People

Israel Sonn was born in Neukirchen in northern Hesse in 1883 as the son of merchant Levi Sonn and his wife Pauline, née Goldschmidt. He became a bookbinder and later lived in Harburg. In 1904, he married Jutta Dwora (Devora) Apteker, who came from Kolomea in Galicia. Between 1905 and 1910, their four children Leopold, Wilhelm, Max and Rose were born in Harburg.

The father of four, Israel Sonn took part in the First World War as a war volunteer. He was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class. Towards the end of the war, when he was at the Belgian front, he fell ill with pneumonia. He was taken to the military hospital (sanatorium) in Lüneburg, where he died on November 6, 1918, just a few days before the end of the First World War. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Lüneburg.

His widow Jutta (Julia) Sonn had a gravestone put up, elaborately designed, which read: “Here rests in peace my dear husband and my children"s devoted father Israel Sonn, b. 22.3.1883. died 6.11.1918”. The family later lived in Hamburg. Israel"s widow Jutta Sonn and her four children were able to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews in 1934: The whole family fled from Hamburg to the USA, where they first settled in Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania.

In 1963, Israel Sonn"s son Max traveled to Germany. After his return to the USA, he sent a letter to the Lüneburg City Council. He wrote: “I left Germany in Dec. 1934 because of the persecution of the Jews, on May 13 of that year I took a flight to Hamburg; it was the first time in 28 years that I had set foot on German soil again. I visited [...] the graves of my relatives in the Jewish cemeteries in Hamburg and Harburg, both cemeteries were completely intact, the cemeteries and graves are kept in order by the city administration.

On May 16, I went to Lüneburg to visit the grave of my father, who was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Lüneburg during the First World War. [...] I had made a 4000-mile flight to say a prayer at my father"s grave after 28 years. Then I was told the inhuman news that the Jewish cemetery had been destroyed by the Nazis and razed to the ground. There was one question I couldn"t answer! Why the destruction of the cemetery in Lüneburg and not in Hamburg and Harburg? - After I was told the horrible news of the destruction of the cemetery, the image of the murder of 6,000,000 Jews, the most atrocious outrage in the history of mankind, came before my eyes, among these victims were 8 very close relatives of mine. I spoke to a mayor"s assistant in the town hall and also to a pastor from St. John"s Church, expressing my protest to these gentlemen about the shameful destruction of the cemetery in your town.”

Max Sonn and his then 83-year-old mother Julia explained that they wanted to erect a new stone in a cemetery near their home in the USA and that the city of Lüneburg would surely consider it a matter of honor to cover the costs. Max enclosed photos of his father in uniform and of the Lüneburg gravestone.

The town of Lüneburg took this request as an opportunity to resume an older project: The erection of a central memorial in the Jewish cemetery to commemorate all those buried there. This had already been proposed by the state association of Jewish communities in the 1950s, but had never been implemented by the town authorities. In an internal memo from the head of the town"s administration in August 1963, it became clear why Lüneburg suddenly wanted to push ahead with the erection of such a stone: They hoped to persuade Max Sonn of the fact “that by [...] erecting a memorial stone at the town"s expense, further costs could not be borne in individual cases, not least in view of the fact that such handling would undoubtedly result in further repercussions.”

However, the plan did not work out: Although the state association of Jewish communities reacted with pleasure to the town"s willingness to finance a central memorial stone, it pointed out that this was by no means enough: “We ask that the request of Mr. Max Sonn from Wilmington/USA be granted, as we have unfortunately had to experience on several occasions that visitors from abroad were no longer able to approach the graves of their deceased because the cemetery had been destroyed and the location of the individual graves could no longer even be determined. We can therefore understand Mr. Sonn"s bitterness about this.”

Also for Max Sonn himself, the plan to erect a central memorial was by no means enough. In December 1963, he wrote to town director Segelcke: “As I noted in my letter to the town council, we want to erect a new headstone in a local cemetery, as our headstone in your town has been destroyed, so the town of Lüneburg is responsible for the damage. - I hope that we can resolve the matter peacefully so that I don"t have to turn to the federal government, German and American newspapers.”

Now, at last, the town of Lüneburg apparently felt compelled to react. In February 1964, it transferred 150 dollars (just under 600 DM at the time) to Max Sonn for the erection of a gravestone for his father in the USA.

On site in Lüneburg, it took even longer before those buried in the Jewish cemetery were finally remembered: It was not until the summer of 1965 that a memorial stone was erected on the site of the totally destroyed cemetery. At the inauguration in July 1965, Mayor Trebchen referred directly to Israel Sonn, albeit by using a wrong first name: “In the First World War, many Jewish fellow citizens stood up for their fatherland, including Max Sonn, who was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class at the time.”

Sources and info (in German):

Gravestone for Israel Sonn (based on historical photographs): epidat - Forschungsplattform jüdische Grabsteinepigraphik, Lüneburg, lbg-1003

Exchange of steps between the town of Lüneburg and Max Sonn, 1963-1964, in: Stadtarchiv Lüneburg, VA3_674201_1931-1989

Für die Versöhnung über Gräber hinweg: Städtischer Gedenk-Obelisk auf dem ehemaligen Judenfriedhof (= For reconciliation beyond graves: Municipal memorial obelisk on the former Jewish cemetery), in: Landeszeitung Lüneburg, 05.07.1965

Name variants: Isaak