born 26 August 1901 in Weißenfels
died 23 April 1945 in Ketschendorf near Fürstenwalde
historical former address Steinhöfeler Chaussee 27
Stumbling stone Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 61
Date of stone-laying 6 September 2017
Fritz Julius Friedländer was born into a Jewish family in Weißenfels in Saxony-Anhalt on 26 August 1901. After the early death of his father, his mother Johanna moved to Frankfurt an der Oder and married the merchant Sally Löschgold. Together with his stepfather, Fritz ran the textile shop “Löschgold & Friedländer” in Frankfurt’s Regierungsstraße. Johanna and Sally Löschgold were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto on 2 April 1942. Nothing further is known about their fate.
On 4 August 1932, Fritz Friedländer married Klara Charlotte Werwinski and the young family moved to Fürstenwalde, where Fritz worked as a self-employed sales representative. The couple had three children – Hans Werner Max, born in 1933, Gerd Fritz, born in 1938, and Bärbel, born in 1943 – who were raised in their mother’s Catholic faith. Protected by the privileges attached to a so-called “mixed marriage”, the family was allowed to continue their life at Steinhöfeler Chaussee 27 (today Karl-Liebknecht-Straße) despite the National Socialist terror after 1933.
During the November pogroms, on 9 November 1938, Fritz Friedländer was arrested and detained as a “protective custody prisoner” in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was released in December, but only on condition that he report daily to the Secret State Police, the Gestapo. Until 1943, he performed forced labour for battery manufacturer Pertrix in Berlin-Niederschöneweide, later at the plant nursery Lehmpfuhl in Spreestraße, Ketschendorf.
When Soviet soldiers stormed the nursery on 23 April 1945, Fritz Friedländer was accidentally shot. In 1947, the family was granted permission to have his body transferred to Fürstenwalde, where he was buried with dignity. Klara Friedländer and her children moved to West Berlin in the 1950s.