Villa Russo. A Jewish Story

Published by Offizin.

The book focuses on a villa in Wernigerode from the late 19th century, its builders, owners and inhabitants. It offers a view of over 120 years of German history: the pride of an entrepreneur, the success of the industrial production of Harz cheese, and its abrupt end with the seizure of power of the National Socialists in the 1930s.

The villa’s Jewish owners, Benno and Clara Russo, are terrorised, deported and violently killed in a concentration camp, while a local Nazi takes possession of the house. Under East-German rule the villa became a vocational school for children with special needs. With German unification, the ownership question arose anew. The Russo descendants offered to give the school and factory buildings to the municipality provided it stayed as a school, but this was blocked by an opaque administrative act.

This process exemplifies difficulties that occurred with unification. Political-historical facts and social-moral principles were often disregarded. A fortunate turn meant that the villa and outbuildings became a musical-artistic meeting place, radiating new life, while also serving as a memorial to the Holocaust.