Dr. Klara Griefahn (1897 - 1945)

Klara Griefahn, née Hoffmann, was born in Budapest on 19.09.1897. In 1917 she began studying medicine in Greifswald. There she married her fellow student Siegfried Griefahn in 1922. After graduation, they both went to Lobeda, where they opened a general medical practice. Their son Sigurd was born in 1924 and their daughter Dörte in 1928. From 1931 Klara Griefahn ran her own practice at Ernst-Abbe-Strasse 6 in Jena. Here she also held a free mothers' consultation. In order to avoid registration as a "non-Aryan" doctor, however, she gave up her self-employment as a doctor in 1933 and helped out in her husband's practice in Lobeda's Schulstraße.

For a long time Klara Griefahn was able to hide her Jewish origins until she was denounced by an acquaintance in 1943. Her license to practice medicine was revoked. Her husband did not divorce his wife despite the pressure exerted against him. On 29 January 1945, Klara Griefahn received the deportation order to Theresienstadt. In the night before her deportation on January 30, she died of a morphine overdose. According to her daughter's memory, many grateful patients attended her funeral at Lobeda Cemetery. Her fate is of particular tragedy because all the other Jena Jews of this last deportation train survived their imprisonment.

The stumbling stone for Dr. Klara Griefahn was placed at Klara-Griefahn-Straße 14 on August 17, 2009 (initiative of the Jenaer Arbeitskreis Judentum).

Hier wohnte Dr. Klara Griefahn, geb. Hoffmann, Jg. 1897, vor Deportation Flucht in den Tod 30.1.1945.