The museum’s permanent exhibition tells the story of Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind at the historical site. During World War II, the small factory-owner Otto Weidt employed mainly blind, visually impaired, and hearing-impaired Jews in his workshop for the blind here in the side wing of the building at Rosenthaler Straße 39. These workers had been placed in the workshop as forced labor.
The workshop was the last refuge for many of the persecuted workers and their families. Otto Weidt organized food and false papers for those of them threatened by deportation. Presumably in January 1943, he bribed the Gestapo and managed to bring his workers back from the assembly camp at Große Hamburger Straße, where they had been taken to await transport to concentration camps.
Weidt hid several people in a surviving windowless room at the workshop and arranged other illegal accommodation. He also attempted to help one of his former employees to escape from a concentration camp.
Using personal documents such as letters, poems, and photographs, the exhibition paints a moving portrait of lives constantly at threat of persecution and deportation. It also documents the Jewish employees’ courageous attempts to escape their persecutors and the vital support provided by Otto Weidt and his circle of helpers.
The Museum Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind is located in the listed building Haus Schwarzenberg at Rosenthaler Straße 39, near Hackescher Markt in Berlin-Mitte. The historical premises of Otto Weidt’s workshop were rediscovered at the end of the 1990s.
The factory owner Otto Weidt moved his workshop for the blind into the premises in the side wing of Rosenthaler Straße 39 in 1940. The company produced brushes and brooms. The former workshop and office spaces now house the museum.
Otto Weidt employed mainly blind, visually impaired, and hearing-impaired Jews in the workshop. Since the company was classed as “important for the war,” he was able to protect some of these Jewish forced laborers from deportation for a time.
Otto Weidt established several networks of people who supported his efforts to help people at risk. The museum also tells these helpers’ stories in the permanent exhibition.
With help from Otto Weidt and others, several people survived the National Socialist persecution. Their biographies are on show in the exhibition’s “Successful Rescues” section. Their biographies are on show in the exhibition’s “Successful Rescues” section.
Otto Weidt also tried to rescue his employees Erich Frey and Chaim Horn, along with their families, by arranging places for them to hide. However, the families were betrayed, deported, and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
