Paula Fürst
born 1894
Paula Fürst was born in Glogau in Silesia in 1894 and moved to Berlin with her widowed mother and her brother in 1906. Trained as a teacher, she became a committed advocate of the Montessori method and in 1926 led the first Montessori class at a German public school, in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. Dismissed from state service in 1933, she took over the Theodor Herzl School, a large Jewish private school on Kaiserdamm, and after the November pogrom of 1938 headed the school department of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, which oversaw all remaining Jewish schooling. In August 1939 she accompanied one of the last Kindertransporte to Britain but returned to Berlin despite her friends' warnings. On 23 June 1942 she was deported from Berlin to Minsk with about 200 others, among them several senior Reichsvereinigung staff; the Bundesarchiv Memorial Book dates the transport to 24 June. She was most probably murdered at the Maly Trostenets killing site near Minsk; the date of her death is unknown.
Murdered in Maly Trostenets.
Sources
- Bundesarchiv, Gedenkbuch – entry Fürst, Paula Margarete Birth 6 Aug 1894 Glogau; residence Charlottenburg; deportation 'ab Königsberg – Berlin' 24 Jun 1942 to Minsk, onward to Maly Trostinec killing site
- Stolpersteine in Berlin – Paula Fürst (biography by Anke Silomon) Move to Berlin 1906, Montessori class 1926, dismissal 1933, Theodor Herzl School, Reichsvereinigung school department, Kindertransport 1939, deportation 23 Jun 1942 with 201 others to Minsk, address Kaiserdamm 101, death date and place unknown, probably Maly Trostinec
- statistik-des-holocaust.de – XVI. Transport Departure 23 Jun 1942 established from OFP files; 202 deportees incl. Reichsvereinigung staff; 26 Jun is only the covering-letter date
- Wikipedia (de) – Paula Fürst Birth date and place; address Kaiserdamm 101; 16th Osttransport to Minsk (dated 24 Jun 1942); presumed murdered
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