Yvonne Sommerfeld’s Family: Survival and Loss Under the Third Reich

This is Part 2 of a five-part series on the Sommerfeld family, tracing the fates of the wider family—so many of whom were caught up in the Holocaust.
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 5 is here
N.B. An Addendum can be found here, touching on Yvonne’s French military connections.

In Part 1 of this five-part series, we confirmed that Yvonne Sommerfeld was no figment of Josef Jakobs’ imagination. She was real — a Swiss-born woman from a Berlin-rooted family, woven into Jakobs’ 1934 gold-counterfeiting escapade in Switzerland. To understand her fully, we need to step back from those encounters with Werner Adolf Goldstein and Josef, and look at the family she came from.

Yvonne belonged to a large German-Jewish family with numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins on the Sommerfeld side. One branch settled in Switzerland—Yvonne’s father’s branch—while the others remained in Berlin or moved to Frankfurt. In the years after her adventures with Josef and Werner, Yvonne would hear how her relatives in Germany were being squeezed from all directions by the Nazi authorities. As the war progressed, the family would learn who had survived—a small handful—and who had not. The losses were not just entries in a record book; they were cousins, aunts, uncles. How this deep fracture shaped Yvonne’s later choices is hard to say, but impossible to ignore. Their story mirrors so many others: success and mobility in the early years, devastation and loss under the Third Reich, and the occasional bright thread of survival.

The Sommerfeld story is not only one of tragedy. A streak of risk-taking—and at times outright illegality—ran through the family. Yvonne’s grandfather Hermann dabbled in dubious business dealings that would one day see him and two of his sons facing extradition. One of those sons, Georg—Yvonne’s father—would carry on the pattern in his own way. But we’ll come to Georg’s story later. For now, we begin with Yvonne’s place in the family, and the fate of the wider Sommerfeld clan.

Tracing Yvonne’s Footsteps

The trail to Yvonne begins in fragments—small, intriguing hints scattered across very different sources. The first came from the MI5 interrogation files of Josef Jakobs, where he claimed Yvonne lived in a villa on Chemin de Moillebeau in Geneva, and that the last he had heard, she was in Nice, France, at Rue des Fleurs 5. Intriguingly, he thought she may have been involved with the French Intelligence Service. All Josef knew of her father, was that he had lived in Switzerland for three decades (ca 1911) and owned a publishing house in Basel.

These breadcrumbs were not much to go on. But a breakthrough came after Yvonne’s great-nephew, Stephan H., reached out after reading one of my posts. He generously shared the names and birth dates of Yvonne’s parents and grandparents—and pointed me towards the Swiss Archives.

With those details in hand, I was able to uncover the story of a family marked by devastating loss but also by surprising threads of resilience and survival.

Yvonne’s Immediate Family

Let’s begin with the heroine of this story. Alice Yvonne Sommerfeld was born 7 June (possibly 6 June) 1906 in Bern, Switzerland. Her parents were Georg Sommerfeld, a German, and Marie Studer, a Swiss.

Yvonne’s mother had an irregular start to life, one that would echo through the lives of her own children and grandchildren. Marie was born 5 April, 1873, in Bettlach, in northwestern Switzerland. Her mother was Magdalena Studer, and the lack of a paternal surname suggests that Marie was born out of wedlock.

Georg, on the other hand, had been born 21 July 1875 in Berlin to Hermann and Maria Sommerfeld.

It is a mystery as to how Georg and Marie met, but they were married 21 February 1900 in London, a curious locale for a German-Swiss couple. Their first child, Margaretha (Marge) Marie Sommerfeld was born the following year, on 30 June 1901, in Bern. Yvonne arrived five years later, completing the family.

While we will learn more of Georg in the next blog post, it is vital to note that his choice to marry a Swiss national and raise his children in Switzerland was a fateful decision. Unlike many of Georg’s siblings, nephews, and nieces, the family’s Swiss residency and nationality would protect them—at least in part—from the Holocaust They would lead a comparatively protected life. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the family slowly vanished.

The Sommerfeld Clan in Berlin

The story of the Sommerfeld clan starts with Yvonne’s paternal grandparents: Heinemann (Hermann) Sommerfeld (born 1848 in Magdeburg, southwest of Berlin) and his wife, Maria Behrendt (born 1847 in Marienwerder, just north of Berlin). Hermann and Maria, both Jewish, were married 25 October, 1873. Over the course of the next eight years, they gave birth to at least six children, all born in Berlin and all of whom survived childhood.

