Memorial Sign for Dr Josef Gunzenhäuser,
Elisabethstraße 21

Josef Gunzenhäuser studied law in Munich and subsequently obtained his doctorate in Erlangen. Until 1924, he was employed by the Reichsausgleichsamt (Reich Compensation Office) in Munich, and from 1925 onwards he worked with his uncle in a law firm. However, as he was Jewish, in 1933 the National Socialists revoked his licence to practise law. In 1938, Dr Josef Gunzenhäuser was arrested and imprisoned for several months in the Dachau concentration camp.

As Dr Josef Gunzenhäuser was extremely talented in languages – he spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish and Turkish – he gave language courses at the Jewish Community Centre until 1941 to prepare people for emigration. His brother Adolf had already emigrated to Italy in 1933, and his father had died in 1936. Dr. Josef Gunzenhäuser himself did not manage to emigrate. The Gestapo deported him to the Theresienstadt ghetto on 5 June 1942. Due to the catastrophic living conditions there, Dr Josef Gunzenhäuser died after a few weeks, shortly before his 46th birthday in July 1942.

Dr Josef Gunzenhäuser's mother had been deported to Theresienstadt three days before him. She was able to leave the ghetto for Switzerland through an exchange transport and from there followed her surviving son to the United States.