Johanna E. Behrendt

We are a group of five working on the history of a Berlin suburb, where we live. One of our main contributions consists in research about the fate of Jewish inhabitants during Nazi years. Our present endeavor aims at commemorating Walther Behrendt and his family, who was forced to emigrate to the Netherlands in 1936. The information we found on the website of your Community Joods Monument proved to be basic for our research – undertaken so far. The family had their flat in the house right next door to the one we live in.
You may have taken notice of the Stolperstein project, which wants to attract the attention of German citizens to Jews which were expelled from their neighborhood in the quarter, where these citizens nowadays live peacefully, mostly ignoring what had happened locally at Nazi times. We want to place five Stolpersteine in the pavement in front of Cimbernstraße 3, for Walter, Gertrud, Heinrich, Peter and his twin sister Johanna Eleonore (“Hannelore”), who had lived there until 1936.
The Stolperstein project is widely accepted and supported in Germany, but there are also critical voices. The less important come from those house-owners who worry about the market-value of their estates. Highly important, on the other hand, are the opinions expressed by some observers, who see the Stolpersteine as an indecent form of commemoration. People may step on it without noticing or – much worse – willingly, as an expression of distaste.
This is our concern and leads to the key question, which may find an answer within the community. Who would know about members of the Behrendt family still alive, to whom we could explain our initiative and thereby ask them to give their opinion on it? (It appears that Johanna E. Behrendt, the only survival, died at Santa Barbara, in 2004.) In case of any outright rejection from a family member, we would consider to abandon our idea.
Hans H. Lembke, Berlin-Nikolassee (February 2016)