born 1 January 1917 in Berlin
died 7 May 1999 in Los Angeles, USA
Historical former address Junkerstraße 13
Stumbling stone Reinheimer Straße 11
Date of stone-laying 7 May 2012
Ilse Heymann was born into a Jewish family in Berlin on 1 January 1917. Her parents Betty and David ran a branch of the wholesale warehouse chain “Hamburger Engros-Warenlager” near the market square in Fürstenwalde, where they sold cotton underwear, haberdashery and knitwear. Ilse had an older brother named Erich. After the National Socialists seized power in 1933, she was forced to give up her formal education and from then on helped her parents in the family business.
On 16 June 1937, Ilse fled to the United States via Southampton in England on the steamer “Paris”. In New York, she contacted her maternal aunt Gertrud Weinkrantz Handelsman, who lived in Brooklyn. Later, Ilse moved to San Francisco, where her uncle Alfred Weinkrantz lived. Ilse corresponded regularly with her mother’s other sister Cilla, who was living in Seattle at the time.
In San Francisco, Ilse went to college and met James Paull, an engineer, whom she married in 1942. The couple had two children – Lorraine, born in 1943, and William, born in 1946. The family lived in Los Angeles. James Paull was employed as an engineer and Ilse worked as a medical secretary in a hospital.
She died on 7 May 1999 following a stroke. Ilse’s parents were deported on 13 June 1942 to the Sobibor extermination camp (Polish: Sobibór), where they were murdered; her brother Erich was deported on 1 March 1943 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where he was murdered.
Family members:
Betty Heymann née Weinkrantz
David Heymann
Erich Heymann
Fanni Heymann néenbsp;Klappholz