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Salomon – Hilda, Jakob, Ernst and Margot

So far there exists no Stolperstein

The Salomon family ran a kosher butcher shop on Nonnengasse in Mergentheim.
The family patriarch, Jakob Salomon, was born on January 18, 1884, in Beerfelden. In 1911, he opened his shop in Mergentheim. A year later, on March 4, 1912, he married 21-year-old Hilda Ebert, a native of Forchheim, in that city.
Another year later, on February 8, 1913, their son Ernst was born, and it was not until eight years later, on May 18, 1921, that their daughter Margot was born.
The family lived where the butcher shop was located—at Nonnengasse 17.
A major turning point was certainly the departure of their son Ernst for Frankfurt am Main in 1932, from where he later emigrated to the United States. Their daughter Margot moved to Forchheim shortly before her 15th birthday, on May 3, 1936, possibly to live with relatives.
Jakob Salomon experienced the true brutality of the Third Reich no later than during Kristallnacht in 1938. Along with numerous other Jewish men from Mergentheim, he was taken to the Dachau concentration camp, where he remained imprisoned from November 12 to December 12. As a result of this imprisonment, he then gave up his butcher shop. The house itself was sold in the fall of 1939.
In April 1940, Jakob and Hilda Salomon moved to Ochsengasse 20.
The last entry on the couple’s registration card dates from June 4, 1941—on this date, the two left Bad Mergentheim and were subsequently able to emigrate to the United States via Portugal.
Their son Ernst and daughter Margot were already living in New York at that time; Margot had been able to emigrate on January 10, 1940. In 1983, Margot told Mr. Brunotte about the circumstances of her escape: “I owe my life to my cousin.” This was because her cousin had managed to secure a passage to America. However, she had given the ticket to Margot. Margot was supposed to go ahead to make arrangements so that her cousin could follow with her family. Together with her mother, she wanted to wait until her father—who had been taken away by the Gestapo weeks earlier and whose whereabouts were unknown—returned. But they waited in vain, and they waited until it was too late. Mother and daughter were deported to Auschwitz. In the line to the gas chamber, they were spotted by their father. He had been deported to Auschwitz after his arrest and was forced to transport corpses there with a wheelbarrow. He knew exactly what would happen to his wife and daughter. So he quickly undressed and silently joined them in the line. Thus they were reunited, if only for a brief moment. For an SS henchman had been watching everything. He beat the father back out of the death march to the gas chamber. The father would never see his wife and daughter again. He himself somehow managed to survive and met Margot Rein in New York years later.
After his escape in 1944, Jakob Salomon worked as a butcher again in the United States until June 1953. Hilda died in 1978 at the age of 88. Their daughter Margot married Murry Rein and had a daughter.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)