Saturday
1 April 1933
Certificate from the Israelite Community of Parchim confirming the Gumpert family‘s long history of residence
The Gumperts were cloth manufacturers. According to the certificate, the family originally came from Spain and had ancestors who had immigrated to Mecklenburg as weavers. As is known from other sources, in 1836 Schlomann Gumpert—born in Parchim in 1804—received a writ of protection from the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg allowing him to trade from an open shop. In 1920 his grandsons Rudolf and Leo Gumpert purchased a cloth mill in the town, which they named the Schlomann Gumpert Cloth Factory after their grandfather.
This company was so successful that in 1937 the family established a branch in Hamburg. But one year later the business was forcibly sold and in the following months the family‘s assets were confiscated. After 1939, the authorities turned Rudolf Gumpert‘s mansion at Buchholz Allee 7 into a so-called Jew House in which all the Jews still in the town were forced to live.
Rudolf Gumpert died in Parchim in 1940. His wife, Margaret, was transported to Auschwitz in November 1942 along with the remaining Jews from Parchim.
Rudolf Gumpert‘s sister Paula and his daughter Liselotte were the only members of the long-established cloth manufacturing family to survive the Nazi dictatorship.
Franziska Bogdanov
