Jews once lived lived here: When houses tell stories

Over the years, many people have passed through this fourth-floor apartment in an old Berlin building. Here, at Rosenheimer Straße 40, they have sat on the sofa and gathered around the kitchen table. They have looked out the window and let their minds wander.

Marie Rolshoven has lived here with her family since 2007. "The feeling of crossing that threshold, the same one the former residents crossed for the last time, stays with you," she says. She knows that Jews once lived here, and none of them survived the Nazi era.

After the National Socialists seized power in January 1933, it quickly became clear that Jews were considered second-class citizens under Nazi rule. Even the right to remain in their homes could no longer be taken for granted.

"A racially conscious fellow citizen cannot be expected to share a household with a Jew," the Nazi party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter wrote on September 18, 1938, claiming that landlords were therefore entitled to terminate leases without notice. On April 30, 1939, the law took effect. Jewish tenants and property owners were forced to leave their homes and move into buildings designated by the authorities, referred to in Nazi jargon as "Judenhäuser"(Jewish houses).

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