Oldřichova 172/52

Oldřichova 172/52, Nusle, Prague.

We didn't choose this doorway because we knew its history.

We chose it because we didn't.

At Oldřichova 172/52 in Prague, two small brass stones set into the pavement gave us our first names: Věra Lebenhartová and Edith Ehrlichová.

Both were born in 1928. Both were connected to this address. Both were deported from Prague in 1942.

So we started looking.

Both surviving records identify Prague XIV, Oldřichova 52 as their address before deportation.

But they did not leave this doorway together.

• Věra Lebenhartováborn 27 February 1928
• Edith Ehrlichováborn 11 May 1928

Both were registered at Oldřichova 52. Oskar and Anna are explicitly documented as husband and wife.

A third Lebenhart lived at the same address: thirteen-year-old Věra.

The records we have located do not explicitly identify her relationship to Oskar and Anna. But what happened next places all three remarkably close together.

• Oskar Lebenhartborn 7 January 1887
• Anna Lebenhartováborn 11 April 1906

8 February 1942 — Prague → Terezín.

All three were deported from Prague on the same transport, with consecutive transport numbers.

Thirty-seven days later, the pattern appears again.

• 13Oskar Lebenhart
• 14Anna Lebenhartová
• 15Věra Lebenhartová

Again, consecutive numbers.

• 440Věra Lebenhartová
• 441Oskar Lebenhart
• 442Anna Lebenhartová

Emigration.

Nearly two years earlier, another surviving document records Anna Lebenhartová at Oldřichova 52 for a very different reason: emigration.

The document tells us that Anna was trying to leave.

It does not tell us enough to establish where she hoped to go, whether Oskar and Věra were intended to accompany her, or why the attempt failed.

What survives is evidence of the attempt itself.

But the second name outside the doorway has not yet left our story.

When Oskar, Anna and Věra were deported in February, Edith Ehrlichová was still connected to Oldřichova 52.

• 179Edith Ehrlichová

The same transport number appears on both surviving records.

In February, Věra left this doorway. In May, Edith did.

Two girls born only weeks apart. Two names now beside each other in the pavement. Two different deportation histories.

• 179Edith Ehrlichová

Nearly seventy years after Věra and Edith were deported from this address, their names were again outside the doorway.

Two Stolpersteine now mark the pavement at Oldřichova 172/52: Věra Lebenhartová and Edith Ehrlichová.

We noticed the stones because we stopped at a random doorway.

The stones told us where to start.

• Holocaust.cz — Database of Victims

  • Records relating to: Oskar Lebenhart, Anna Lebenhartová, Věra Lebenhartová and Edith Ehrlichová
  • Transport records: Prague → Terezín, 8 February 1942; Terezín → Izbica, 17 March 1942; Edith Ehrlichová's May 1942 deportation records

• Encyklopedie Prahy 2

  • Records relating to: Věra Lebenhartová, Edith Ehrlichová and Oldřichova 172/52

• Stolpersteine / Kameny zmizelých

  • Records documenting the Stolpersteine for Věra Lebenhartová and Edith Ehrlichová

• National Archives, Prague

  • Police Directorate / identity and registration material relating to Oskar Lebenhart and Anna Lebenhartová

Reproduction permission pending — archival photographs and documents are not reproduced in this file.