Marsplatz 10-14 – a ‘ghetto house’

The organised expulsion of Jews from their homes in Germany in the late 1930s also affected the Marsplatz house. Tenancy agreements between Jews and non-Jews were forbidden by the April 1939 ‘Law on Rental Agreements with Jews’, and the non-Jewish tenants left. They were increasingly replaced by Jews, including the owners of the property, who had hitherto lived in the Cologne district of Sülz. In May 1941 the house was declared a ‘ghetto house’ by the Gestapo. With some 25 currently known occupants, it was a relatively small such house. Around half the inmates were deported at the end of 1941 to the ghettos in Litzmannstadt (today Łódź) in Poland and Riga in Latvia; the other half were transferred to other ghetto houses and deported from there.