Lotte Schwarzschild was born on May 21, 1925. She was the daughter of Moritz Fritz Schwarzschild and his wife Mina, née Koschland. Her father was a partner in Ernst Sicher & Co., a wholesalers specializing in electrical convenience goods and light fixtures. The family first lived at Holbeinstraße 10 before moving to Äußere Prinzregentenstraße 12 when Lotte was six. Lotte spent her childhood in the immediate vicinity of her school, the Städtisches Lyzeum (municipal lyceum) at St.-Anna-Platz in St.-Anna-Straße 20, a girls’ school at the time.
The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 radically changed the life of the Schwarzschild family. Lotte Schwarzschild was forced to leave the lyceum at St.-Anna-Platz by 1938 at the latest. In April 1938 her father applied for a commercial license, which was refused because he was a Jew. The family received financial support from their private milieu. In 1939, Lotte and her parents were ejected from their apartment; as a consequence, they now had to constantly change address. By December 1941 at the latest, the Munich “Arisierungsstelle” (“office of Aryanization”) forced Lotte, aged only 16, to work at the Flachsröste (flax factory) Lohhof. Separated from her parents for the first time in her life, she had to live in the specially constructed barrack compound. The forced laborers in Lohhof, all of them women, suffered from hunger, the extremely arduous work, and draconian punishments, imposed for even the slightest “offence.” On October 2, 1941, she suffered a serious injury at a so-called swinging machine, which had no protective device, and her upper thumb limb was almost cut off. As a Jew, she was not allowed to be treated in the nearest hospital, but only in the "Israelitische Privatklinik" in Munich. On April 4, 1942 the Gestapo (Secret Police) deported Lotte Schwarzschild to Piaski in Lublin District. Many of those deported there died of starvation, perished from exhaustion and illness resulting from the inhumane forced labor in the nearby camps, or were murdered by the SS. It is not known when and where Lotte Schwarzschild died. Her parents Moritz and Mina Schwarzschild were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on June 10, 1942, and from there to the Auschwitz extermination camp on October 19, 1944. Presumably the SS murdered the couple directly upon the arrival of the train.
(text Schüler*innen des P-Seminars „Erinnerungszeichen“ am Städtischen St.-Anna-Gymnasium 2019/2021,editor C. Fritsche, translation P. Bowman)