• Siegbert – born 27 July, 1874 (moved to Frankfurt later)
• Georg – born 21 July, 1875 (Yvonne’s father)
• Abraham Arthur – born 16 September, 1876 (moved to Frankfurt later)
• Sara Sella – born 11 June, 1878 (unknown ending)
• Margarethe – born 28 January, 1880 (married and actor and opera singer)
• Meier Erich – born 10 October, 1881 (moved to Frankfurt later)

Hermann was a businessman and a seemingly successful one. He dealt in textiles and had a manufacturing and linen goods business in Berlin in the late 1800s. His business may not always have been on the up-and-up. In January 1898, several British newspapers carried a small notice:

Hermann Sommerfeld, and George and Siegbert Sommerfeld, his sons, were again charged with obtaining goods by fraud within the jurisdiction of the
Swiss Government. It was alleged that in November last [1897] the men went to Zurich, and by means of false pretenses obtained from Messrs. Brussel and
Co. silk worth about £600. Prisoners were committed for extradition. (Morning Post – 5 January, 1898)

We will cover the details of their extradition in the next blog post, but for now, this news casts a shadow over Hermann and his two eldest sons. Hermann’s activities in the early 1900s are unclear, but life moved forward—his children married, and grandchildren were born Perhaps he retired in the 1910s to enjoy time with his family. Certainly, he would have been too old to fight during the First World War.

On 11 November 1921 Hermann’s wife, Maria, passed away in Berlin at their residence at Brandenburgische Strasse 43 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. Hermann followed her less than a year later, dying at home on 2 November 1922 at the age of 74. Yvonne’s grandparents would be among the lucky ones. They would not live to see the horrors that would soon tear apart German society. Many of their children and grandchildren would not be so lucky.

Siegbert Sommerfeld

The eldest Sommerfeld child, Yvonne’s uncle, Siegbert, was born 27 July 1874 in Berlin. As noted earlier, he went into business with his younger brother, Georg, and dealt in textiles, primarily silk. Despite the extradition back to Switzerland, he appears to have lived a relatively successful life. On 3 March 1910 he married Martha Straus in Frankfurt. Whether they had any children is unknown. Siegbert died on 9 March 1923 in Hamburg, less than a year after his father, at just 49 years old. His widow lived in Frankfurt for nearly two decades after his death, but her fate was not kind. On 18 August 1942 Siegbert’s wife, Martha, was deported to Terezin (Theresienstadt), where she perished.

Arthur Abraham Sommerfeld

Arthur Abraham Sommerfeld, the third of the Sommerfeld siblings, was born on 16 September 1876. Like several of his brothers, he had an unexpected connection to England. On 22 June 1898 Arthur married Beta Schimmelmann in Mile End Old Town, London. The couple did not, however, make England their permanent residence. Their two children were both born in Berlin: Egon on 16 November 1902 and Ruth on 31 May 1904. Arthur worked as a tailor for many years before moving into the automobile trade, serving as Director of the Automobilhaus Röchlin & Co.

Arthur’s daughter, Ruth, married Hans Michael Abraham on 21 November 1922 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. Ruth had been living with her parents at Kurfürstendamm 97/98, while Hans lived further along the boulevard at Kurfürstendamm 190/192. Hans was a physician and his father, Rudolf, was a dentist. The marriage was, however, short-lived and the couple divorced on 29 November 1927.

Ruth never remarried. On 5 January 1935 she took her own life in Berlin under the weight of Nazi persecution. Ruth’s ex-husband, Hans, had remarried in 1931, to Stephanie Karoline Bruck. The couple escaped to England, where Hans worked as a “chemical advisor” to the British Dental Cement company in London. In February 1947 they both changed their surnames to Anders, and Hans changed his forename to Harold. His father Rudolf perished in the Holocaust.

As for Yvonne’s uncle, Arthur died a few years after Ruth, on 1 September 1939, due to complications from diabetes. His wife, Beta (born 28 February 1874 in Bremen), was recorded as half-Jewish in the Nazis’ 1939 German Minority Census but that did not spare her. She was deported to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) Ghetto on 19 April 1943. She perished on 9 March 1944.

Arthur’s son, Egon, married Käthe Schlesinger (born 1903) sometime before 1926. The couple had one daughter, Inge, born on 20 January 1926 in Berlin. The entire family was deported to Auschwitz on 26 February 1943 where they all perished.

