Stephan Franz Sänger was born in Augsburg on April 2, 1897, the youngest child of Julius Sänger and his wife Rosa, née Einstein. The Jewish Sänger family had lived there since 1881. Stephan grew up with his siblings Berta, Siegfried Friedrich (Fritz), Elsa (Elsie) and Alfred. Photos that have been preserved show a happy family. Stephan Sänger attended the Humanistische Gymnasium, a Grammar School in Augsburg, subsequently studying construction engineering at the Technical University in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He later worked for his family’s construction and civil engineering firm Kleofaas & Knapp.
During the First World War, Stephan Sänger served with the field artillery. In Berlin in 1923 he married Selma Fähling, who was a Protestant, and in 1930 moved with her to Müllerstraße 45 in Munich. Following the separation from his wife, Stephan Sänger lived in Tengstraße between October 1935 and May 1938. It is unclear how he earned his living after the “Aryanization” of Kleofaas & Knapp in November 1938. On July 3, 1939 he married Selma Rosenfelder, who also came from Augsburg. The couple did not live together because his wife stayed with her widowed mother. After being forced to move several times, Stephan Sänger lived at Lindwurmstraße 125 from June 1942. Until then, there had been a prayer room of the Jewish community there, but after this had been closed down, the building was appropriated as a “Jew house”.
When Stephan Sänger’s mother-in-law, Sophie Rosenfelder, was deported to Theresienstadt ghetto on July 22, 1942, Stephan and Selma Sänger went with her voluntarily. In Theresienstadt, the couple were at first assigned separate accommodation. To begin with, Stephan Sänger worked in a technical office. In the spring of 1944 he became head of the construction workshop and was now able to move into a room in the construction workshop building with his wife. Just a few months later, on October 1, 1944, the SS deported Stephan Sänger to Auschwitz extermination camp. The deportation train arrived there on October 3, 1944. It is not known whether Stephan Sänger was murdered immediately on his arrival or later. His wife, Selma, was deported to Auschwitz five days after him and also murdered, like almost all of his relatives. Only his sister, Elsie Götz, survived and was able to emigrate to the USA. (Text Nancy Freund-Heller, editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)
