Walter Brünn

November 1938, Sachsenhausen, Germany

Walter is imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, four miles north of Berlin. He has not committed any crime. The Nazis have arrested him because he is Jewish. In exchange for his freedom, Walter is forced to hand over his department store to a so-called Aryan German.

WALTER AND LILLI BRÜNN lived in Berlin, where Walter ran a successful department store. His father had started it fifty years earlier and Walter had taken over the business.

Like many other Jewish men, Walter was imprisoned in connection with the November pogroms 1938. During the pogroms synagogues, jewish shops and homes were destroyed all over Nazi Germany. After two weeks in Sachsenhausen, Walter was released and a new owner reopened his family’s former business.

The Brünns no longer had any means of supporting themselves. The Nazi persecution of the German jews was a growing threat. The couple had no choice but to leave their homeland and apply for a residence permit in another country.

In the summer of 1939, Walter was granted permission to enter Sweden and left Berlin that August. In September of the same year, Lilli was informed that she too had permission to travel to Sweden.

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