Emanuel Stössel

Little was known about Emanuel in 2018. Only research in 2020 brought many new insights and the discovery of descendants in England.

Emanuel Stössel was born in Lockenhaus in 1886 and died in Poland, probably in 1942.

He was the son of Wolf and Sophie Stössel (née Gerstl). In his chronicle of Lockenhaus, Ägidius Schermann reports that Wolf Stössel was very concerned about the upbringing of his children. Emanuel had five siblings. The second-born brother Max Mordechai probably took over his father's business in Lockenhaus, the eldest brother Moritz and the two sisters Hermine and Berta settled in small Hungarian villages near the border, sister Eugenie, who owned a house in Lockenhaus, sold it and moved first to Wr. Neustadt and later to Vienna.

Emanuel went to Mödling and ran a trading company there. He was married to Valerie Breuer and became a member of the board of the IKG Mödling in 1932. His home at Klostergasse 8 has a long history dating back to the year 1200. From 1865 to 1889 it housed a Jewish prayer house, and there are also reports of a bathing establishment.
Emanuel Stössel also ran a business in the house where he lived with his family, and it was the headquarters of his trading company and commission for pulses, country produce and colonial goods (extract from the telephone directory).

In 1938, the Stössel family, like all Jews, was expelled from Mödling. There are two known addresses of the couple Valerie and Emanuel Stössel in Vienna.Tandelmarktgasse 8/5 and Hollandstraße 10/20, a collective flat in Vienna's 2nd district.
On 19 October 1941, Emanuel and Valerie were deported to Litzmannsstadt/Lodz (Transport 7, Train Da 5 from Vienna, Austria to Lodz, Ghetto, Poland on 19/10/1941)

It is not known when the two were murdered. It is known that Emanuel Stössel was still alive in January 1942, as a document signed by him from the Litzmannsstadt ghetto has been preserved.The camp mainly served as a stopover before deportation to the German extermination camps Kulmhof, Auschwitz II, Majdanek, Treblinka and Sobibor.A grandson of Valerie and Emanuel Stössel researched in Yad Vashem and received confirmation there that both were murdered in Auschwitz.The National Socialists kept meticulous records and these can be viewed at Yad Vashem. They contain the date of their deportation from Austria to Lodz, the date of their transport to Auschwitz and the date of their arrival in Auschwitz. On the day of their arrival at the camp in Auschwitz, they were immediately taken to the gas chambers and murdered. (This information comes from a descendant of Emanuel Stössel, after his visit to Yad Vashem)

Daughter Sophie survived and wrote a memorial sheet/page of testimony in Yad Vashem in 1975, and grandson Peter also wrote a memorial sheet in Yad Vashem in 2006.

Quellen: Schermann Chronik von Lockenhaus, Yad Vashem, DÖW doew.at.

Update 2.12.2020

Emanuel and Valerie Stössel had three daughters: all three children survived the Holocaust. Franzi, Sophie and Gretel

Franzi, the oldest of the three sisters, managed to escape to England with her husband. Later, in the early 1960s she emigrated to the USA as did her 2 sons. Both had children.

Sophie was born in July 1918 in Wiener Neustadt. Once in London, in 1940, she married another young Austrian on the eve of his being interned to the Isle of Man. She was 19 or 20 years old when she had to leave Austria. She has two sons. Both live with their families (children and one has grandchildren) in England. Sophie died in 2006 aged 87. "The Holocaust was the great tragedy of her life. A constant shadow". (quote from one of her sons)

Gretel (Margaret), the youngest of the three sisters, was born on March 31, 1923. She was brought to England after the night of pogroms in November 1938 by a Red Cross children's transport. Whether the parents, Emanuel and Valerie, knew where their youngest daughter was sent to is unclear. When she arrived in England, unlike other children from the transports, she was unfortunately not taken in by a family, but was sent to an orphanage. Gretel, in her few and rare stories, described the home more as a "labor camp". In the year 1940 she was reunited in England with her sisters and met later her husband, he was from Vienna. In 1949 they emigrated to the USA. Gretel died in 2001. Descendants of Gretel live in the USA today. Gretel "never talked about her parents and very little about her life as a refugee, she always became very quiet when asked about it. It was too painful to talk about it"(quote from her only child).

Emanuel and Valerie Stössel died in Auschwitz.

The Germans kept meticulous records. The records at Yad Vashem detail the date of I) their deportation from Austria to Lodz, 2) the date of their transport to Auschwitz, 3) the date of their arrival in Auschwitz; and 4) On their arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp, they were immediately taken to the gas chambers and murdered. (This information comes from a descendant of Emanuel Stössel, after his visit to Yad Vashem)