Ernst Reichenbach

Two separately held genealogy charts give Ernst’s birth at Hoher Weg 27 and name Adolf and Goldine as his parents. The 1928 directory names Paul and Ernst as proprietors.

He signed Ruth’s 1930 marriage record and the family’s 1935 mourning card. A land-register extract later records him in Berlin with Margarete as owner of Martiniplan 10.

A contemporary Berlin Kultusvereinigung death card records Ernst’s last address as Normannenstraße 2 in Nikolassee and states ‘Verstorben 27.11.42’—died 27 November 1942. The card was processed on 31 December. It establishes the date and Berlin registration, but gives neither a cause of death nor any statement about custody.

Normannenstraße 2 was the home of the Jewish bookseller Max Harrwitz and his wife Hedwig. After being forced to sell it, they remained and took persecuted Jewish people as subtenants. Berlin’s official Stolpersteine biography places Ernst, his wife Rosalie, Jeanette Reichenbach and Martha Reichenbach in that house. Its statement that Ernst died in 1940 conflicts with the dated Arolsen card and is not adopted here.

A family memorandum says Ernst died in the camps. Because the Berlin card records a death without naming cause or custody, the family account remains part of the record rather than being treated as disproved.

Family memory carries Rosa Rosenberg from Ernst Reichenbach’s life into postwar Innsbruck, but the documentary bridge is not yet complete. An Innsbruck Jewish genealogy record identifies a Rosa Rosenberg, born in Berlin in 1890 and buried in Innsbruck in 1961, with Oskar Kasimir Lubomirski. A family memorandum and Susan Reichenbach Heyman’s oral history make it likely that she was Ernst’s widow; no civil or persecution record has yet been found.

Contemporary Jewish reporting gives Oskar a distinct postwar history. In 1961 AJR Information described him as a former prince of Polish origin who had converted to Judaism and led Innsbruck’s small Jewish community; a second report called him a prominent convert. Their story belongs to the history of survival, displacement and the rebuilding of Jewish life, but Rosa’s wartime path must remain open until a person-specific record is found.