13th Location: Ritterstraße 27

The Werberg Family

The shop and family home of the Jewish family Werberg until 1939 now forms the entrance to the Minden Museum. Adolf Werberg had bought the house in 1908. His son L.M. Werberg, born October 24th, 1898, inherited the house and ran a second-hand shop for shoes and textiles here. He lived here with his wife Bella, née Philipp, born June 25th, 1898, and his son Hans-Adolf, born 1931.

Immediately after the Nazis had come to power in 1933 there were the first anti-semitic actions and boycotts against the Werberg family and their shop. During the November pogrom of 1938 many shop windows were broken and much shop furniture was destroyed, also at the Werbergs. L. M. E. was taken to the concentration camp at Buchenwald and brutally maltreated there; seriously ill he returned to Minden. He and his wife decided to send their son Hans-Adolf out of Germany with one of the children’s transports. Hans-Adolf reached England, later the USA, and so could escape from the Nazi regime.

In 1939, the Werbergs were forced to sell their house to the Town of Minden. The price of 7500 Reichsmark was not handed over to the Werberg family, but kept

by the Town. In 1952 the house was given back to the son Hans-Adolf and bought a second time in 1954 to house an extension of the Museum.

It is not yet clear where the money finally went this time. The Town can prove it was paid into a bank, but it has apparently not reached Hans-Adolf Werberg.

L.M. Werberg and B.Werberg were deported to the ghetto at Riga together with many other Jewish men and women in December 1941. They died there on February llth, 1942. No details of their deaths are known.