Dr. Paul Freudenthal

At about 19 years old, he moved to Leipzig in 1896 to study dentistry. Freudenthal had been working as a dentist near the main train station since 1901 and earned his doctorate 20 years later. After World War I, his brother Benno followed him to Leipzig. They lived together at 2 Tauchaer Str. (which is now called Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße).

After the November Pogroms of 1938, Dr. Freudenthal lost his medical license. From then on, he was only allowed to treat Jewish patients. Following Georg Elser’s assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich on November 8, 1939, a “special operation” was launched throughout the German Reich. In the course of this, Paul Freudenthal was arrested and deported to the Leipzig police prison. As persecution and discrimination against Jews intensified, the brothers were forced to move into one of the so-called “Jew houses” at 11 Jacobstraße in 1941. Simultaneously, the Nazi regime confiscated their assets.

On May 10, 1942 – earlier that year, deportations had begun with the aim of murdering fellow Jewish citizens – Paul and Benno Freudenthal were deported to the Bełżyce ghetto in the Lublin District of occupied Poland. For this purpose, they had previously been gathered along with about 280 other people at the 32^nd Elementary School at 2 Yorkstraße. Their luggage and personal belongings were subsequently confiscated and later sold to Leipzig’s population by the Klemm auction house. Hans Klemm’s company sold off private possessions like household items to benefit the state treasury.

Paul (65 years old) and his brother Benno (63 years old) died in occupied Poland. Paul Freudenthal’s luggage tag is now located at the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp memorial in Lublin (Poland) – and points to a possible location of the dentist’s murder.