Sabine (Sabina) Schwager, geb. Teller

Sabine (Bini) Teller was born on July 3, 1885 in Unterhaid in Bohemia (today Dolni Dvoriste) to the seed merchant Leopold Teller and his wife Anna, née Kuh. She attended school in Unterhaid and later in Prague. She also learned to play the piano and sing, attended the theater and other cultural events in Prague. In 1911 Sabine Teller married the merchant Leopold Schwager of Munich and moved with him into Gärtnerplatz 4 (today Klenzestraße 26). The couple had three children: Charlotte, born in 1912, Erwin, born in 1913, and Karl, born in 1921. Charlotte was only two years old when she died of pneumonia. With the outbreak of the First World War Leopold Schwager fought in the German army, returning only 1919 after being released from a prisoner of war camp. While he was away, Sabine Schwager ran the family business with the help of trusted employees.
After the Nazi seizure of power Sabine and Leopold Schwager initially did not try to leave Germany. Their sons emigrated in 1938 to Palestine and the USA. Following the “Kristallnacht” pogroms on November 9, 1938 Leopold Schwager was imprisoned for a month in Dachau concentration camp. After his release, Sabine and Leopold Schwager got on the waiting list for US visas at the American consulate in Stuttgart – they had number 39,000 on the list. In February 1941, their number came up. Their son, Erwin, did everything he could from the USA to bring his parents over. But Sabine and Leopold Schwager were unable to make the journey to freedom: In October 1941, the Nazi regime forbade German Jews to emigrate. On November 20, 1941 Sabine and Leopold Schwager were deported to Kaunas in Lithuania, where they were shot to death five days later.(text Dianne Schwager, editor C. Fritsche, translation T. Axelrod)