An in memoriam

Yesterday, at my father’s request, two so called Stolpersteine were placed in front of the house at the Herengracht 522 in Amsterdam. This was the house where Paul Auerbach and Sophia Charlotte Auerbach-Seligsohn lived before they were killed in 1944. Paul was killed in Dachau and his wife Charlotte was killed in Auschwitz.

Paul Auerbach collected early Greek printed books (books printed mostly between 1501 and 1544). This unique collection was saved during the second world war, and later formed the basis of the library of the Institute of Byzantine and New Greek Studies at the University of Amsterdam. My father’s research, who was a professor at this institute, was based in large part on Paul Auerbach’s collection.

To commemorate Paul and Charlotte Auerbach we placed the two Stolpersteine. And in the last few months we collected the little information we could find about Paul and Charlotte and bundled it in a small book of just 32 pages: Two short publications by Paul Auerbach, one short essay about him and his collection, a few pictures of his work, and one single image of Paul Auerbach himself. We have found almost no information at all about Charlotte Auerbach.

We also created a simple web page about Paul Auerbach and Sophia Charlotte Auerbach-Seligsohn (in Dutch). We will update this page whenever we find more information.