Klara Fiedler

Little is known about Klara Fiedler’s (née Adler) early life. The daughter of a long-established Jewish family in Speyer, she married the Christian merchant Adam Karl Eduard Fiedler from Issigau (Upper Franconia) on 16 May 1907. A year later, their son Johannes Karl Eduard was born.

The family initially lived in Issigau, but moved to Mittweida in October 1924 for business reasons. Her husband and his brother Heinrich would later acquire a majority stake in Aktien-Bierbrauer AG in Mittweida. The house at what was then 9 Immelmannstraße (now Grüner Winkel) came into the family’s possession in August 1937.

Under the Nuremberg Laws, Klara Fiedler was considered to be in a “privileged mixed marriage”, as she, being Jewish, had married a non-Jew. When the last Jews from Mittweida were deported in 1942, she was consequently the “only Jew” left in the town. In 1945, her son was forced to perform hard labour in Minzig near Meissen.

In the same year, according to her own account “on 13 February 1945, I was deported by the Leipzig Secret State Police to [...] Theresienstadt. Under strict guard, I was transported together with other fellow sufferers in goods wagons, where we received no food for four days. The treatment [...] was poor, the food was unfit for human consumption, causing me to collapse several times, completely exhausted”.  In the Theresienstadt ghetto, she performed auxiliary work.

Following her liberation, Fiedler returned to Mittweida in June 1945. In September 1945, she became a founding member of the Jewish Community of Chemnitz and assisted the community council by providing information about the Jews of Mittweida.

Klara Fiedler died in Mittweida on 27 May 1959. She was cremated on 1 June 1959 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, and her urn was transferred to Issigau five days later. She lived in Mittweida, Grüner Winkel 9, until the end.

Her widower tried in vain until his death in September 1960 to be recognised as a VdN survivor. He died on 12 September 1960 in Mittweida