Sara Sella Sommerfeld

The fourth Sommerfeld sibling, Sara Sella, was born on 11 June 1878 in Berlin. She leaves only the faintest trace in the genealogical record. Perhaps she escaped the Nazi horrors and built a new life in a safer place—or perhaps not. One record in the Yad Vashem database lists a Sally/Salli Sommerfeld, born in the 1870s, who died in the 1940s. The name is close, and the dates match well enough to give pause. I hope it is not her.

Margarethe Sommerfeld

The fifth child of Hermann and Maria is Margarethe, born 28 January, 1880, in Berlin. She married Julius Kuthan at an unknown date, probably before 1908. Julius was born 28 September, 1882, in Vienna and was an actor, opera singer and director. As a result, the family moved around a lot.

Their daughter, Gerti Kuthan, was born 10 April 1908 in Elberfeld (a suburb of Wuppertal). After living in Berlin from 1929 to 1938, the couple moved—or were forced to move—to Prague, a decision that would hasten their fate. The Nazis deported them both to the Łódź (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto on 3 November 1941. Margarethe died 27 July, 1942, of “heart problems”. Julius followed, less than two months later, also dying of “heart problems”, on 14 September 1942. A rare trace of Julius’s career survives in an opera recording on Spotify.

As for their daughter, Gerti, she is a ray of sunshine in this sad tale. Gerti escaped to the UK in 1939 and is listed in the 1939 National Register as a singer. She worked in restaurants and a print shop during the war. In 1946, she married fellow refugee Paul Weis, a Jewish-Austrian lawyer who had also escaped the horrors of the Shoah. In 1947, the couple moved to Switzerland where Paul was a United Nations official. The couple had one child, Julian Charles Weis, born in 1949 in Switzerland. Gerti and her husband passed away in 1991, within a few days of each other.

Meier Erich Sommerfeld

The youngest Sommerfeld sibling is Meier Erich, born 10 October 1881 in Berlin. At the age of 22, Erich married Amalie Kahn (born 1879) in Berlin, on 29 September 1904. Erich and Amalie had at least one child, Edith Brila Sommerfeld, born 8 June 1905 in Berlin. The family later moved to Frankfurt where they lived at Schwanenstrasse 6 in the late 1930s.

Erich and Amalie were both deported to Terezin (Theresienstadt) Ghetto on 15 September, 1942. Erich died less than two months later, on 1 November 1942. Amalie ultimately perished on 23 November 1943.

Their daughter, Edith Sommerfeld, appears on an undated “medical” index in the genealogical records, which states that she was a resident at Weilmünster, Oberlahnstein. The small market town of Weilmünster lies 50 km northeast of Frankfurt and sounds fairly innocuous until one learns that:

During Nazi Germany, the mentally ill and handicapped of the 1897 Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Weilmünster (English: State Medical and Care Facility) were forcibly sterilized and systematically underfed or killed with drug overdoses. From 1937 to 1945, more than 6,000 people died there, among them all Jewish patients. Preliminary proceedings against the facility’s staff for having taken part in the Nazi murder of the sick were suspended in 1953. (Wikipedia)

The Vitos.de site has a bit more info (in German) on the tragedy of Weilmünster, noting that during the National Socialist period it played a central role in the state-controlled program of murdering sick inmates—euphemistically described as “euthanasia”.

We don’t know why Edith was sent to Weilmünster, but she was likely targeted due to a perceived disability. She does not appear in the Yad Vashem database and her date of death is unknown. Accounts about the victims of such institutions are harrowing and unbearably sad. Josef Jakobs’ own sister may have perished in one of these “healing” facilities.

There is one hope-filled loose end. In the 1939 German Minority Census, Lucie Sommerfeld (née Lind) was living with Erich and Amalie at their home address. Her husband, Kurt Sommerfeld (born 1914 in Frankfurt), was at that time an inmate of the prison (Strafgefängnis) at Homburger Landstrasse 112. Their two-year-old daughter, Helga, was living at Hans-Thoma-Straße 24, in the Kinderhaus der Weiblichen Fürsorge (Children’s Home for Women’s Welfare). The home took in orphans as well as children from difficult family situations.

It seems likely that Kurt had been arrested during the mass round-ups of Jewish men after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938. Families with the financial means could sometimes secure the release of husbands, brothers, or sons—provided the man had plans to leave Germany shortly afterwards.

All three—Kurt, Lucie, and Helga—eventually managed to escape to Shanghai and, in 1947, emigrated to the USA. Kurt was likely related to Erich and Amalie, perhaps a son or nephew. Another ray of sunshine.

