Henriette Lipcowitz, geb. Steiner

Little is known about Henriette Lipcowitz aside from her dates of birth and death. There are no known photos of her. She was born on March 10, 1867 in Munich to the merchant Gerson Lipcowitz and his wife Franziska, née Fischer. Henriette Lipcowitz earned her living as an embroiderer. She never married or had children. Throughout her life, she sublet apartments at various addresses in Munich, and briefly in Frankfurt and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1923 and 1929. In 1937 Henriette Lipcowitz moved in with the Silber family as a subtenant for a few months on the ground floor of Bürkleinstraße 16 (today 20). After the “Kristallnacht” pogroms on November 9, 1938 the disenfranchisement of the Jewish population accelerated. In November 1938, the National Socialist government decided to forcibly concentrate the Jews still living in Germany. In Munich, Jewish men, women and children were crammed into the smallest of spaces in so-called “Jew houses.” These were mostly houses owned by Jews or facilities belonging to the Jewish community. On April 3, 1940, at the age of 73, Henriette Lipcowitz was forced to move into the retirement home of the Jewish community at Kaulbachstraße 65. On June 21, 1940 she died of “poor circulation,” according to her death certificate. Her grave is in the New Jewish Cemetery in Munich. (text Felicia Englmann, editor C. Fritsche, translation. T. Axelrod)