Olga Nussbaum was born in Munich on January 11, 1876, the daughter of Hermann and Henriette Nussbaum. Her father was a cloth merchant and master tailor. Olga Nussbaum was very close to her younger siblings all her life. She attended the prestigious school Höhere Töchterschule, today the Luisengymnasium, in the Maxvorstadt suburb. On December 17, 1896, she married Moses Moritz Maier, a teacher of religion, who was ten years her senior. The marriage produced no children. The Jewish couple lived at first at Luitpoldstrasse 2, and from 1902 at Mathildenstrasse 9.
Moses Moritz Maier died in 1923. Her three sisters and her brother, with their families, provided her with firm support at this time. In 1932 she moved to Arcostrasse 1. The Nazi seizure of power changed Olga Maier’s life. Her brother, the doctor Benjamin Nussbaum, emigrated to Palestine with his family in 1934. Olga Maier visited him there for two weeks in 1936. Many of her nieces and nephews and their children left Germany. Olga Maier sent letters and parcels to her loved ones abroad for as long as this was possible – even sending half a cake to her niece in Trinidad. She also sent her many of her cake recipes.
Olga Maier had to move from the first floor of Arcostrasse 1 up to the third floor in 1935, and in 1939 she had to leave the house entirely. She moved into Thierschstrasse 7 with the Walz family. She had already had to surrender her valuables in February 1939 – two silver candlesticks were later bought from the Städtisches Leihamt (municipal loan office) by the Bavarian National Museum. The Secret State Police (Gestapo) forced Olga Maier to move to a barrack camp, the "Judensiedlung" ("Jewish Quarter") Milbershofen, on January 30, 1942. On July 15, 1942, she was deported from there to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, and from there on September 19, 1942 to the Treblinka extermination camp, where the SS murdered her on September 20 or 21, 1942. Her sisters were also victims of the Shoah. In 2022, Olga Maier’s two silver candlesticks were returned to her heirs, who made a gift of them to the Jewish Museum Munich. (Text S. Steinborn, translation C. Hales; editor Ch. Fritsche)
