Amalie Spitzauer, geb. Löwenstein

Amalie Mathilde Löwenstein was born on September 15, 1879 in Hanover. She was the daughter of Louis Löwenstein, a trader in agricultural produce, and his wife Klara, née Neumann. The family moved to Munich on April 3, 1896. Amalie Löwenstein trained as a dentist. On December 29, 1902 she married Dr. Otto Spitzauer, who was ten years her senior and had a dental surgery in Sendlinger Straße 89. A son, Otto Benjamin, was born on November 7, 1903. The family lived in a luxurious ten-room apartment with attached dental surgery in Leopoldstraße 21. Otto Spitzauer died in 1913. After the death of her husband Amalie Spitzauer continued to live in financially secure circumstances. During the early years of the Nazi dictatorship Amalie Spitzauer lived in a three-room apartment at Pilotystraße 7 (today Franz-Josef-Strauß Ring 4). Deprived of her rights because she was Jewish, her financial situation was obviously becoming increasingly precarious. In March 1935 she sought a subtenant. In 1938, Amalie Spitzauer had to witness how the discriminatory laws directly impacted on her son Otto, who was given a prison sentence for “race defilement.” Although he had converted to Catholicism, according to Nazi racial ideology he was still categorized as a Jew and forbidden from marrying an “aryan” woman. Despite this, he lived together with Katharina Becker in an informal marriage. After serving his sentence Otto Spitzauer was deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was murdered on August 4, 1940.
On November 20, 1941 Amalie Spitzauer was deported together with around 1,000 other Jewish men, women and children from Munich to Kaunas; she was given the number 433 on the deportation list. On November 25, 1941 SS men shot Amalie Spitzauer and all of the other deportees. (text Ruth und Klaus-Peter Münch, editor C. Fritsche, translation P. Bowman)