Rita Irmgard Stark was born on March 8, 1922 in Munich. She was the daughter of Joseph Stark and his wife Lina, née Weißmann. Joseph Stark, born in 1882, was a partner in N. Stark & Cie, a well-known wholesale and retail trade firm specializing in cloth located at Karlsplatz 5. Rita’s mother Lina Stark, born in 1895, came from Viernheim, an industrial town in the district of Heppenheim. Rita Stark grew up with her brother Günther Michael, three years her junior, in Seitzstraße 5. She attended the Städtische Lyzeum (municipal lyceum) for girls at St.-Anna-Platz, located at St.-Anna-Straße 20. Hardly anything is known about her childhood and youth, and it is therefore not possible to say if the family was religious or if the children were given a Jewish upbringing. The life of the family changed dramatically with the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. On September 16, 1938 the family business was deregistered and after its “Aryanization” operated under the name Hugo Pautsch; only the “aryan” employees were permitted to remain on the company staff. Following the “Kristallnacht” pogroms on November 9, 1938, several Munich Jews forcibly expelled from their homes lived with the Stark family in Seitzstraße 5. In April 1939, Rita’s brother Michael was still able to celebrate his bar mitzvah. Rita Stark left Munich in early August 1940 and lived in Berlin-Charlottenburg until April 1941. Her return to Munich was possibly because of the worsening health of her mother, who had a heart condition. Lina Stark died on June 4, 1941 in the Jewish hospital in Hermann-Schmidt-Straße 5. A few months later, on November 20, 1941, the Gestapo (Secret Police) deported Rita Stark, her father Joseph and her brother Michael together with around 1,000 other Jewish men, women and children from Munich to Kaunas. On arrival there SS men shot all the deportees on November 25, 1941. (text Schüler*innen des P-Seminars „Erinnerungszeichen“ am Städtischen St.-Anna-Gymnasium 2019/2021, editor C. Fritsche, translation P. Bowman)
