Cäcilie Holländer

In 2023, two books from the library of Cäcilie Holländer could be returned.

Cäcilie Holländer was born in Berlin on 11 August 1890 as the daughter of the factory owner Johann Ludwig Jacoby (1862-1942) and Marie Helene Jacoby, née Neumann (1869-1942). Six years later, her brother Hans Max Adolf Jacoby (1986-1984) was born.

On 22 May 1919, Cäcilie Jacoby married Dr. Ernst Julius Holländer, a district court judge born in Berlin on 4 April 1883. From August 1919, the couple lived in a 6-room apartment on the third floor to the left of the front building at Giesebrechtstraße 3 in Charlottenburg. The couple had four children: Gerhard Ludwig Holländer (1922-1999), Kurt Werner Holländer (1924-1988), Eva Katharina Holländer (1927-2002) and Karl Günther Holländer (1930-1945). Persecuted as Jewish, Ernst Holländer was banned from his profession and lost his office as a district court judge in 1933 as a result of the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service". He no longer had access to his assets, which were seized. From then on, he was forced to work as a warehouse worker at Hüttenwerke Emil Schmidt in Berlin-Lichtenberg in order to support his family.

The eldest son of the family, Gerhard, emigrated to the United States and reached New York on 9 June 1937. His younger siblings Karl, Eva and presumably also Kurt fled from Germany to London on a Kindertransport and lived at Bloomsbury House. Kurt Werner Holländer was interned there as an "enemy alien" in 1940 and then taken to Canada, where he was released from prison in 1941. Eva and Karl arrived in New York in November 1943. In the same year, Gerhard was drafted into the US Navy. Kurt had only been living in the United States since 1948, after he had been called up for military service in Canada.

In the meantime, Cäcilie and Ernst Holländer were forced to leave their apartment in Giesebrechtstraße on 11 November 1941 and were sent to a collection camp at the synagogue at Levetzowstraße No. 8. Their apartment and all their belongings were confiscated. On 14 November, they were deported from Grunewald to the Minsk Ghetto, where they were both murdered. Their date of death was subsequently determined to be December 31, 1944.

One of the restituted books was recorded in the acquisition journal "J". This means that it is one of around 40,000 books that the Berliner Stadtbibliothek took over from the Berlin municipal pawnshop in 1943: Books from the last apartments of deported people who were persecuted as Jewish. The volumes that were accessioned after 1945 were mainly assigned to the supplier "Kulturamt", a supplier designation that was often used for holdings from this "Acquisition J". It can therefore be assumed that the second book also reached the library via the pawnshop as early as 1943.