After the Buth family:
The departure from the villa of Theresa Buth (née Osterhaus), Emil Buth’s second wife, appears to mark the starting point of the villa’s convoluted history. From that point onwards, the building never again served as a private residence for its owners, and yet it was constantly home to people from a wide variety of backgrounds and circumstances [1].
Agnes Fink (née Fitzer) recounts in eyewitness accounts that she herself lived with her family at Villa Buth as a child. The building had been let to them. In 1941, the family were forced to leave the villa to make way for the Nazis’ plans. They were in turn allocated the house and the butcher’s shop belonging to the Jewish Lehmann family, which had ‘become available’ following the family’s internment at the villa [2]. This raises the question of whether, as early as 1932, the owners no longer cared about the fate of Villa Buth, as contemporary reports already refer to the villa as “in a state of serious disrepair” [3] This situation was later cited, amongst other things, as a justification for the use of Villa Buth as a collection centre for Jews.
[1] Villa Buth: Zwischenstation zum Holocaust (Veröffentlichungen des Jülicher Geschichtsvereins 1923 e.V. 22), T. Ohrndorf und I. Gedig, Hg., 2. Aufl. Ammianus Verlag, 2024,
[2] M. Kummer und T. Ohrndorf, „Architektur und Baugeschichte der Villa Buth, in Villa Buth: Zwischenstation zum Holocaust (Veröffentlichungen des Jülicher Geschichtsvereins 1923 e.V. 22), T. Ohrndorf und I. Gedig, Hg., 2. Aufl. Ammianus Verlag, 2024, S. 19–33.
[3] Schreiben an den Innenminister Nordrhein-Westfalens, 1950, betreffend Schutzhaftlager Jülich, zitiert nach: Heilig-Geist-Gymnasium Würselen. (2024). Villa Buth – Zwischenstation zum Holocaust [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XbgiQnZQjs
