Stolpersteine grieve for victims of the Nazis, one at a time

Max Kösterich lived for a time at 204 Chaussée de Waterloo, an elegant apartment block on a hilly thoroughfare in Brussels. A married father of four sons, he probably arrived in the Belgian capital from Frankfurt in 1934, aged 50. What Kösterich did for a living is lost to time, though a previous stint working in the Dutch East Indies suggests a well-off trader of some sort. Why the family moved is also not known, but might be guessed at. For if history remembers Kösterich at all, it is as a statistic: one of 6m Jews murdered by the Nazis. Three of his sons died with him at Auschwitz. Only the second one, Manfred, survived. In 1938 an opportunity came up for just one brother to emigrate to Australia, an escape from the impending horror. It was Manfred who drew the winning straw. Those not so lucky were rounded up, landing in French camps before being loaded onto eastbound trains.