One of the tragic fates directly related to the Jewish community building was mapped by the historian Miroslava Menšíková.
Adolfina and Isaac Gimpel came to Brno from Vienna. The first record of the Gimpels' arrest dates from 13 February 1939, a day later they were taken to the border by order of Police Commissioner Vrba, together with other refugees. Two days later, on 16 February 1939, they were arrested again in Brno, after serving a sentence of seven days in prison they were to be sent back to the German border.
After their release from prison, the couple cut themselves on their wrists, ingested an unknown poison, and then jumped from the 3rd floor of the Jewish community building at Koliště, in front of which you are standing. Apparently they lost their last glimmer of hope that the Jewish community could help prevent their removal to Germany.
Similar tragedies took place shortly after the occupation of Brno. Doc. Ing. Josef Sedláček grew up in the neighbouring house, then Koliště 59 (now 47). For a written record preserved in the Jewish Museum in Prague, he recalled how a certain Mr. Bloch jumped from a third-floor window onto the concrete courtyard, Mrs. Appelfeld jumped from the fifth floor into the courtyard of the New Synagogue, and the Wolfs, who had a shop selling staple goods in the courtyard of the house, posioned themselves by gas. You won't find any of these victims of hatred on the deportation lists. Another 20 or so Jewish families from the same house were subsequently murdered in Nazi concentration camps.