Tilly Landauer was born on April 2, 1887 in Munich. She came from a distinguished Munich family: Her father, Siegmund Höchstädter, was a councilor of commerce and her mother, Clothilde, was the daughter of the dentist Emmanuel Sternfeld. Tilly grew up with her sisters Wilhelmine and Pauline at Prinzregentenstraße 12. At the age of 21, on September 23, 1908 she married Franz Landauer, whose family owned a large fashion house on Kaufingerstraße. In October 1908 the couple moved into a first-floor apartment at Königinstraße 85, facing the Englische Garten (English Garden). When the Nazis came to power, Tilly and Franz Landauer were subjected to discriminatory measures that increasingly restricted their lives. In July 1938, after living in their apartment on Königinstraße 85 for nearly 30 years, the couple was forced to leave home and move into Hohenstaufenstraße 7. In the course of the “Kristallnacht” pogroms the National Socialists held Franz Landauer in Dachau concentration camp from November 12 to December 19, 1938. The Nazi authorities also looted the couple systematically: Tilly and Franz Landauer were forced to pay a “Jewish property levy” of 25,000 Reichsmark; this so-called atonement tax was imposed on all Jews following the November pogroms. In March 1939, the couple also was forced to turn over all jewelry and valuables made of precious metals. On August 24, 1939 Tilly and Franz Landauer fled to Amsterdam. In order to emigrate, they had to pay “Reich flight tax” and “emigration tax” totaling 29,900 Reichsmark. On December 10, 1942 – about a year and a half after the Wehrmacht had occupied the Netherlands – the couple was deported, together with Tilly Landauer’s mother, Clothilde Höchstädter, to Westerbork transit camp. Clothilde Höchstädter and Franz Landauer succumbed to the catastrophic conditions in the camp. On January 18,1944 the SS deported Tilly Landauer from Westerbork to Theresienstadt concentration camp. On October 12, 1944 she was subjected to an agonizing three-day train journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The SS murdered her in a gas chamber in the camp, most likely just after her arrival, on October 15, 1944. (text Barbara Hutzelmann, editor C. Fritsche, translation. T. Axelrod)
