Ella Boronow

In 2016, two books and two loose bookplates by Joseph and Ella Boronow were returned.

Ella Rosina Glücksmann was born on April 20th, 1879 in Milowitz. She grew up in Wrocław and there in 1902 married the dentist Joseph Boronow, who was born in 1872 in Königshütte. The couple got five children: the daughters Toni, Katharina and Stephanie and the two sons Erich and Johannes. Joseph Boronow died in 1929, Katharina Boronow died three years later.

In 1934 Ella Boronow moved to Berlin to Toni and Erich. Stephanie Boronow had already emigrated to Palestine with her husband Wolfgang Perl in 1933, Johannes escaped to the Philippines in 1935. Erich Boronow was arrested in Berlin in November 1938 for political reasons. After being detained at the Plötzensee Prison, he was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp via various stations and was shot and murdered there on May 28th, 1942. Toni Boronow survived the Holocaust in illegality. Ella Boronow was deported to Auschwitz on December 14th, 1942 and murdered there.

The two returned books are not from the stock of the Central and Regional Library of Berlin (ZLB), but were returned by Mr. Jan Oeben together with the two loose bookplates found in the ZLB. He had bought them at a flea market in the Netherlands about 30 years ago and had become aware of the common provenance via the co-operative database Looted Cultural Assets.