Schuhwarengeschäft Blass
The merchant Max Blass, who came from eastern Poland, opened a shoe and clothing shop in Wismar shortly after 1920, which from about 1923 moved through several addresses to ABC-Straße 14 [1][2]. The shop was popular for its low prices [1][2]. It was among the shops in front of which SA men stood on 1 April 1933, and it was ransacked and closed by the police in the night of 9 to 10 November 1938 [1][3][4][5]. Max Blass and his son Ernst were arrested, but the family, who emigrated to the USA between 1937 and 1939, survived [1][2].
The shop and the family
Around 1920 the merchant Max Blass moved from eastern Poland to Wismar, where on 15 December 1920 he married Jenni Fischel [1][2]. Shortly afterwards he opened a shoe and clothing shop at Sargmacherstraße 9. Around 1923 the family and the shop moved to Mühlengrube 36, and afterwards he moved the business premises to ABC-Straße 14, where the family later also moved into the flat above the shop [1][2]. In 1927 Paula, the third child, was born [1]. According to the city's biographies Max Blass had low prices, so that "even poorer people could afford something" from him [1][2]. The family belonged to the Israelite community in Schwerin [1].
1933 to 1935: boycott and agitation
At the start of 1933 the children of the family already suffered antisemitic assaults at school. Bernhard Blass attended the elementary school from 1927 to 1931 and then the Gymnasium of the Große Stadtschule, but because of the hostility his parents sent him to Hamburg, where he attended the Talmud Torah school until 1937, which his brother Ernst also attended from 1934 to 1938 [1]. At the "boycott" of shops owned by Jews on 1 April 1933, SA men posted themselves with placards in front of the shoe shop Blass at ABC-Straße 14 [1][2][5]. On 18 July 1935 the "Niederdeutscher Beobachter" called on customers to boycott it: "In future make a wide detour around the business house of the little Jew in ABC-Straße." [1] From mid-1938 Max and Jenni Blass also had to carry the additional first names Israel and Sara [1][2].
9/10 November 1938
According to the city's short biography there are different accounts of the night leading to 10 November 1938. They say that the SA is supposed to have raged in the shoe shop, smashed the shop window and the furniture and thrown the goods onto the street [1]. A photograph from the morning of 10 November 1938, taken from the shop opposite at ABC-Straße 11, shows the sign "M. Blas Schuhwaren" and the notice "Polizeilich geschlossen" (closed by the police) in the window [3]. Steffen Langusch names Löwenthal, Lindor and Blaß as the three shops in Wismar whose windows were smashed, after which they were closed by the police; three Jews, among them the merchant Blaß and his son, were "taken into custody for their personal protection" [4]. Max Blass and his son Ernst were arrested on 10 November and taken to the penal institution Neustrelitz-Strelitz, where at the age of 15 Ernst Blass was the youngest of the 175 Jews from Mecklenburg held there. Max Blass was released in mid-December 1938 and returned to Wismar [1][2].
Emigration
Bernhard Blass left Germany for New York from Hamburg on 1 June 1937. Ernst Blass and his sister Paula likewise travelled from Hamburg to New York on 22 December 1938, for which both had received their visas before the pogrom. After his release Max and Jenni Blass left Wismar and travelled from Hamburg via England to the USA in April 1939, so that the family was reunited in New York in 1940 [1][2]. The inscriptions of the Stolpersteine, by contrast, read "Flucht 1939 England" for all five persons [6], whereas the Stadtarchiv gives direct departure to New York for Bernhard (1 June 1937) and for Ernst and Paula (22 December 1938) [1][2], which could presumably be settled only by means of Bersch 2018, Buddrus/Fritzlar 2019 and the Hamburg passenger lists. On 27 June 2015 five Stolpersteine for the Blass family were laid in front of ABC-Straße 14 [2][6]. What happened to the shop and the house ABC-Straße 14 after Max and Jenni Blass left in April 1939 is not known.