Stolpersteine in Plzeň Region
They remember the fate of the Nazi victims being murdered, deported, exiled or driven to suicide.
Generally, the stumbling blocks are posed in front of the building where the victims had their last self-chosen residence.
Jakub Kohn, a prominent Horažd'ovice trader, bought the interior furnishings of the Synagogue of Polish Jews in Vienna and brought it to his hometown.
Last Rabbi of Horažďovice was Martin Friedmann (1887–1931), from 1931 until 1941 there was only a lay leader, Adolf Popper, in this town.
The Memorial Scrolls Trust repaired them and loans them to synagogues throughout the world so that they can commemorate the perished Jewish communities of Bohemia.
He guided the group and gave first-hand testimony of the deportations to Theresienstadt on 26 November 1942, recorded on video by Westminster Synagogue.
His second wife, four of their children, his son Karl and all three of his grandchildren were also murdered in the course of the Shoah at Łódź Ghetto, at Auschwitz and in Belarus.
Also his brothers Karl and Josef, his sister Anna and her family members were murdered in the course of the Shoah.
Also her mother, her brothers Josef and Ota, her sister Anna and her brother-in-law František Pisinger as well as the two children of Anna and František were, separately, deported and murdered by the Nazis at Łódź Ghetto, at Auschwitz and in Belarus.
Another one of his relatives, Josefa Ledererová, born on 5 January 1882 in Slatina, living as a widow in Horažďovice, was deported together with him, his wife and his sister-in-law to Theresienstadt in 1942.
His wife and his daughter Elsa were deported together on 26 November 1942 from Klatovy to Theresienstadt by transport Cd.
Františka Löwyová and her husband were deported from Klatovy to Theresienstadt concentration camp by transport Cd.
The first record of the community is a decree of Charles IV from 1338, that ordered the administrators of the town to protect the Jews.
This changed drastically in 1848, when the Austrian monarch lifted residence restrictions for Jews in the whole empire.
In spite of anti-Jewish riots of 1866, the Jewish population continued to grow — and reached the number 1,207 in 1870.
In 1920, a severe and years-long controversy on kosher slaughtering broke out, when it was declared illegal for humanitarian reasons.
Although the Supreme Court abolished this kind of prohibition in 1934, attempts to reintroduce Shechita failed, due to the price difference.
After the annexation of Sudetenland by Hitler's Reich in the fall of 1938, many Jews from these regions arrived in the city.
[67] They felt in safety, but this changed drastically when Hitler Germany invaded the rest of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939.
They were treated like inferiors and exposed to degrading repressions on administrative, psychological and physical levels.
[68] In January 1942, at least 2,000 of Plzeò citizens of all professions, all social classes and all ages (workers, craftsmen, tradesmen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, physicians, officials, housewives, children and elderly persons) were interned in the Sokol building in Štruncovy Sady and deported from town after several days.
They were labelled "Jews" by the Nazis on the basis of their genealogical origin — not considering their faith nor their national or denominational feeling.
Also interned and then deported were 540 Jews from nearby areas – men, women and children from Blovice, Hořovice, Kralovice, Manětín, Radnice, Rokycany and Zbiroh.
[71] Most of the deportees had to walk from the Bohušovice railway station about two and a half kilometers to the camp, carrying children and luggage in the severe cold.
Already in March of the same year two transports, Aa and Ab, each containing 1,000 people, were sent from Thersienstadt to the Izbica Ghetto.
Twenty-two days later, on 19 October 1944, also Josefina Löbnerová was deported to Auschwitz and murdered immediately after arrival.
Egon Löbner was deported to Auschwitz too, on the same train like his father, was a forced laborer there, sent on a death march to Gross-Rosen und was transferred to Flossenbürg, where he had to work for Messerschmitt.
He went back to Pilsen, completed high school and emigrated to the United States, became a renowned scientist in the field of optoelectronics, married and had three children.
Her brother Alois died on 13 August 1942 in the Łódź Ghetto, his wife Zdenka already in October 1941.
His brother Markus died in 1930, his sister Berta (born 1870 or 1871), married to Heinrich Schnurmacher, was also murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
