Jewish merchants in Solingen-Ohligs

Stop 10: The Wallach Family

Düsseldorfer Str. 26 as of today. Photo: Daniela Tobias

Düsseldorfer Str. 26 – go to map – go to starting point

Karl Joseph Wallach was born on 1 December 1897 in Eilendorf, a village close to Aachen. He was the seventh child of butcher and cattle trader Andreas Wallach and his wife Eva. We don’t have any information about his childhood and youth. According to his daughter Margot, he was trained as decorator.

Annonce im Ohligser Anzeiger vom 15.3.1929, Quelle: Stadtarchiv Solingen via zeitpunkt.nrw
Advertisement in the local newspaper “Ohligser Anzeiger“ of 15 March 1929. Source: City Archive of Solingen via zeitpunkt.nrw

In August 1927, Karl Wallach moved from Gelsenkirchen to Ohligs where, together with Albert Oster, he opened a store for textile goods in September 1927, called Oster & Co. It was located at Düsseldorfer Straße 26, the previous address of Julius Steinberger’s department store. Wallach and Oster employed up to 11 auxiliaries at a time.

On 17 February 1929, Karl Wallach got married to businesswoman Hildegard Koopmann. The marriage ceremony was held in Goch where Hildegard had been born on 17 November 1900. Her family ran the city’s largest store for clothing and textiles. The couple’s daughter Margot Johanna was born on 12 January 1931 in Ohligs.

Vermählungsanzeige vom 16.2.1929 im Ohligser Anzeiger, Quelle: Stadtarchiv Solingen via zeitpunkt.nrw
Marriage announcement in the local newspaper “Ohligser Anzeiger“ of 16 February 1929. Source: City Archive of Solingen via zeitpunkt.nrw
Annonce von Karl Wallach im Ohligser Anzeiger vom 9.5.1936, Quelle: Stadtarchiv Solingen via zeitpunkt.nrw
Advertisement by Karl Wallach in the local newspaper “Ohligser Anzeiger“ of 9 May 1936. Source: City Archive of Solingen via zeitpunkt.nrw

In August 1931, the company “Oster & Co.“ advertised a newly opened department where goods were sold at a unit price. One year later, the store was transferred to Hildegard Wallach and henceforth went by the name of “Oster & Co. Nachfahren” (literally “Oster & Co. Descendants”). In November 1932, the Wallach family moved from Düsseldorfer Straße to nearby Talstraße 38 where they continued the operation of their store at first. However, as Jewish businesses started to be boycotted from 1933 onwards, the company had to file for bankruptcy in October 1934. Karl Wallach instantly registered a business as commission agent for haberdashery. He managed to run a store for fabrics, covering one floor of their home at Talstraße, until 1938.

As Margot Wallach recalls, the family had achieved quite some prosperity. The mother collected antiques. A housemaid, a laundress and a cleaning lady worked at the family’s spacious flat at Talstraße. The parents were not particularly religious, but once Margot started going to school, she also attended Hebrew lessons at the synagogue community in Solingen. This is where she met her lifelong friend Bella Tabak.

Margot Wallach (3rd from left) and Bella Tabak (on the right) were flower girls at the wedding of their neighbours Hugo Lichtenstein and Margot Zürndorfer. Source: Bella Tabak Altura
Talstr. 38 as of today. Photo: Daniela Tobias

Margot had a happy childhood. Together with her father, she wandered through the forests, went to football matches and, in 1936, visited the newly built autobahn. However, she also started to experience antisemitic exclusion through her fellow classmates on the playground. Even though Margot’s teachers had a positive attitude towards her and signalled her mother that she was a good student, they were not allowed to assign good grades to the Jewish child.

The Wallach family was among the victims of the “Kristallnacht”, the coordinated rampage against Jews on 9 November 1938. In 1946, witness Anni Meyer testified [in translation]:

„I vividly recall the night of the known action against Jews in 1938. At the time, I used to live at that house on Talstraße, number 38. The Jewish WALLACH family lived on the first floor. (…) In my flat, I then heard screams coming from the WALLACH family’s flat and I could also hear that furniture was being destroyed which, later on, I saw for myself in the flat of the WALLACH family. The screaming I heard gave me the impression that the Jewish family was in need and distress, so I opened my window that faced the street and called for help. A police officer, which I [saw] standing (…) under a gas lantern and whose voice I recognised to be that of officer DREYER, answered me from the street: ‘You don’t seem to be aware of what’s going on tonight, the whole of Germany can’t get no sleep tonight.’ DREYER inquired about my name and asked me to close the window. There were two other police officers accompanying DREYER. (…) I did not see anyone else on the street.”

