Cilli Herrmann, geb. Stern

Cilli (Zilli) Herrmann, née Stern, was born in Augsburg on Mai 7, 1894. Her father Moses Löb Stern (1852-1920), called Moritz, came from Michelbach an der Lücke in the Hohenlohe region and had established himself as a merchant in Harburg.¹ Later he moved to Augsburg, where he was registered at 7 Hermanstrasse as merchant for fabrics and notions. His wife and Cilli’s mother Sara (1858-1927) came from the extensive and well-respected Deller family in Fischach.² Her tombstone is preserved at the cemetery of the Jewish Community Swabia-Augsburg on Haunstetter Strasse.

The inscription praises Cilli’s mother as pious and charitable:

“She strived for good works as long as she lived.

She especially respected those who observed the religious precepts.

She opened her hands wide to the orphans and migrants.

Her path of life was walked in true fear of G’d.

Thus was Mrs. Sara, Moshe Arjeh’s wife.

She passed away the day on which our sanctuary was destroyed.”

Cilli grew up with three older brothers. We know nothing about her education. It can be assumed that, in keeping with the image of women at the time, she did not receive any professional training, but was prepared at home for a life as housewife and mother. In 1920 she married the merchant Josef Herrmann (1883-1942?). He was ten years older and came from Hainsfarth, Nördlingen county (see biography Josef Herrmann). In the same year, the couple moved into a bright and roomy apartment on the second floor at 33 Völkstrasse. Margot was born in 1921 and Trude in 1925. Also, two of Cilli’s three brothers and their families lived in the distinctive, middle-class Wilhelminian-style neighborhood, Max (1881-1955) at 7 Hermanstrasse and Isaak/Justin (1885-1943) at 7 Mozartstrasse. Only Jacob Stern (1883-1968) had settled in Frankfurt am Main. The cousins liked to play together, especially when, after 1933, their non-Jewish playmates shunned them.

The Sterns were a close-knit and affectionate family. Every Shabbat, the siblings and their families met for a common walk. For Sukkot, the families enjoyed traveling to Fischach to celebrate together with the Deller family. For seven days, in accordance with the tradition, they took their meals in the superbly painted arbor, called by the Hebrew term “Sukka”. The Dellers’ Sukka showed not only an idealized representation of Jerusalem, but also a view of Jew’s Lane in Fischach, with their great-grandmother in front of her house. In the Nazi period, the arbor ended up in the former Palestine in the luggage of emigrants. Today it can be admired in the permanent exhibition of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

But Cilli and Josef Herrmann also had non-Jewish friends with whom they spent their leisure time. Especially popular were the costume parties during carnival. Her nephew Henry/Heinz, youngest son of Cilli’s brother Justin, remembers his aunt as cheerful and cosmopolitan.³ She sent her two daughters to St. Elisabeth School, where they were instructed by Catholic nuns. While, after 1933, teachers at other schools made the lives of Jewish children miserable and bedeviled them, Margot and Trude were treated well by the teachers at St. Elisabeth. For example, the Jewish girls there did not have to go to school on Shabbat, so that they could observe the Jewish religious rules.⁴ With the November pogrom, however, this tolerance came to an end.

Since the family led a traditional Jewish life, Cilli Herrmann kept a kosher household. This became more difficult when in 1930, the state of Bavaria banned kosher butchering. It is not known, how Cilli experienced the growing hardship for Jews and coped with the exclusion from public life and the economic constraints, after the National Socialists assumed power. But like her brothers, at a certain point in time she and her husband understood that the situation would not improve and tried to find a possibility for emigration. In November 1938, after open violence against Jews had broken out, Josef Herrmann had been detained in the Katzenstadel Gestapo prison and his brother-in-law Justin Stern had been brought to the concentration camp in Dachau, the couple registered their daughters for a “Kindertransport” to Great Britain. But, when in June 1939, places became available for them, the parents did not have the heart to part with them. They decided to emigrate jointly as a family. They waited with growing despair for the required papers and the necessary money for which they asked family members who had already emigrated. With the beginning of the war, their freedom of movement became more and more constricted. Their property was confiscated, being in public in the evening was forbidden, as well as visiting cinemas and theaters. The provision of food coupons was reduced to a minimum. From December 1938 on, Cilli and her daughters had to bear the mandatory name “Sara”, her husband “Israel”.⁵ Later the family was forced to abandon their comfortable home. From April 1, 1940 on, the municipal register listed them at 4 Hermanstrasse, 3rd floor, where they had to share the apartment with a family or single person by the name of “Mühlhauser”.

Margot’s friend Kunigunde Hutzmann however, who, even at that time, still came to see her, spoke of a so-called Jews-house next to the Catholic cemetery: that would be 10 Hermanstrasse.⁶ In April 1941, presumably as a farewell, Cilli and her daughter Margot signed Kunigunde Hutzmann’s poetry album. Cilli wrote: “Think: ‘Praying is up to me. Answering and granting, in the hands of the Most High.’ With best wishes for the future. Yours, Mrs. Herrmann.”

Two weeks later, Cilli, aged 56, and Margot Herrmann, aged 20, were prompted to do forced labor at the Augsburg balloon factory.

From September 1941 on, they had to wear a yellow star on the coat, which marked them as “Volksfeinde” (enemies of the people) and exposed them to the humiliations of the national socialists and racists. In October of the same year, the emigration ban of the NS state destroyed all their hope for rescue. In late March 1942, Cilli and Josef Herrmann received the deportation order for themselves and their daughters. On April 2, together with 124 other Augsburg Jews, they had to depart for Piaski in Poland, occupied by Nazi-Germany (Generalgouvernement). The files say “evacuated”. Neither Cilli nor her family survived this “evacuation“ (see Josef Herrmann’s biography). How and where they died remains unclear. In 1960, the Augsburg district court declared Cilli Herrmann, as well as her husband and her two daughters as dead.

Benigna Schönhagen (Translation by Michael Bernheim)