Jenny Kissinger, geb. Schuster

Jenny Schuster was born in Wenkheim, a small village in what is now Baden-Württemberg. Her father, Jakob Schuster, had a shop there and was the leader of the synagogue. On April 22, 1930 Jenny Schuster married Julius Kissinger and moved with him to Tattenbachstraße in Munich-Lehel. Julius Kissinger was a teacher at the Jewish elementary school in Herzog-Rudolph-Straße. The Kissinger family belonged to the Ohel Jacob orthodox community. Shortly after the birth of their son Albert on February 19, 1931 the young family moved to Bürkleinstraße 16 (today 20). Jenny Kissinger was pregnant again when they moved. Their second son, Manfred, was born on March 27, 1932. Because the apartment was becoming too small, the Kissinger family moved into the apartment to the left of the stairs on the same floor. Jenny Kissinger’s divorced brother-in-law Ferdinand Kissinger and, later, her father-in-law Simon Kissinger lived there as well. The situation for the Munich Jews became ever more difficult following the Nazi seizure of power. In the course of the “Kristallnacht” pogroms, Ferdinand Kissinger was deported to Dachau concentration camp on November 10, 1938 and interned there until December 12, 1938. As more and more Munich Jews were being driven from their homes, the Kissingers tried to emigrate to the USA in 1940 – but in vain. On November 20, 1941 the Gestapo (Secret Police) took Jenny Kissinger with her family away from their apartment and brought them to the “Judensiedlung” (“Jewish Quarter”) Milbertshofen at Knorrstraße 148. Together with around 1,000 other Jewish children, women and men, she was supposed to be “relocated”, as it was officially called, to the Riga ghetto in Latvia. This was the first and biggest deportation of Jews from Munich. Because the Riga ghetto was already overcrowded, the deportation train was diverted to Kaunas in Lithuania. There, the SS held the people for three days in the cellar of Fort IX, a fortress outside the city. On November 25, 1941 SS mobile killing squads shot Jenny Kissinger along with her family members and had them buried in a mass grave. (text Felicia Englmann, editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)