Paula Stern was born on July 26th 1901, in Hamburg as one of seven brothers and sisters. Her parents were Leopold Isaac (*06.06.1869) and Olga Isaac nee Gumpel (*05.10.1868). Since 1924 the family name was changed into Wolf. Paula’s father was a member of the ‘Wolf Brothers’ (Gebrueder Wolf) famous and very popular artists and vaudeville singers from Hamburg, more www.gebruederwolf.de . The family also owned several theatres in Hamburg.
Paula married Fritz Stern who was born in Hannover on September 20th 1899. According to the Hamburg address books of 1937 - 1939 the Sterns probably must have lived in Hamburg at 21 Rappstrasse, near the big Synagogue at Bornplatz and the Talmud-Tora-Realschule. Nearby other family members lived. On June 18th 1928, their son Leopold, named after his late grandfather, was born.
Probably in early September 1938 the family left Hamburg and immigrated to the Netherlands where they first stayed in a home for refugees in Oostzanerwerf and later moved to Den Bosch at 49 Koningsweg. Paula’s brother Donat Wolf writes in his diary that he met his sister Paula as well as Fritz and Leopold Stern on board of the ‘MS Selandia’ in Rotterdam while immigrating to Shanghai together with his brother James Wolf and his brother in law Ernst Berlin. It was the last time that Paula saw her brothers Donat and James.
After the German occupation of the Netherlands Paula, Fritz and Leopold were interned at Westerbork on 9th April 1943 and from there deported to Sobibor, Poland, on April 27th 1943, and murdered there.
Johann-Hinrich Möller, November 2013