12/2014 1 Dr. Max Bloch´s speech on the occasion of the "Stolperstein" (stumbling stone)- placement for

Dr. Margarete Zuelzer (1877-1943) in Eichkampstr. 108

Berlin, on 2 Sept. 2012

"Much have you given me with cordiality and spirit - living together was beautiful, now I am totally orphaned!

Life will look different after these terrible times - I was joyfully prepared to rebuild everything new with you!

You cared for me faithfully from the distant place I still can´t conceive that you have left the earth.

Left friends and work behind, left science, striving and glory all the beauty that you loved so much we loved your human nature!"

Those verses were written by Margarete Zuelzer´s older sister Gertrud on 7 Febr. 1944 in Terezin. The two unmarried sisters had lived together in Eichkampstr. 108 until Margarete emigrated in 1939. The older sister was struck hard by the death of the younger one. Gertrud Zuelzer who was born in 1875 in Haynau (that means two years older than Margarete) was a painter. In the First World War she served as a volunteer nurse in a Belgian soldier´s home after she had been baptized in 1916 - a year earlier than Margarete. In the Weimar Republic in Berlin she was quite successful and her art was shown in the big Berlin exibitions; a famous collector of her art was Hjalmar Schacht, whose portrait she painted and who was a friend of her. On 13 Sept. 1942 Gertrud was arrested while trying to cross the Swiss border illegally and was deported to Terezin, where she arrived on 19 Nov. What saved her life (and she did survive, different to Margarete) was her profession and the help of her sister: Margarete sent her parcels from Amsterdam (until she was deported herself), that contained "everything necessary for sketching". Gertrud made sketches of her co-prisoners, mainly the privileged Czechs, and got bread for reward. Otherwise she would not have survived Terezin - so she said after the war. Margarete did for her sister whatever was possible from Amsterdam where she worked in the Tropical Institute and sang in the church choir. A proof of Margaretes efforts is a collection of postcards which she sent to her sister in 1942/43 adressed to the "Jewish Camp Terezin in the protectorate of Bohemia". I want to quote from these cards in the following. The first card was written on 22 Nov. 1942 - three days after Gertrud had arrived in Terezin and four days before her 68th birthday: "Dear Gertrud, I send you the most affectionate and longing birthday-wishes! Keep healthy until we meet again! Body-care is most important! Changing clothes day and night. I´m the same as before, everything o.k., working and healthy.... Full of yearning, Grete." Margarete did not get an answer at first which increased the worries for her sister. In Jan. 1943 Margarete finally got a receipt with Gertruds signature and was very pleased: " so you got my letters, hopefully also a parcel, waiting for confirmation, then I´ll send again." She sent sketching material, hopje-cake, socks and wrist-warmers. She hoped for information and descrip- tions, but underestimated the censorship of Terezin: "if I only had a card with a description of what you are doing. Are you helping in the kitchen or the hospital?... If I only knew if you have any 12/2014 2 requests, I would like to fulfill them if I could. - Please keep healthy, that is the most important thing," she wrote on 1 March 1943. On 20 March she got the first card from Terezin, yet with little information. But it was a sign of life. Gertrud wasn´t able to report much of her life, but Margarete tried to reveal a lot of her way of life to her sister: on 21 March she answered that she was forced to move rooms, she had to move from her beautiful flat in Bachplein to a furnished room in Merwedeplein in an Amsterdam city quarter which was allocated to Jews. Anne Frank´s family lived in 37, Merwedeplein until July 1943; Margarete was placed in number 24, only a few houses away from the Franks. She com- plained to her sister: "have to share the kitchen with three other parties. It´s difficult because I am working all day long. But it is not far from the institute and that is an advantage." On 7 April the removal was completed: "I moved and am quite satisfied, only hope that it will stay this way. I have a sunny room ... half an hour closer to the institute and that is convenient. I walk along the Amstel now every day. I live together with two couples, tiny kitchen, and it is not decided yet who will be the boss of it. Because I get on well with the delightful old lady, the two of us are against the less pleasant ones, and it works out well ... We also have a bathroom and I hope it will stay like this. I am trying hard to stay healthy ... and wish the same for you." She wrote the last card on 11 May 1943: again she asked Gertrud that she should write "how and with whom you live and as much of your everyday life as possible." Again and again she empha- sized the importance of volunteer nurse work at war (at the front), which Gertrud should underline as often as possible. That would be the only way of being allowed to stay in Terezin "and that is very important that you stay in Terezin". Margarete seemed to be certain (far away in Amsterdam that it could only be worse elsewhere. She was totally occupied by the worry for her sister. Other people were worried about Margarete. She had got to know her boss at the Amsterdam Tropical Institute, Professor Wilhelm Schüttner while travelling to the Dutch-Indies for research in 1926/27. Since then they were good friends and he tried hard to keep her at the institute: at the end of 1942 he submitted a petition to various places asking, "that Dr. Margarete Zuelzer ..., being an offspring of a formerly well-respected Jewish family, would be treated as an exceptional case". He expres- sed the kind request "to keep Dr. Margarete Zuelzer in Amsterdam and let her continue her work in the department of parasitology". This would also be important for the army. This request was denied by SS-Hauptsturmführer Ferdinand aus der Fünten on 2 Dec. with the remark "Exempting the Jew Margarete Zuelzer from her allocation of labour in Germany". On 20 May 1943, nine days after her last card to Gertrud, Margarete Zuelzer was deported to the concentration camp of Westerbork where she died on 23 Aug. Gertrud Zuelzer who never got over the violent death of her sister returned from Terezin to Berlin in 1945, marked by the emprisonment. She was devoted to the legacy of her sister until her death in 1968. From 1948 onwards she lived with her niece (my grandmother) Rosemarie Bloch, who was the daughter of her (and Margarete´s) older sister Anneliese. Anneliese had been married to a non-Jew und thus survived the war without any harm. This is how all those papers came into my hands in the end and I am grateful having been able to quote from them to you today. Dr. Max Bloch, Cologne

Margarete Zuelzer in lab in Heidelberg Gertrud und Margarete Zuelzer 1920 summer-semester 1902 (privat pictures)