marcus König, on the occasion of the laying of stumbling stones for Else and Sigmund Dormitzer

Dear Members of the Dormitzer family,

Dear Mr. Rottner Defet [who has been awarded the Citizen’s Medal of Nuremberg],

Dear Representatives from History for Everyone,

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

– For more than 30 years, since the beginning of the 1990s, victims of the National Socialist Dictatorship have been remembered with small commemorative plaques, called stumbling stones.

– In the meantime there are 10s of 1000s of these memorial plaques, which are normally placed in the ground in front of the last freely-chosen address of a victim of Nazi terror, in more than 1,300 cities and towns in all of Germany.

– In Nuremberg, the first stumbling stones were laid in 2004; there are now more than 150 of these plaques, the majority of which remember Jewish victims of the National Socialist reign of terror.

– And today, two more of these reminders that we must remember will be added:

 

– These plaques will remind us from now on of the Jewish couple Else and Sigmund Dormitzer and where they once lived here in the Blumenstrasse.

– Else Dormitzer, who was born in 1877 in Nuremberg as the daughter of a sawmill owner and timber merchant, made a name for herself in the early 1910s as a journalist and, using the pen name Else Dorn, as an author of children’s books.

– Else Dormitzer wrote for the arts section of the “Fränkischen Kurier” (“Franconian Courier”) and later for the “Nürnberger-Fürther Israelitischen Gemeindeblatts“ (“Nuremberg-Fürth Jewish Community Newspaper”) and, in the 1920s, was a correspondent for the “Berliner Tagblatt” (Berlin daily newspaper).

– For the Löwensohn and Pestalozzi Publishing Houses, both located in Fürth, Else Dormitzer worked not only as a translator but published many children’s books, which brought her a wider recognition within Nuremberg and beyond.

 

– In addition, she became a member of the board of directors of the Nuremberg Jewish Community in 1922, making her the first female trustee of a Jewish Community in all of Germany.

– In 1924, she also became the first female member of the board of directors of the important “Centralvereins Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens” (“Central Association for German Citizens of the Jewish Faith”).

 

– In the Pogrom night of 1938, the Dormitzers were brutally maltreated and afterwards forced to sell their home.

– With her husband Sigmund Dormitzer, whom she had married in 1898, Else Dormitzer went into exile in 1939 to Hilversum in Holland.

– In April 1943, the Dormitzers were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

– After her liberation, Else Dormitzer emigrated to England, where she died in 1958.

– The two daughters of the Dormitzers survived in Holland and England.

 

– Sigmund Dormitzer, on the other hand, suffered a far worse fate.

– Sigmund Dormitzer, who was born in 1869 in Nuremberg as the son of a wholesaler, studied law in Erlangen, where he obtained his doctorate in 1893.

– With his partner Dr. Bernhard Eismann, he ran for many decades a very successful and respected law office in der Karolinenstrasse.

– From 1916 to 1926, he was Chairman of the Nuremberg Law Society and afterwards – until March 1933 – its deputy president.

– In 1928, he received the honorary title “Geheimer Justizrat” (“Judicial Privy Councilor”).

– He was also active in many Nuremberg clubs and associations and was a founding member of the Rotary Club Nuremberg in 1929.

– Whereas his wife survived the hardships of her concentration camp incarceration, Sigmund Dormitzer died in December 1943 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp of a hunger edema.

 

– Else and Sigmund Dormitzer, who, with their family, led a socially committed and economic successful life in Nuremberg, lost in the wake of the so-called 2seizure of power” their former existence and their perspectives for the future which were based upon this life, they lost their professions, their possessions, their home – and, for Sigmund Dormitzer, his life.

 

– With the laying of these two new stumbling stones, we will now and in the future remember where marginalization, discrimination, racist hate and ideological fanaticism may lead and – in the case of the National Socialist regime – did lead on a massive scale.

 

– In that they make us aware of a horrible time and all of its deadly consequences, may the fates of Else and Sigmund Dormitzer forcefully remind us of the indignities and injustice which took place and, at the same time, impose on us a solemn obligation to continually strive - with all due diligence - for tolerance, justice and peace.