Adolf Emmering was born in Losdorp, Province of Groningen in northern Holland, on 25 August 1904.  His parents were the Dutch trader Benjamin Emmering and Sara Goge, who was born in Moisling, today a suburb of Lübeck.  When he was four years old, his parents moved with him and his younger sister, Elena (born in 1906), to Lübeck.  His youngest sister, Eva, was born in Lübeck in 1909.

Following several moves within the old city centre the family finally made their home in the building located at St.-Annen-Straße 12, which was located kitty corner / diagonally opposite from the Synagogue. "An- und Verkauf von Kleidung, Betten, Möbel usw. B. Emmering" ( B. Emmering, Buyers and Sellers of Clothing, Beds, Furniture and More) was written on the wall. The shop was located on the ground floor.  Therefore, it was there in Lübeck that Aron Adolf Emmering grew up and went to school.  After completing his schooling at Middle School for Boys in February 1919 he began vocational training as a salesman at the business of Isaak Frankenthal, which dealt with fur and animal hair.

It is almost certain that following the completion of his vocational training he continued working in the trade in Lübeck yet in 1924 he moved as a 20 year old to Paris as verified by some papers, which were found during renovations of a building in Amsterdam, although these documents do not reveal what motivated him to move to Paris.  Apparently he was only able to find employment as a day labourer in and around Paris. 

Likewise in 1930 an announcement in the Lübeck Israelite Congregation was made under the rubric "Personals - The Engagement of Miss Fränzi Blumenthal and Mr. Adolf Emmering" (Tamus 5690, Second Volume No. 6, July 1930).

Franziska Rosa Blumenthal was born in Hamburg on 30 April 1907.  Her parents were the trader Martin Blumenthal, who was originally from Lübeck, and Elsa, nee Wolff, from Stargard, then Germany now Szcczecinski, Poland.   She was the eldest child in the family.  Shortly after the birth of Fränzi the Blumenthal family moved to Lübeck, where they had an apartment as well as their retail business at Beckergrube 74.  Fränzi Blumenthal thus along with her younger brother, Max Julius (born in 1908) grew up, went to school and attended religious classes at the Synagogue in Lübeck.

With the start of the National Socialist government the situation of this Jewish family was threatened. They were able to keep their own store open only for a short time.

At the beginning of August 1934 Aron Adolf and Franziska Emmering, along with their daughter, packed up their belongings, including the permit to sell notions / haberdashery door to door, and left Lübeck, arriving in Holland a few days later.  Once in Amsterdam they registered with the authorities that they would be living at Uithoornstraat 9.  Since they were Dutch citizens they had no problems leaving Germany and going to Holland to live.   For the time being they put into storage their household effects in Lübeck. 

Aron Adolf's two sisters, Elena Emmering and Eva Emmering, had left Germany earlier than their brother and were already in Holland.  His father, Benjamin Emmering, had died at the beginning of September 1932.  Only his mother, Sara, along with Franziska Blumenthal's extended family remained in Lübeck.

Her brother Max Julius Blumenthal sought refuge in Amsterdam at his sister and brother-in-law's after he was badly beaten up in July of 1935 by members of a branch group of the Nazis.  But being a German citizen he experienced insurmountable difficulties in Holland.  Without a work visa he could not get a job so when his visitor's visa expired in September of 1936 he had to return to Lübeck.   He found employment with the Jacobi Company working in the warehouse.  He was arrested in November of 1936.  After spending three weeks in a local jail he was transferred to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Oranienburg, located north of Berlin, later to Dachau Concentration Camp and then Buchenwald Concentration Camp, outside of Weimar.

On the 9th of June she returned to Amsterdam, with a heavy heart for she had to leave her father to be on his own in Lübeck.  As well she was very concerned about her brother. 

Martin Blumenthal had to leave his apartment at Beckergrube 74 after the death of his wife and lived in sublet rooms, first at Königstraße 116 in one of Rosa Taschimowitz's rooms, then on Hartengrube at the Lissauers and finally at Sophienstraße 1 with the Mansbachers before he was forced to leave Lübeck "to no known address" according to official records.  On the basis of entries in the memorial book of the Bundesachiv (National Archives) it is known that he was deported on 25 October 1941 from Hamburg to Lodz, Poland and died in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto (the German name for the Lodz Ghetto) on 25 April 1942.  In the residents lists of the Lodz Ghetto one finds he was registered as having lived at Rubens Straße 2, Flat 13.

<xml> M</xml>ax Julius Blumenthal could thank several Jewish organisations for their intensive efforts to procure his release from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in the beginning of 1939.  Following his release he fled to Shanghai.

It is not known when exactly Franziska, Ingried and Aron Adolf Emmering were taken to Camp Westerbork in Holland.  They left their personal papers, family photographs, and documents in Amsterdam.  It is assumed they gave them to friends for safe keeping, hid them or simply left them behind.  On 8 June 1943 Franziska and Aron Adolf Emmering along with their daughter, Ingrid, were deported to the Sobibor death camp in Poland.   Sobibor is located in a sparsely populated forested wet land in the eastern end of the Lublin District.  Mass exterminations in gas chambers began at Sobibor in May 1942.  The new arrivals at the camp were immediately driven into a supposed shower room and gassed. 

Aron Adolf Emmering was murdered there on 9 June 1943,

Franziska  Rosa and Ingrid Emmering were murdered on 11 June 1943. 

Ingrid was 12 years old, her mother 36 and her father 39.   

At this point in time their relatives were no longer alive.  Eva and Elena Emmering were murdered in Auschwitz on 30 September 1942 and Sara Emmering also in Auschwitz on 25 January 1943.

The single survivor of the family's relatives was Max Julius Blumenthal, Fränzi's brother.  He survived the war by living in the Shanghai Ghetto and later lived in the US.  However he suffered from severe health problems all his life, due to the various injuries he received while interned in the concentration camps.

The personal papers of Aron Adolf and Franziska Emmering were discovered during the renovations of a building in Amsterdam a few years ago and were entrusted to the Institute for Concrete Matter (ICM) in Haarlem, Netherlands.  The art historian and author Wim de Wagt became involved in researching their trail, which led him to Lübeck.  At that time Stolpersteine (Stumbling Stones) were already laid at St.-Annen-Straße 12.  Thanks to cooperative efforts three Stolpersteins could be laid in memory of Ingrid, Franziska and Aron Adolf Emmerring on Engelswisch.  Wim de Wagt's book Het geheugen van de kunst (The Memory of Art) will be published in February 2013.  One chapter of the book will deal with the Emmering family's history in Groningen, Lübeck and Amsterdam. 

[1] Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Hansestadt Lübeck
[2] Heidemarie Kugler-Weiemann
[3]-[8] Institute for Concrete Matter (ICM), Haarlem, Niederlande