Testimony of Anni Meyer (3 November 1946) on the happenings in Solingen-Ohligs (translation: M.B., 2021). Source of the German text: LAV R NRW Gerichte Rep. 191, Nr. 43, Bl. 8, as quoted in Stracke, Stephan: Der Novemberpogrom 1938 in Solingen im Spiegel der Justiz. Darstellungen und Dokumente, Solingen: 2018, p. 154

Following the “Kristallnacht“, more than 25,000 Jewish men in Germany were deported to concentration camps. Karl Wallach found himself among the Jews arrested in Solingen. On 10 November, the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, literally “Secret State Police”) put him into “protective custody”. On 16 November, he was transferred to Dachau concentration camp. Merchant Martin Goldschmidt and gynaecologist Dr. Hugo Lichtenstein of Ohligs were among his fellow prisoners. Karl Wallach’s business had been closed down while he was still in custody, his daughter left the “Volksschule” (primary school of the time) merely one and a half years after she had first started going there.

Gewerbekarte Karl Wallach, Quelle: Stadtarchiv Solingen
Business registration card of Karl Wallach. Source: City Archive of Solingen

Karl Wallach returned to his loved ones as a broken man in December 1938. The family now started looking for escape routes that would lead them out of the country. Since they had no relatives in the USA, there was no chance of emigrating there. In early April 1939, the family crossed the Belgian border on foot, aided by a trafficker. Margot had to leave her doll behind during the nightly march. It had been a present from her grandmother but since the doll was constantly exclaiming “Mama” it would have given them away otherwise.

Over the next couple of months, further relatives of the Wallach family arrived in Brussels. Among them were Karl’s sisters-in-law Helene Appel, née Koopmann, together with her husband Joseph, and Anna Hoffmann, née Koopmann. Going by the alias of “Anita Müller“, Anna Hoffmann organised the illegal emigration of Jews to Belgium up until May 1940. She later on fled to Paris, where she was arrested in September 1941.floh sie nach Paris, wo sie im September 1941 festgenommen wurde.

At Rue Masui 158, the Wallach family stayed in an attic flat and lived there in poor circumstances. Hilde Wallach earned the family’s meagre livelihood by working as a cleaning lady, while Karl Wallach looked after daughter Margot. One by one, the couple had to sell all of their valuables in order to survive. Margot attended primary school where she was reunited with her friend Bella Tabak from Solingen and learned French very quickly.

Together with other German males, Karl Wallach was interned shortly after Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940. Later on, the internees were transferred to camps in southern France. From July 1942 onwards, the French Vichy regime extradited Jews from France’s non-occupied zone to Germany. Via the camp in Drancy, Karl Wallach was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp on 26 August 1942 where he was eventually killed.

Hilde and Margot Wallach had stayed behind in Brussels where Margot was able to attend a public school until May 1942. However, from June 1942 onwards, Jews in Belgium and northern France were also forced to wear yellow badges (“Judenstern”, literally “Jew’s star”). At the same time, the German occupiers started to transport them towards the territory of the Reich, supposedly for work. Hilde Wallach responded by setting up a hiding place above a garage in the backyard. Until September 1942, she hid there together with her daughter, her sister Helene and Helene’s 15-year-old daughter Ellen. Margot, who was the only one fluent in French and attending a Catholic school by then, did the shopping.

Rue Masui 158 is the red house on the right. The family’s hiding place was located above the garage.

Since the situation was getting more and more dangerous, Hilde Wallach eventually turned to the nuns at Margot’s school for help. Assisted by a supportive priest, the four women and girls were allotted to different Catholic institutions, the Belgian resistance movement organised fake identity papers for each of them. Under the name of Rosette Nisal, Margot found shelter in a convent in Namur and received a Catholic baptism. Namur is where, in September 1944, she witnessed Canadian troops liberating Belgium.

Once Margot was back in Brussels with her mother, the aid organisation United Jewish Appeal enabled the talented schoolgirl to attend the Lycée (institution of secondary education). At only 16, Margot Wallach successfully completed school and was one of the best graduates in town. Due to financial reasons, going to university was, however, not an option and so she started working as a secretary. In December 1948, Hilde and Margot Wallach travelled from Antwerp to the USA – Hilde’s sister Helene Appel and her daughter Ellen had already emigrated there the year before.

In New York, Margot Wallach started a family with Lothar “Leonard” Katz, a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Her mother Hilde died in New York in June 1976. Margot Katz gave an interview to the USC Shoah Foundation in 2001. She died in Naples, Florida, on 23 August 2004.

The 2001 interview of Margot Wallach by the USC Shoah Foundation can be viewed at the City Archive of Solingen. © 1994-2001 USC Shoah Foundation