Paula Heyman

In May 2026, a looted book from Dr Paula Heyman’s library was returned.

The previous owner was clearly identified by means of a name and address stamp from Heyman found inside the book.

Paula Heyman was born on 3 June 1890 in Berlin, the daughter of banker Hugo Heyman (1856–1920) and his wife Marie Johanna, née Feist (1869–1943). Her siblings were twin sisters Frida and Käthe Heyman (both born in 1892). Frida died in her teens around 1907 in Berlin.

After studying philosophy in Berlin, Paula Heyman studied medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau and Berlin, where she was awarded her doctorate in 1916 and received her licence to practise medicine in the same year. She specialised in paediatrics. From 1928 onwards, Heyman was a medical officer for the Berlin Student Union. In this role, she examined female students in need of assistance, issued expert opinions and applied for convalescent cures. From 1922, she was a school physician in Berlin-Mitte. Heyman was a member of several medical associations (including the Verein sozialistischer Ärzte, VsÄ) and held various offices in the Association of German Physicians (Bund deutscher Ärzte, BdÄ).

Persecuted in Nazi Germany because of her Jewish heritage, Paula Heyman was dismissed from the public service in 1933. She subsequently ran a paediatric practice and also worked on a voluntary basis for the Jewish Community of Berlin and the Jewish Children’s Aid Society.

Paula Heyman was not married and had no children. In Berlin, she lived at Alexanderufer 5 (1926/27), then at Humboldtstraße 34, and finally with her mother Marie Johanna at Blumenstraße 100. Paula Heyman's practice was located there from 1933. In 1938, her licence to practise medicine was revoked as a result of anti-Semitic Nazi legislation. On 17 May 1943, she was taken from Blumenstraße 100 by the Gestapo, deported on the 38th transport as a ‘transport doctor’ via Katowice to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and murdered there. The last sign of life from Paula Heyman in the camp came in July 1943 in the form of a letter.

Paula's sister Käthe Heyman, later known as Kate, managed to emigrate to England in the 1930s, where she took courses at University College London in 1934–35 and later worked as a teacher and social worker. She lived in Belsize Park London and died in London in 1983. Kate Heyman never married and had no children.

Paula Heyman's cousin, the securities trader Bernhard Bernard Valentin Heyman (1894–1952), his wife Wilhelmine (Minnie) Anna Heyman, née Stern (1898–1985), and their children, the twins Lieselotte Lina Sophie Montague, née Heyman (1923–2012), and Hans Martin Heyman (1923–2008) survived the Shoah. In 1939, they emigrated from Berlin to Great Britain via the Netherlands, where they settled in Holland Park, London.

Martin Heyman joined the British Home Guard in the early 1940s and worked for the BBC Monitoring Unit in Caversham, Berkshire, where he monitored German radio broadcasts. In early May 1945, he reported on the German declaration of surrender broadcast by the “Reichssender Flensburg”. After the end of the Second World War, Martin Heyman studied at Christ Church College, Oxford, and continued to work for the BBC Monitoring Unit in Caversham, eventually becoming its managing director. He was married to the librarian Julienne Mary Green (1934–2016) from 1962 and they lived in Shiplake Bottom, Berkshire. The couple had no children.

Martin Heyman‘s sister, Lieselotte Lina Sophie, studied at Birkbeck College, University of London, and joined the Royal Air Force, where she rose to the rank of sergeant. After the Second World War, she worked at the BBC, among other things as a language trainer, but later gave up this work to start a family. In 1953, Lina Sophie Heyman married architect Hubert John Montague (1924–1970, formerly Hans Hubert Joachim Meyer, whose family left Berlin for London earlier in the 1930s) and had three children with him: Antony, Eleanor and Robert.

The book, which belonged to Paula Heyman, was incorporated into the collection of the Berlin City Library (Berliner Stadtbibliothek, now the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin) as a gift in 1945. The supplier “Kulturamt” (Cultural Office) listed in the acquisition journal, is presumably connected with the Berlin City Council (Magistrat). However, after the end of World War II in 1945, this supplier designation was also used for books that were proven to have come from the last apartments of deported Berlin Jews, which the Berliner Stadtbibliothek had already purchased from the Berlin City Pawnshop (Städtische Pfandleihanstalt Berlin) in 1943.

The ZLB would like to thank Antony Montague, Eleanor Montague, and Robert Montague for providing a wealth of information on the Heyman and Montague families.

Text & research: Kristin Hoßfeld / Jenka Fuchs