Ilse Jetti Löffler, geb. Homburger

Ilse Jetti Homburger was born in Munich on September 15, 1912, the daughter of the butchers Leopold and Bella Homburger. She grew up with her sister Liesel and the twins Max and Bernhard at Bayerstrasse 55. Her brother Bernhard died when he was three.
Ilse Homburger attended the Luisengymnasium high school from 1923 to 1928 and was known as a likeable and helpful pupil. She left the school at the end of her eighth year. She worked as a clerk for Gerstle & Löffler, a firm located at Weinstrasse 3 making and distributing fashion and underwear, and was responsible for dispatching goods. The owner was the son of the co-founder Alfred Löffler.
It is not known how Ilse Homburger fared as a Jew during the first few years of the Nazi regime. It is also unclear whether Gerstle & Löffler suffered under the measures against Jewish traders. The shop was demolished during the “Kristallnacht” pogroms on November 9-10, 1938. In early 1939, the employees Friedrich Ultsch and Albert Jaus “aryanized” the firm for far below its actual value. On July 20, 1939, Ilse Homburger married Alfred Löffler, who was thirty years her senior. The couple subsequently had to move home several times. On November 20, 1941, the Gestapo (secret state police) deported Ilse Löffler together with her husband Alfred and her widowed mother Bella Homburger to Kaunas. There, the SS shot them on November 25, 1941. Ilse Löffler’s sister Liesel survived. She had already emigrated to Britain in 1939. There is no information about what happened to her brother Max. (Text: Barbara Hutzelmann; editor: C. Fritsche; translation: C. Hales)