Arnold Springer was born in Munich on October 8, 1920, the son of the businesspeople Jakob Springer and Barbara Springer, née Birndorfer. His father was Jewish, his mother a Catholic from Rosenheim. The family lived at Rosental 16, opposite their relatives at Rosental 19 (now Sendlinger Strasse 3). Arnold’s father Jakob died on March 24, 1924, his mother Barbara likewise before he reached the age of ten. After her death, Arnold lived with his grandmother Rosa Springer at Rosental 16. Along with Dorline and Emma Springer he was co-owner of the building Rosental 19.
According to National Socialist racial doctrine, Arnold was Jewish. He had been born of a “mixed marriage,” but that did not protect him from persecution because his “Aryan” mother had already died. Arnold neither received adequate schooling nor was he able to serve an ordinary apprenticeship. He went to school at the Vereinigte Institute Dr. Schönheil-Holl and subsequently completed an apprenticeship as a mechanic and fitter at the Jüdische Anlernwerkstätte (Jewish Training Workshop). Arnold and Rosa Springer were compelled to move out of Rosental 16 in July 1936. Initially they lived at Prinzregentenstrasse 12, then on the third floor of Mariahilfplatz 1. According to the residential registration card, the latter flat belonged to Arnold Springer’s family. Arnold and Rosa’s further addresses were Biederstein 7, c/o Hesselberger, Leopoldstrasse 52a/IV, c/o Abeles and, from November 19, 1941, Holzkirchner Strasse 5, c/o Lipkowitz. Arnold Springer was deported from Munich to Piaski on April 4, 1942. To this day, the date and place of his death are unknown. He presumably did not live past the age of twenty-one.
Most of the information we have about Arnold is from the Munich municipal archive. No one alive today has personal memories of him. In addition to a snapshot showing him with two other children, several studio portraits of Arnold as a child have come down to us. They are in photo albums his second cousin Anny Rosenthal, née Springer, took with her to the U.S. when she emigrated in 1936. (Text and translation Judith Rosenthal; editor C. Fritsche)
