Thekla Salomon, née Rosenthal

Thekla Rosenthal, also called Thea, was a pianist. In 1914, she married Alfred Salmony, who had been born in 1886 during his parents’ business trip to Minneapolis in the USA. Until 1918, Alfred Salmony was a front-line soldier and Thekla Salmony worked as a nurse in a field hospital. In 1920, their son Hansjörg was born in Cologne. The family lived in 59 Wichterichstraße. All their attempts to leave failed. Only Hansjörg managed to escape in 1940 over the Swiss border. On October 30, 1941, Thekla and Alfred Salmony were deported from Cologne to the ghetto. Initially, they lived in the Cologne II collective in Marysin, maintaining close contact with Alfred Salmony’s cousin Dagobert Elias, who had been deported from Cologne on October 22 together with his wife Else and daughter Helga. They lost their support in May 1942, when Dagobert’s family was deported to Kulmhof and murdered. From June 1942, the couple lived in 29 Matrosengasse (Marysińska Street), where Alfred Salmony died on August 11, 1942.

From December 1942, Thekla Salmony worked in the Leather Department producing shoes. She died in the ghetto on April 27, 1944.