The central square in Eppendorf on Kümmellstraße has been renovated and newly designed. On 19 February 2009 the square was named "Marie-Jonas-Platz" in honour and memory of Dr. Marie Anna Jonas. Her daughter Esther Bauer attended the ceremony.

Biography:
Dr. Marie Anna Jonas was born on 12.01.1893 in Fischhausen, East Prussia as the third of four children born to the liberal Jewish family Levinsohn. Here she attended the Grammar School/High School (Gymnasium) where she took her GCE A Levels/SAT (Abitur). After leaving school she spent a year in England as an au pair before becoming a teacher. She and her elder sister were Red Cross nurses in the First World War. After the war she studied Medicine at the University of Königsberg. In 1923 she acquired her licence to practice medicine and married Dr. Alberto Jonas, a classics scholar and senior teacher at the old established Hamburg Jewish community Talmud Tora School for boys. When in 1924 her husband became principal of the Jewish community Girls' School (Israelitischen Töchterschule) in Karolinenstraße, she became its school doctor. On 13 March 1924 their only child Esther was born. The family lived at No. 12 Grindelallee, in the Grindel Quarter, until 1925 when they moved to No. 5 Woldsenweg in Eppendorf.

Her daughter describes her mother Marie as being "a very gentle woman" and "very loving and very affectionate". When Esther was ill, her mother did not go to work but remained at home although the family employed a nanny. Her husband referred to her as "the gentle Michen".

Having been orphaned at the age of fifteen Marie Anna Jonas was very proud of her independent personal development. It was important to her that her doctor title was her own achievement and had not been acquired through marriage. Her social commitment was independent of her husband whose views vehemently repudiated all internal Jewish politics. She was a member of WIZO (Women's International Zionist Organization) and member of the board of the Hamburg chapter. She and her husband belonged to the Nehemia Anton Nobel Lodge.

As early as the First World War Marie Anna Jonas was confronted with anti-Semitism from soldiers who refused to be attended on by a Jewish Red Cross nurse. Although in 1934 she received the honour cross (Ehrenkreuz) for her services in the war she was aware that the coming to power of the National Socialists was a threat to the Jews. She proposed immigration to Palestine but her husband discounted this.

The 30 May 1932 the "Law pertaining to the Legal Status of Women Civil Servants" ("Gesetz über die rechtsstellung der weiblichen Beamten") enabled the dismissal of married women civil servants when the family income was otherwise secured; Marie Anna Jonas lost her job as school doctor. She then worked voluntarily, first at the UKE (University Clinic Eppendorf), then at the Jewish Hospital (Israelitischen Krankenhaus) in Simon von Utrecht Straße. When the Fourth Decree of the Reich Citizen Law ("Vierte Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz"), of 25 July 1938, withdrew Jewish doctors' licenses to practice medicine, she worked as a nurse and attended elderly people, particularly in the night. She taught biology and health education in the Jewish community Girls' School. Her pupils were young participants in occupational training courses for preparation for emigration, her daughter Esther being among them.

The family did not succeed in escaping the Nazi persecution; they had left their application for emigration to the USA far too late. In the spring of 1942 they had to vacate their apartment at No. 5 Woldsenweg and move into a so called "Jew House" at No. 39 Laufgraben. On 19.07.1942 Marie Anna Jonas, her husband and daughter were deported to Theresienstadt (Terezin in Czechoslovakia). Dr. Alberto Jonas died six weeks later of meningitis.

In the ghetto Marie Anna Jonas began to work as a doctor. There were practically no medicines, but she "gave the people a kind word and … treated them humanely." At the beginning of October 1944, she tried in vain to prevent her daughter Esther, who had in the meantime married in Theresienstadt, from accompanying her husband to an alleged labour camp. They were transported to Auschwitz where her husband was murdered. On 12.10.1944 Marie Anna Jonas was herself deported to Auschwitz and was murdered there.
Her daughter Esther survived.

Dr. Marie Anna Jonas' daughter Esther Bauer was present at the ceremony.
Esther was deported with her parents to Theresienstadt. From there she was deported to Auschwitz. From Auschwitz she was transported to a women's labour camp in Freiberg, Sachsen, a satellite camp of Flossenbürg concentration camp. Here she was employed as slave labour in the construction of aircraft for the firm Freia GmbH, a camouflage for the Arado-Flugzeugwerke GmbH Potsdam-Babelsberg. As allied troops neared she was further transported to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. US troops liberated the camp on 5 May 1945.