Josef Herrmann

Josef (Joseph) Herrmann was born in Hainsfarth in Donau-Ries county, on August 5, 1884. His parents were the tradesman Ignaz Herrmann and Klara, née Gutmann. After his education in business, Josef Herrmann served in the army for the entire duration of the First World War. He was decorated with the Iron Cross 2nd Class.¹ Upon his return, he moved to Augsburg in early 1919 and established a “suspenders factory” on Obstmarkt.² The following year he married Cilli (Zilli) Stern of Augsburg, whose father Moses Löb Stern (1852-1920) had run a textile trading business there.

In 1921, the young couple moved to the distinctive, upper-middle-class Bismarck neighborhood. They lived at 33 Völkstrasse on the second floor of a stately apartment building.

There, the couple’s two daughters, Margot (born 1921) and Trude (born 1925) grew up (see biographies of Margot and Trude Herrmann). The Herrmanns spent much time with the families of two of Cilli’s brothers, who lived in the same neighborhood. The extended family was close-knit. Nearly every Shabbat they met for common walks and other pastimes.

Josef Herrmann was a devout Jew. Not only did he visit the Synagogue regularly, he was also active within the Jewish community. He chaired the Israelite Men’s Association and acted as deputy head of the Synagogue and Cemetery.

Whether his business was affected by the NSDAP boycott in April 1933, is unknown. During the November Pogrom in 1938, however, Josef Herrmann, like most of the other Jewish men in Augsburg, was arrested by the Gestapo and detained in the police prison. But he was not among the more than one hundred men who, like his brother-in-law Justin Stern, were transported to the Dachau concentration camp. After the November Pogrom, the NS authorities forced him to give up his business.³ From 1939 on, no Jew was allowed any longer to operate a business or a trade. Thus, the family not only lost its livelihood, but was also no longer allowed free disposition of its savings. When the war began, persecution by the NS state became more and more oppressive. Already since January 1939, Josef Herrmann was forced to use the compulsory name “Israel” and his wife and the two daughters, that of “Sara”.

Early on, the extended family was looking for possibilities to emigrate. Josef and Cilli Herrmann as well, tried to get to England and asked their relatives who had already emigrated for the required affidavits and for financial support. They registered their two daughters for a Kindertransport which was meant to bring them to Great Britain and to safety. But when in July 1939, the day to say farewell came, the two girls did not have the heart to part with their parents. The family waited together for the necessary papers and the money promised by their relatives, which were required for the immigration to Great Britain.

While more and more Jewish citizens of Augsburg left Germany, and also the Rabbi was able to escape shortly before the war began, the remaining members of the congregation council tried as best as they could to help those who were still in Augsburg. Together with Benno Arnold, Josef Herrmann took over the hard task of guiding and keeping the dissolving community together. In addition, Josef managed the clothing distribution, an urgently necessary effort, since the NS state did not issue clothing coupons to Jews.

In January 1940, the national socialists forced the Herrmann family to leave their comfortable home and to move into a so-called “Jews house” at 10 Herrmannstrasse. In 1941, Cilli and Margot had to work as forced laborers for the armaments industry in the Augsburg balloon factory. Now they all had to wear the yellow star and were visible to all as “Volksfeinde” (enemies of the people) and treated with contempt. Due to the emigration ban issued in October 1941, they were irreversibly trapped. When in November the first deportation orders came, Josef Herrmann was forced to help organize them. In March of the following year, he and his family were themselves listed.

On April 2, 1942, the transport with 124 men, women and children left via the Milbertshofen camp near Munich for Poland, occupied by the Germans and declared “General-gouvernement”. Their destination was the Piaski transit-ghetto. In the little town near Lublin, the Nazis had crammed approx. 6000 local Jews into a fenced-in ghetto. There was neither a water pipe, nor a sewer line and only one single fountain with drinking water. One of the few survivors reported: “Every day, twenty to thirty completely emaciated people starved to death. (…) Despite these catastrophic rationing conditions, all men and women able to work were drafted daily into groups for excavation, gardening and road maintenance.”⁴ From Piaski, Josef Herrmann and his family never returned. Either they perished wretchedly there, or they were further deported to an “Aktion Reinhardt” extermination camp. In 1960, the Augsburg District Court declared the family dead.⁵

Benigna Schönhagen (Translation by Michael Bernheim)