Inge Herlitz née Jacobsohn

Inge Herlitz, née Jacobsohn, was born in Berlin on 23 July 1922, as daughter of Leo and Charlotte Jacobsohn, née Rosenberg. Her father was a textile merchant and lived with his family in Budapester Straße in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

Unfortunately, Inge's parents both died in 1933 and were buried in the Weissensee Jewish Cemetery. Inge was now an orphan and moved in with Frida Cohn, née Jacobsohn, in Neukölln. She attended primary school there.

Frida Cohn was most likely deported from Germany as part of the 1938 "Poland Action". Inge's aunt Erna Abraham, née Rosenberg, who lived in Oranienburg, took in her niece.  The widow lived in Bernauer Straße with her children Martin Joachim and Beate, who were about the same age as Inge. 

At the age of 18, Inge married the young lift fitter Oskar Herlitz from Oberschöneweide. She moved in with him at Wattstr.11, where her mother-in-law Johanna Herlitz, née Cohn, provided them with a room. They now lived there in very cramped conditions, as another room was sublet to a non-Jewish family.  For the rest of the Herlitz family - mother-in-law and sisters-in-law Dorothea and Henriette - only the kitchen was now available. 

Inge and her husband were also affected by the introduction of forced labour for Jewish people. She herself had to straighten springs for pennies at the Germania spiral spring factory in Braunauer Straße (today: Sonnenallee) in Neukölln.

In June 1942, Inge's mother-in-law and sister-in-law Dorothea were deported to the Sobibor extermination camp. This brought the housing situation to a head, as the main tenant was now missing. Oskar and Inge had no financial reserves for an escape. The borders had also long been closed. 

On 15 August 1942, the couple were deported from the Putlitzstrasse/Quitzowstrasse goods station in Berlin-Moabit on Transport 18 to Riga/Latvia. Inge's fate is not known, but it is known today that after the train arrived, over 1000 people were shot directly in the nearby Bikernieki forest and buried in mass graves that had already been laid out..