Stolpersteine

On the way to the next stop of this IWalk, note the Stolpersteine, memorial stones that are placed in front of Maiselova 3.

Alois, Berta, called Beila, and their ward Růžena fled to Prague from Teplice and lived here in a sublet with Mr. Schwarz. Maiselova Street was one of the ghettos without walls established in Prague: the Jewish inhabitants were moved to certain streets, several families in each apartment. Alois came from Osoblaha in the Krnov region, Berta was born in Sambor, now a town in Ukraine.

Mr. and Mrs. Bergmann were guardians of seven-year-old Ruzena Brandler, whom they adopted a few days after her birth. Her mother, Mrs. Bergmann's sister, lived in abject poverty in Poland. That is why they came to Prague from the occupied borderlands with her. But the Czechoslovak authorities insisted on the child's immediate deportation back to Nazi Germany. It was only thanks to the help of the lawyer Dr. Hanuš Kafka that a residence permit was secured for Růžena.

Although the Bergmanns had an affidavit to the USA, they probably did not have the financial means to arrange everything they needed. In 1940 they applied for emigration to Shanghai, seeking any possibility of existence. Instead of going to Shanghai, they were deported to the ghetto in Terezin.

They left Terezin on a transport of 1,000 people bound for the ghetto in Minsk, Belarus. But there, a mass murder was in progress and the local commander refused the train's arrival. The deportees were told on the outskirts of the town of Baranovichi to get off the carriages, that there would be lunch, and then they were all shot in the nearby Gai forest.