Fanny Deutsch was born in Miklós in Hungary on March 29, 1873. Nothing is known about her parents or her young life. In 1895, she married the tailor Aron Gross, who was born in Tehehaza on December 18, 1869. The wedding took place in the Hungarian capital. Five years later, the Jewish couple settled in Munich. Twelve children were born to them over the next few years, of whom only three survived infancy. Aron Gross died in Budapest on November 15, 1925, at the age of 55. A year later, Fanny Gross moved from Lothstraße 20 to Rosenheimer Straße 191, where she lived in a ground-floor apartment with her son Ladislaus.
Fanny Gross’s life changed abruptly after the Nazi seizure of power. Like all Jewish women and men, she, too, had to endure the experience of being excluded from the social life of Munich, where she had lived for many decades. On July 1, 1939 the Nazis forced her to leave her apartment. Suffering from serious heart disease, Fanny Gross had to move into the Jewish retirement home at Mathildenstraße 8, where she probably had to share a room with one or two other women. She died a few days later, on July 23, 1939, in the Jewish private clinic at Hermann-Schmid-Straße 5.
Her son, Ladislaus Gross, was sent to Dachau concentration camp in 1933 by the Gestapo (Secret Police). He was expelled from Bavaria the same year by order of the Interior Ministry. What befell him subsequently is not known; he was declared dead. His brother Luitpold left Germany in 1939 and emigrated to England. Fanny Gross’s son Ernö and his wife were deported by the Gestapo to Kaunas on November 20, 1941, where they were shot by the SS five days later. (text Caroline Brunnbauer, Elena Glas, Emilia Heinrichs und Leni Tanner; editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)
