On 20 October 2018 Ellen Marcus had a stumbling stone laid for her family: her mother Charlotte (Lottie) was able to emigrate to the USA, but her grandparents Arthur and Ida and her uncle Robert did not survive the Holocaust.

Arthur Blümlein was born on 4 April 1872 in Nuremberg. His parents Maier Blümlein and Rosalie (née Feldheim) came from Schonungen near Schweinfurt. Like his father, Arthur was a trader. In Nuremberg, he worked in the toy industry.

His wife Ida Kuh, was born on 21 April 1891 in Redwitz near Lichtenfels. Her parents were Theodor Kuh und Fanny (née Liebermann). The couple had two children: Robert was born on 3 November 1913, Charlotte on 19 February 1916.

Robert suffered from a mental disability. Consequently, from the age of 16 he lived in the mental hospital at Kalmhof in Idstein, west of Frankfurt am Main. The hospital was interdenominational and the resident patients included many Jews. On 8 February 1933, before the “Gleichschaltung” (Nazification of Germany), his parents brought him back home to live with them.

Charlotte attended the municipal lyceum for girls and the municipal business school for girls. She saw no future for herself in National Socialist Germany and emigrated to the USA in March 1934, a few days after her 18th birthday. An uncle already living there helped her obtain a visa.

At the end of the 1930s, her parents wanted to emigrate to the USA, taking Robert with them. However, they were unable to obtain visas.

The family lived for many years in an apartment in Obere Pirckheimerstrasse 43. Today the address is Pirckheimerstraße 117 (In 1954, the city council removed the division of the street into Lower, Middle and Upper Pirckheimerstrasse.) They spent their last months in Nuremberg living in cramped conditions with many others in the “Jewish house” at Meuschelstrasse 38. By bringing all the Jews together in so-called “Jewish houses”, the city administration obtained living quarters for “national comrades” (“Volksgenossen”). It also made it easier to keep Jews under surveillance and ultimately deport them.

Robert was deported to the Izbica ghetto on 24 March 1942 and murdered. Arthur and Ida were deported on 10 September 1942 to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Arthur died there on 18 April 1942. Ida was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp on 18 May 1944 and murdered there.

In the USA Charlotte married dentist Dr. Howard Marcus. She died in December 2015 in San Diego, a few weeks before her 100th birthday.