Albert Kissinger

Albert Kissinger was born on February 19, 1931. He was the eldest son of Julius and Jenny Kissinger. At first, the family lived in Tattenbachstraße in Munich-Lehel. With baby Albert, the Kissingers moved in June 1931 to Bürkleinstraße 16 (today 20). Albert’s little brother Manfred was born on March 27, 1932. Because the apartment was becoming too small, the family moved into the apartment to the left of the stairs on the same floor. Uncle Ferdinand Kissinger, who was divorced, and later grandfather Simon Kissinger lived there as well. Albert and Manfred were proper Lehel lads. They went to the Jewish elementary school just a few minutes away on foot. Their father and uncle taught there. But the boys probably did not enjoy a sheltered childhood in the district. Contemporary witnesses relate how the Jewish children in Lehel were excluded and sometimes treated brutally by the Christian children. The Jewish lawyer Fritz Silber later recalled how his son was run into, hit and sworn at in Bürkleinstraße by another child on a scooter. From 1940, the Kissinger family made great efforts to be able to emigrate to the USA – but in vain. Albert Kissinger was ten years old when the Gestapo (Secret Police) took him away from the apartment with his family and brought them to the “Judensiedlung” (“Jewish Quarter”) Milbertshofen at Knorrstraße 148. He was deported to Kaunus in Lithuania along with around 1,000 other Jewish children, women and men. This was the first and biggest deportation of Munich Jews. On November 25, 1941 SS mobile killing squads shot Albert along with his whole family and had them all buried in an anonymous mass grave. (text Felicia Englmann, editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)