Bernhard Haas

Bernhard Haas grew up in a Jewish family in Thalmässing in Middle Franconia. With the onetime flourishing Jewish community increasingly dwindling, his family also decided to leave the village. Bernhard Haas presumably first moved to Bamberg, then in 1904 to Munich. His family had already settled here and ran a business dealing in oils and fats. Bernhard Haas continued the business after the death of his father. He was also involved in a cigar business and acted as a broker for properties, mortgages and loans. Business was good. Bernhard Haas purchased properties in the Munich districts Neuhausen, Trudering, and Pasing. In 1926 he married Viktoria Ziegler, the daughter of a Catholic family from Pasing, who converted to Judaism. In 1933 the couple ‒ with their son Erich born in 1926 ‒ moved into an apartment at Sandstraße 1 (today Varnhagenstraße 7a). The family owned the building, which was also the site of the warehouse of the trading company specializing in oils and fats Bernhard Haas had founded in 1930. On November 10, 1938 Bernhard Haas was arrested in the course of the “Kristallnacht” pogroms and taken to Dachau concentration camp. There he was issued the prisoner number 20,340. After barely three weeks imprisonment, he died on November 28, 1938 in unexplained circumstances. Bernhard Haas was buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Munich. (text Berhard Koch , editor C. Fritsche, translation P. Bowman)