Conclusion

The story of the Sommerfeld clan is one of devastating loss, tempered by only a few escapes. Yvonne’s cousin, Gerti Kuthan, reached England and built a new life. Kurt Sommerfeld, likely another cousin, fled with his wife and young daughter to Shanghai, eventually reaching the USA. But by the war’s end, most of Yvonne’s extended family was gone. Whether she ever spoke of them or not, such loss leaves a mark. It may have hardened her, or simply reinforced the lesson that survival sometimes demands bending the rules—a lesson her father, Georg, already knew well. In the next part, we’ll see how his own life may have passed that on.

Legend:   Green = survived the Shoah   |   Red = perished in the Shoah

• Hermann Sommerfeld – b. 1848, Magdeburg; businessman (likely textiles); d. 2 Nov 1922, Berlin.
  & Maria Behrendt – b. 1847, Marienwerder; d. 11 Nov 1921, Berlin.
  
  • Siegbert Sommerfeld – b. 27 Jul 1874, Berlin; silk merchant; m. 1910 Frankfurt to Martha Straus; d. 9 Mar 1923, Hamburg.
    • wife Martha Straus – b. 10 Dec 1871, Mainz; deported 18 Aug 1942 to Terezin (Theresienstadt); perished.
    • Children – unknown
  • Georg Sommerfeld – b. 21 Jul 1875, Berlin; m. 1900 London to Marie Studer; d. 30 Jul 1953, Zurich (See Part 3 for full profile.)
    • wife Maria Studer – b. 05 Apr 1873, Bettlach; 06 Jan 1944, Zurich.
    • daughter Margarethe “Marge” Marie Sommerfeld – b. 30 Jun 1901, Bern; d. 28 Jun 1955, Zurich
    • daughter Aline (Alice) Yvonne Sommerfeld – b. 7 Jun 1906, Bremgarten; d. 1996, Riehen (Basel)
  • Abraham Arthur Sommerfeld – b. 16 Sep 1876, Berlin; m. 1898 London to Beta Schimmelmann; car agent; d. 1 Sep 1939, Berlin.
    • wife Beta Schimmelmann – b. 28 Feb 1874, Bremen; deported 19 Apr 1943 to Terezin (Theresienstadt); perished 9 Mar 1944.
    • daughter Ruth Sommerfeld – b. 31 May 1904, Berlin; m. 1922 & div. 1927; suicide 5 Jan 1935, Berlin (persecution-related).
      • ex-husband Hans Michael Abraham – remarried, escaped to the UK, died 1950
    • son Egon Sommerfeld – b. 16 Nov 1902, Berlin; m. 1903; deported 26 Feb 1943 to Auschwitz; perished.
      • wife Käthe Schlesinger – b. 11 Jan 1903, Berlin; deported 26 Feb 1943 to Auschwitz; perished.
      • daughter Inge Sommerfeld – b. 20 Jan 1926, Berlin; deported 26 Feb 1943 to Auschwitz; perished.
  • Sara Sella Sommerfeld – b. 11 Jun 1878, Berlin; fate unknown, possibly perished.
  • Margarethe Sommerfeld – b. 28 Jan 1880, Berlin; m. Julius Kuthan (actor, opera singer); deported 3 Nov 1941 to Łódź (Litzmannstadt); d. 27 Jul 1942.
    • husband Julius Kuthan – b. 28 Sep 1882, Vienna; deported with wife; d. 14 Sep 1942, Łódź (Litzmannstadt).
    • daughter Gerti Kuthan – b. 10 Apr 1908, Elberfeld; escaped to UK; m. Paul Weis; d. 1991, Switzerland.
      • son Julian Charles Weis – b. 1949, Switzerland.
  • Meier Erich Sommerfeld – b. 10 Oct 1881, Berlin; m. 1904 to Amalie Kahn; deported 15 Sep 1942 to Terezin (Theresienstadt); d. 1 Nov 1942.
    • wife Amalie Kahn – b. 1879; deported 15 Sep 1942 to Terezin (Theresienstadt); d. 23 Nov 1943.
    • daughter Edith Brila Sommerfeld – b. 8 Jun 1905, Berlin; resident of Weilmünster institution; perished (“euthanasia”).

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Sources

Familien Blatt for the Sommerfled Family – gathered by Daniel Tiechmann – November 2021
Bundesarchiv – entry for Ruth Sommerfeld – notes suicide
Ancestry – genealogical records
AbeBooks – postcard of Julius Kuthan
Akpool – postcard of Julius Kuthan
Ebay – postcard of Julius Kuthan
Vitos site – Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Weilmünster
Wikipedia article on Paul Weis – husband of Gerti (nee Kuthan).

Header Image – Image by Adam Hill from Pixabay