Virtually no memories of Emma Springer, née Levinger have come down in our family. Emma was born in Munich on August 22, 1877, the daughter of the wholesale merchant David Levinger and Helene Lina Levinger, née Ullmann. She had ten brothers and sisters, five of whom died in infancy or childhood. Her brothers Hugo and Otto were killed in World War I. Emma went to school at the Neumaier’sches Institut in Munich. On June 27, 1901 she married the businessman Jakob Springer, who was ten years her senior. Jakob was a cousin of my great-grandfather David Springer. The couple had one daughter, Margarethe, born on June 27, 1901. Along with Dorline and Arnold Springer, Emma and Jakob were co-owners of the house at Rosental 19 (now Sendlinger Strasse 3). They also owned the apartment at Franz-Joseph-Strasse 15, where they lived from 1920 to 1933. It is not known whether they left that apartment voluntarily or in connection with Nazi persecution.
During the Nazi period, Emma and her husband lived at Winzererstrasse 52, Krumbacher Strasse 9 and Magdalenenstrasse 2. From December 1939, the couple were lodged in a so-called “Judenhaus” (“Jews’ house”) at Richard-Wagner-Strasse 11, where Jakob Springer died on March 29, 1941. In January 1942 Emma was forced to move to the so-called “Judensiedling Milbertshofen” (“Milbertshofen Jews’ Colony”), a barracks camp at Knorrstrasse 148. From there the Gestapo deported her to the Piaski Ghetto in Poland on April 4, 1942. Her relatives Dorline and Arnold Springer were on the same transport. It is not known whether Emma succumbed to the horrific conditions in the ghetto or was killed in one of the surrounding labor camps. The date of her death is also unknown.
Emma and Jakob’s daughter Margarethe had managed to emigrate to Jerusalem in the summer of 1933. There she later married Dr. Ernst Linz. Emma’s brother, the ENT specialist Dr. med. Siegfried Levinger, and his wife managed to emigrate to Palestine, where their son Fritz lived, in January 1936. The Nazis killed Emma’s niece Ruth Levinger within the framework of the “euthanasia” murders of sick persons. On September 20, 1940 she and other exclusively Jewish patients were deported to the Hartheim killing center and murdered there. There is a memory sign dedicated to her at Gaussstrasse 3, where she once lived.(Text and translation: Judith Rosenthal; editor: C. Fritsche)
