The photo shows Esther Kowalewsky. How do we know that? Her identity and life story were uncovered through the work of the AG Stolpersteine and the research conducted by Michael W. Schönemann.
Her husband Abraham (b. 1888) came to Leipzig from Ukraine in 1918 to study at the university. The following year, he returned to Ukraine and married his fiancée Esther Wischnewsky (b. 1891).
AM00001287_Esther Kowalewsky
The Kowalewskys moved to Leipzig in 1920. After completing his studies, Abraham opened a hosiery shop in the city center. Their daughter Sophie was born in 1926. In the meantime, they had been stripped of their Ukrainian citizenship by decree of the newly founded Soviet Union, as they had emigrated. With the enactment of the Nuremberg ‘Racial Laws’ in 1935, discrimination against the Jewish population reached a new level of intensity. The Nazi state forced their expulsion through systematic humiliation. Many people attempted to flee with the help of relatives abroad. To do so, they needed travel documents and recent passport photographs. The Kowalewsky family, who lived at 12 König-Johann-Straße (now Tschaikowskistraße), also knew that they were no longer welcome in Germany.
During the November pogroms of 1938, a friend hid the family. Abraham was thus able to avoid arrest and imprisonment in the Buchenwald concentration camp. On November 20, 1938, the three-member Kowalewsky family fled to Rotterdam. From there, they emigrated to the USA.
You can view an interview with their daughter Sophie about this in our exhibition.