Inge (auch: Ingeborg) Gutmann

Ingeborg (Inge) Gutmann was born in Munich on December 6, 1923 and grew up in a Jewish family. Her parents, Bertha and Nathan Gutmann, owned a shoe wholesale firm at Goethestrasse 23. She spent the first few years of her life with her grandparents in Niederwerrn near Schweinfurt. On May 12, 1926, shortly before the birth of her brother Heinz Julius, two-year-old Inge went to live with her parents in Munich. From April 1934 to July 9, 1938 she attended the Städtisches Lyzeum (City Grammar School) in Luisenstrasse, the present-day Luisengymnasium. In 1939, because career opportunities for Jews were limited, Inge Gutmann completed a course in household and infant care at the Jewish children’s home at Antonienstrasse 7, probably hoping that this would make it easier to emigrate and follow her brother Heinz, who had fled to the USA in 1938.
After experiencing the brutal violence against Jews in the “Kristallnacht” pogroms on November 9-10, 1938, Inge Gutmann accelerated her desperate attempts to leave Germany – but in vain. From 1941 on, she had to work as a forced labourer in the Flachsröste (flax factory) Lohhof. In mid-November, 1941, she and her parents received their deportation order. The family had to move into the “Judensiedlung” (“Jewish Quarter”) Milbertshofen, a barrack camp at Knorrstrasse 148. On November 20, 1941, the Gestapo (secret state police) deported them with around 1,000 other Munich Jews to Kaunas. Inge Gutmann was 17 years old. The SS shot her and all the other deportees on November 25, 1941. Her brother Heinz managed to escape to the USA in 1938.(Text: Amelie Lehmacher, Paul Lindner, Antonia Strobl, Lily Süßmuth; editor: C. Fritsche; translation: C. Hales))