City of Neu Isenburg

Names

Sonntag, Marianne Gerda

First NameMarianne Gerda
Family NameSonntag
Date of Birth5 January 1936
Birthplace/Place of ResidenceMannheim
Residence in „Heim Isenburg“01 February 1936 - 20 January 1938
Departure toStuttgart (in fact Kiel)
Profession-
Date of Death/Place of Death-

Marianne Gerda Sonntag was born on 05 January 1936 in Mannheim. Her parents, Heinrich Klein and Gerda Sonntag, couldn't get married, because Gerda Sonntag was Jewish. The forbidden contact to her brought Heinrich Klein to prison. After she gave birth to a daughter, Gerda Sonntag emigrated to Shanghai. She didn't get a ticket also for her daughter and so on 01 February 1036 she brought her to the Home of the Jewish Women's Association in Neu-Isenburg. In Shanghai Gerda Sonntag married.

When her father was released from prison, he found out that Gerda Sonntag emigrated alone and began to look after his daughter. He found her in 1938 in Neu-Isenburg, visit the Home of the Jewish Women's Association and took her with. As place of residence he named Stuttgart; the truth was that he moved to Kiel where he found a workplace as an engineer. In Kiel he lived together with his girl friend and later wife, Betti Herold, and his daughter Marianne Gerda Sonntag. They gave her the surname Klein and looked after her very carefully, because they were always afraid, that Marianne Gerda was regognized as a half-Jewish girl.

Heinrich Klein was obliged to contact the police regularly, because it was known that he has a daughter with a Jewish woman. For the daughter it meant that she had not very much contact to other people; most of the time she was at home.       

In 1948 the family Klein got a letter, in there was mentioned a girl named Marianne Gerda Sonntag, Marianne Gerda Klein asked after that girl, but she never got an answer.

On 22 August 1946 the family moved from Kiel to Walldorf, today it belongs to Baden-Württemberg. In 1950 they moved to Lampertheim. There Heinrich Klein and his wife Betti were divorced.

Marianne Gerda Klein married on 24 December 1953 and gave live to five girls. In the same year her father, Heinrich Klein, moved to Oggersheim.

Betti Klein told Marianne Gerda Sonntag that she was not her biological mother and that her biological mother could emigrate in the pre-war years to Shanghai, later she moved to the USA.

She also heart that she has an uncle, Daniel Sonntag, who has survived Auschwitz as the only member of the family. After the war he emigrated also to the USA. Two aunts of her emigrated in time to Australia and to the USA.

Her mother, Gerda Sonntag, came to Germany in 1961, after the sister of Heinrich Klein, Gretel Weisbrod, who lived in Walldorf, contacted her.

In 1963 and 1967 Marianne Gerda Sonntag visited her mother in the USA. 

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