Albert Goss

In 2026, a book from Albert Goss’s library could be given back.

The books' route of accession into the stock of the Berlin City Library (Berliner Stadtbibliothek, BStB) is unknown. The volume was added to the collection after the end of the war in 1951; the supplier is only noted as ‘Bücherlager’ (book storage) in the library's acquisition journal.

An address stamp clearly identifies the former owner of the book as the sports teacher Albert Goss.

Albert Goss was born on 13 October 1895. His parents were the teacher Joseph Goss (ca. 1865-1920) and Dora Goss née Cohn (ca. 1862-1928). Albert had two younger siblings: Erich, born on 6 November 1897, and Frieda, born on 30 March 1900. All three children were born in Schokken, Prussia (now Skoki, Poland). The Goss family later settled in Berlin at Auguststraße 38.

Albert Goss lived at Raupachstraße 13 from 1925. He married Alice Segal in Berlin in 1932. She was born in Berlin on 3 August 1905, the daughter of the sign manufacturer Wolf ‘Willy’ Segal (1873-1943) and Gertrud Segal, née Cohn (1875-1932). Albert and Alice Goss' son Joachim was born in Berlin on 30 June 1935.

The Goss family was persecuted as Jewish in Nazi Germany. Albert Goss was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp from 15 November to 23 December 1938. According to his declaration of assets, Albert Goss no longer worked as a sports teacher in 1942, as he had done previously, but was employed by the Jewish Cultural Association of Berlin at the Weißensee cemetery. The Goss family was also forced to take in subtenants in their three-room flat. Albert, Alice and Joachim Goss were taken to the collection point in the synagogue at Levetzowstraße 7/8 in Berlin-Tiergarten on 26 October 1942 and deported from Berlin to Riga on the ‘22nd Eastern Transport’. All of the approximately 800 people who were deported on this transport were murdered after arriving in Riga on 29 October 1942 at the latest, including Albert, Alice and Joachim Goss.

Erich Goss studied medicine and became a physician. In 1925 he married Alice Peril, born on 19 August 1895 in Halle an der Saale, in Berlin. The family lived in Südende (Berlin-Steglitz) Am Fenn 19 in around 1930. 

Erich worked as a general practitioner and obstetrician. The couple's son Werner Joachim was born in Berlin on 10 January 1931. 

In 1936, Erich, Alice and Werner Goss escaped to the United States via Le Havre and thus survived the Shoah. Erich Goss worked as a radiologist in New York until his death in 1966. Werner Joachim, now Bernard Joseph Goss, got married in the States in 1963 and became a father of two. He was killed in action in the Vietnam War on 23 April 1966. Alice Goss lived in the United States until her death in 1987.

Frieda Goss was working as a child carer in Berlin. On 30 January 1930, she married the labourer Walter Cohn in Berlin. They both emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine in the 1930s and thus survived the Shoah. According to family accounts, the couple had no children, but adopted a girl from Yemen. Frieda Cohn died in Israel in 1966, also according to family accounts. No further details could be gathered about this branch of the family.

Albert Goss' library was confiscated and ‘utilised’ by the German Reich due to Nazi persecution. In 1943, the antiquarian bookseller Max Niederlechner (1889-1970) appraised and valued the collection at 30 Reichsmarks on behalf of the Berlin-Brandenburg Chief Finance President's Asset Realisation Office (‘Vermögensverwertungsstelle des Oberfinanzpräsidenten Berlin-Brandenburg’). An unspecified number of books (‘1 batch’) was sold to the antiquarian bookshop of Wilhelm Rüter.

Whether the volume “Sportmassagen” that has been identified in the stock of the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin was part of this “batch” has so far not been established with certainty.