Berlin Stories Dr. Dimitri Roman Stein

Pragerstraße 20, 10779 Berlin

Dr. Dimitri R. Stein, who was denied his Dr.-Ing. at the TH Berlin because he was Jewish, and his father, Roman I. Stein who was murdered in Auschwitz, are remembered at the Technical University Berlin with the help of photographs, letters and a video recording.

Dimitri R. Stein (1920-2018) was born into a liberal Jewish-intellectual family in Petrograd.

In the summer of 1920, the family fled from St Petersburg to Finland to escape anti-Jewish violence after the Russian Revolution. They spent the following months in the Finnish town of Terijoki (now Zelenogorsk, Russia), which was overcrowded with thousands of Russian refugees.

Joseph Hessen, Dimitri’s grandfather,was a publisher, journalist and a member of the Russian Duma. He had close ties with the Berlin publisher Ullstein, who finally organised his entrance visa to Germany.

Ina Stein, Dimitri’s mother worked as a teacher at the German-Russian School (1931-1945) in Hohenstaufenstrasse  (now Georg-von-Giesche-Schule, then Werner-von-Siemens-Gymnasium).

Although the every-day existence of the family was marked by the severe financial problems they faced, Dimitri retained memories of a good childhood. He spoke Russian with his parents at home, but spoke German outdoors and at school. The parents were atheists, and the young Dimitri did not feel Jewish. After primary school he went on to the Herder-Gymnasium at Reichskanzlerplatz (now Theodor-Heuss-Platz).

Roman and Ina Stein had neither the necessary contacts nor the funds to leave Germany. In 1936, Roman I. Stein emigrated alone to Paris, where some of his own family had already fled. Like the many other emigrants, he lodged in a small hotel, without employment and dependent on sparse support from Jewish aid organisations.

Dimitri and his mother were not allowed to send more than ten Reichsmark a month abroad. When Dimitri visited his father in Paris when he was 17-year-old 1937, he secretly took 300 Reichsmark in hard currency across the border.
Because he was classed as a foreigner by the Nazi regime, the stateless Dimitri did not have to provide proof of Arian status in 1938 when he enrolled at the Technical College Berlin (TH Berlin) to study electrical engineering.
His father had successfully talked him out of his wish to become a journalist – pointing to the collapse of his own career. With future emigration in mind, it was important to learn something practical, so that he would be able to find work everywhere.

But his application to study for a doctorate at the TH Berlin was rejected in 1943 because of his Jewish origins.

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Father and son saw each other for the last time in 1941.

As a stateless foreign Jew, Roman I. Stein was arrested in Paris in the summer of 1942 and on 14 September he was deported with Transport 32 from Drancy Internment Camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was murdered directly after he arrived.

After the apartment in Prager Strasse had been searched on various occasions by the Gestapo and Dimitri had only been released after several days Gestapo imprisonment in Prinz-Albrecht Strasse with the help of a friend, he went into hiding in the southern part of Germany where he found refuge as a “war-worker” until the end of WW II.

After the death of his mother, Dimitri R. Stein emigrated to America in 1946. Helene Malyschew, his mother’s sister, provided surety for him. She had been in Swedish exile, where she looked after the daughter of the composer Rachmaninoff, and she had moved to New York with the Rachmaninoff family before the start of war.

In New York Dimitri met the Russian interpreter Sophie Baschkin, who had also fled from Berlin. He got by with part-time jobs until he was appointed as a teacher at Fargo University in North Dakota.

Sophie Baschkin and Dimitri R. Stein were married in June 1948. Because Sophie worked for the UN, Dimitri returned to New York and set up his own business, specialising in cabling.

At the age of 88 years, Dimitri R. Stein was rehabilitated by the Technical University Berlin and after an examination he was awarded his doctorate.

On 27 October 2018 Dr. Dimitri R. Stein passed away at his home in Watermill/NY. He is followed by three sons, seven grandchildren and a great-grandson.