Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt –biographie

Markus Gersten was born in Rauchersdorf in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1890. He was a commercial clerk and married Klara Bernstein. The couple had two children. Their daughter Meta was born in 1919, followed by their son Leo in 1921. The family lived in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg in the 1920s, and from the mid-1930s at Altonaer Straße 13 in Berlin-Tiergarten. Leo Gersten managed to escape to England in 1939.

Markus Gersten was blind. He worked as a brush-maker at Otto Weidt’s workshop for the blind. On August 15, 1942, Markus, Klara, and Meta Gersten were deported to the Riga area; they were murdered three days later in the forests of Rumbula and Bikernieki.

A Stolperstein cobble commemorates Markus Gersten outside the building at Altonaer Straße 26 in Berlin-Tiergarten.