Emma Wallach, geb. Koschland

Emma Koschland was born on July 17, 1878 in the Swabian town of Ichenhausen. She was the daughter of the merchant Israel Isidor Daniel Koschland and his wife Regina, née Sinsheimer. She married Julius Wallach on October 27, 1903. Three years before, he and his brother Moritz had opened a store specializing in traditional regional costumes in Munich. The Wallach’s business flourished and soon gained a reputation beyond Munich. It fitted the members of the festival parade with costumes at the centennial Oktoberfest in 1910. Emma and Julius Wallach had three children: Hildegard, born in 1904, Helmuth, born in 1907, and Gertrud, born in 1908. On May 28, 1927 Emma Wallach divorced her husband. Nothing is known about Emma Wallach’s life in the first years of the Nazi dictatorship. She lived at Galeriestraße 17 (today Franz-Josef-Strauß-Ring 4). In 1939, a woman named Angstmann reported her to the police for verbal abuse. On July 10, 1939 she was sentenced to a two-month prison term by the Munich special court for “violating the Treachery Act” of 1934. The sentence was not enforced however. With the whole incident obviously leaving a sharp impression on her, Emma Wallach tried to emigrate to Britain directly in the summer of 1939 ‒ unsuccessfully.
On November 20, 1941 Emma Wallach was deported to Kaunas together with around 1,000 other Jewish men, women, and children. She was number 314 on the deportation list. Like everyone else, she had to meet the transportation costs of 50 Reichsmark. On November 25, 1941 SS men shot Emma Wallach and all of the other deportees. The Wallach family was scatted in all directions in the years of Nazi rule. Emma Wallach’s daughter Hildegard fled with her husband, the art dealer Ilja Kagan, to the United States. Gertrud Wallach had already moved to Denmark in 1929. In 1936 Helmuth Wallach moved to his sister there. Emma Wallach’s divorced husband Julius emigrated in 1939 with his second wife, moving to New York. (text :Ruth und Klaus-Peter Münch; editor: C. Fritsche; translation: P. Bowman)