Alexander Lubranczyk

Alexander (Alex) Lubranczyk was born on February 25, 1854 in Pudewitz (today Pobiedziska) to the tailor Aron Lubranczyk and his wife Therese, née Skotzka. On January 18, 1881 he married Emma Salomon in Berlin. The couple had four children between 1883 and 1889: Alfred, Gertrud, Sophie and Bruno. The two youngest children died early on, of tuberculosis. In Berlin, Alex Lubranczyk and his brother Louis ran a tailor's workshop. After the death of his wife, Alex Lubranczyk moved to Munich in 1928 to live with his daughter, Gertrud Hirsch, at Ohmstraße 20. She had married Siegmund Hirsch in 1914. They had two children: Gerda Sophie, born in 1918, and Rudolf Bruno, born in 1920. Alex Lubranczyk’s grandson, Rudolf, described him later as introverted and distant. Having spent most of his life in Berlin, he probably found it difficult to understand the Munich dialect. In 1939 Rudolf Hirsch succeeded in emigrating to England; Gertrud, Siegmund and Gerda fled to Chile. Given his age, Alex Lubranczyk remained in Munich. When the Jews were forced to resettle in so-called “Jew Houses,” he had to move to the Jewish retirement home on Mathildenstraße 9. Until 1941, Alex Lubranczyk hoped in vain for a visa to Chile. On April 16, 1942 the Gestapo (Secret Police) took him to the “Judensiedlung” (“Jewish Quarter”) Milbertshofen at Knorrstraße 148. On June 18, 1942 the Gestapo deported the 88-year-old on Transport II/7-305 to Theresienstadt ghetto. There, he was housed together with other elderly people under catastrophic conditions in a so-called “Siechenheim”. Only six weeks later, on August 3, 1942, Alex Lubranczyk died. The official cause of death was given as inflammation of the kidneys and renal pelvis, as well as pneumonia. (text Andrea Seelenfreund, editor C. Fritsche, translation T. Axelrod)