Herzog Leopold-Straße 3 (laid in 2010)
Arnold and Bella Lemberger
“Lemberger, perish! Jew, perish!”
Arnold Lemberger, born June 1, 1877, in Freistadt, Moravia,
wife Bella Lemberger, née Kohn, born February 15, 1890, in Nikolsburg, Moravia,
son Hans, born 1923 in Vienna, and the twins Alice (“Lizzi”) and Walter, born 1925 in Wiener Neustadt.
Both parents were deported to Minsk on November 28, 1941, where they perished. All three children survived in exile in Great Britain.
The five-member Lemberger family lived until 1938 in the house at Herzog Leopold-Straße 3, where their business was also located. Bella gave birth to three children: Hans in 1923 and the twins Alice and Walter in 1925. The family lived in the same house where their shop operated. In the “Lemberger Department Store” one could purchase mainly textiles, toys, sporting goods, leather goods, and household items. The store, with its 12 display windows in the city center, was especially prominent.
As of April 26, 1938, the store was placed under compulsory management. On June 15, 1938, the couple was forced to sign a contract stripping them of their business. In December 1938, the shop was “Aryanized.”
After the November Pogrom (“Kristallnacht”), the family—having witnessed the devastation in the city—was expelled along with many others in November 1938. They could take nothing but the clothes they wore. The family was left with no means of livelihood. Still, the parents were able to arrange the escape of all three children to Great Britain, though they themselves had to endure miserable living conditions in Vienna.
Arnold and Bella Lemberger were deported on November 28, 1941, to Minsk, where they fell victim to the Shoah.
Werner Sulzgruber
Walter, their son, remembered his father as a respected citizen of the city. All the more incomprehensible to him was the course events took, which he could not grasp. He still recalled how, after the Anschluss, the Nazis organized a torchlight parade that passed through Herzog Leopold-Straße in front of their store and into the main square. The family, hidden behind curtains, looked out of the window and had to see and hear the marchers shouting loudly: “Lemberger, perish! Jew, perish!”
The day after the “Kristallnacht,” the mother was at home alone with her three children when the Nazis returned to take them all away and lock them inside the synagogue. They were driven in a humiliating “single-file march” through the city center, watched by passers-by, many of whom laughed.
Helmuth Eiwen, based on an interview with son Walter Lee, May 2010, London
The twins Walter and Alice, later known as Walter Lee and Lizzi Smith, and their brother Hans all remained in London after the war. All three have since passed away.