Siegfried Wilmersdörfer was born in Regensburg on March 14, 1879. He was the illegitimate child of Zerline Wilmersdörfer. He grew up with relatives in Regensburg and went to school there. On March 11, 1911 he married Flora Schmidt. The couple moved to Landshut, where Flora Wilmersdörfer gave birth to their daughter Anna Lina in 1912. Siegfried Wilmersdörfer ran a business there. During the First World War, he served at the front and won the Iron Cross, among other distinctions. In 1919 the family moved to Amberg, where Siegfried Wilmersdörfer had opened a textile goods shop. In 1922 the shop was relocated to Senefelderstraße in Munich. From 1925 to 1935 Siegfried und Flora Wilmersdörfer lived at Haimhauserstraße 19 (today 1). The family regularly attended the main synagogue in Herzog-Max-Straße. Siegfried Wilmersdörfer was interested in art, and loved music and mountain climbing. He was a member of the “Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten” (“Reich Association of Jewish Front Soldiers”). Life changed radically for all of them with the Nazi seizure of power. In September 1938, the Thuringian knitted goods factory owner Martin Ringelmann “aryanised” the firm for far below what it was worth to. In the course of the “Kristallnacht” pogroms on November 9, 1938 the Gestapo (Secret Police) interned Siegfried Wilmersdörfer, who suffered from heart disease, for four weeks in Dachau concentration camp. There, he was forced to grant power of attorney for all his financial affairs to a lawyer. Siegfried and Flora Wilmersdörfer had visa for Cuba and left Germany on May 13, 1939 on board the MS St. Louis. But a decree by the Cuban president forbade the more than 900 Jewish passengers from entering the country and the ship had to return to Europe. On June 14, 1939 Belgium, Great Britain, France and the Netherlands said they would be willing to take in the desperate people. Siegfried and Flora Wilmersdörfer moved to Brussels. Following the German occupation of Belgium in May 1940, Siegfried and Flora Wilmersdörfer once again found themselves under the control of the Nazis. Siegfried Wilmersdörfer died of a heart attack on May 1, 1941. On July 31, 1943 the SS deported Flora Wilmersdörfer from Mechelen assembly camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where she was murdered. Their daughter Anna Lina managed to emigrate to the USA with her family.(text Barbara Hutzelmann, editor C. Fritsche, translation. C. Hales)
