Sophie & Klaus Weiß - English

Sophie Weiß, born Breitenbach, was born in Munich in 1892 as the daughter of the wine merchant Wilhelm Breitenbach. After her first marriage to the timber merchant Lothar Weiß and the birth of her son Klaus in 1921, she lived in Munich and later in Kitzingen. Following her divorce, she moved to Magdeburg and worked in a tobacco shop with her new life partner Helmut Gerike. 

Her last address in Magdeburg was Otto-von-Guericke Straße 48, where she lived with Klaus. Klaus, an outstanding pupil at the 4th secondary school, had to endure the humiliations and exclusions of the Nazi harassment by his classmates and teachers as a "half-Jew". His classmate Arnold Bosse described how Klaus was constantly the target of hostility, how his religion isolated him, and how his teachers humiliated him. 

The Weiß family was deported from Berlin to Kauen on November 17, 1941, and murdered in Fort IX on November 25, 1941. Sophie and Klaus fell victim to the mass shootings at open pits. 

The story of Sophie Weiß and her son Klaus not only illustrates the resistance against discrimination, but also the tragic toll exacted by Nazi persecution. Their lives and sufferings serve as a powerful testimony to the need for tolerance and anti-racism in our society.