Emanuel Kocherthaler

Emanuel Kocherthaler was raised in Ernsbach, today part of the town of Forchtenberg, Baden-Württemberg. He followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a merchant, and moved to Munich in 1902. In 1904, he and Rosa Falk married; they moved into the third-floor apartment on Bürkleinstraße 16 (today 20), a building that belonged to Rosa Kocherthaler and her siblings. Their daughter Alice was born on July 8, 1905. After the “Kristallnacht” pogroms of November 9, 1938 the Kocherthaler family was subjected to increasingly repressive measures. In keeping with the “decree of the usage of Jewish assets” enacted on December 3, 1938, they and all Jews in Germany had to turn over their valuables to the Städtisches Leihamt (municipal loan office). It was not until 1940 that they were paid 147 Reichsmark for their property, the silverware and some jewelry. The proceeds were placed together with their rental fees in a security account to which they had no access. In 1939, Bürkleinstraße 16 was turned into a “Jew house,” where Jews were forced to resettle. It wasn’t long before more than 72 men, women and children had moved into this cramped space. Alice Kocherthaler managed to emigrate to England in June 1939, and from there to the USA. On January 20, 1942 the Nazis expelled Emanuel and Rosa Kocherthaler from their apartment in Bürkleinstraße, where they had lived for almost four decades and raised their daughter. They were sent to a Jewish community dormitory on Wagnerstraße 3. On June 4, 1942 the Gestapo (Secret Police) deported the couple in Transport II/2 to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Emanuel and Rosa Kocherthaler were transferred to the “home for the elderly” in the “Kavalierkaserne” – damp, dark and utterly overcrowded barracks: one of the worst locations in Theresienstadt. Emanuel Kocherthaler died on February 4, 1943; the official cause of death was “old age.” His wife, Rosa, succumbed to the catastrophic conditions in the camp; she died on April 6, 1943. (text Felicia Englmann, editor C. Fritsche, translation T. Axelrod)