Ernst Picard was born on May 24 1887. Also for him there are no files in the old Konstanz register. There are only files about another Ernst Picard who shared the great-great-grandfather in Wangen with our Ernst in Kreuzlinger Strasse 68. The reconstruction of Ernst's life was extremely difficult and only fragmentary.

A note in the local paper can be found that Ernst received the Iron Cross in April 1915 for his merits in the army. Ernst Picard graduated in 1913 at Heidelberg University and his thesis was published in 1921 on a specialized medical topic, this information can be found in the database of the university. He must have moved to Berlin after the war, because in 1919 the gynecologist Ernst Picard can be spotted in the Berlin directory of that year. Later his address in Berlin is quite noble: He lived and practiced on Kurfürstendamm 64, where he was registered in the directory until 1936. As the Berlin register for this area of the town was destroyed during World War 2, it was impossible to find out, when Ernst got married but in the death notice for Max, Ernst and his wife Edit were mentioned together with their first son Heinz Hellmuth. So the conclusion is possible, that Ernst married before the war.

It is possible to reconstruct some aspects of everyday life for the family because after the Second World War, the couple put claims for restitution of the belongings they left behind in Berlin in 1936.

"We lived in an 10-room-apartment. When we emigrated in August 1936, many other jews left the town, too. We had to liquidate our household in a hurry and, therefore, were forced to leave quite a lot of our belongings behind or sell the furniture far below value."

In the restitution claim there is a long list of built-in furniture which could not be removed quickly, in addition, expansive machinery of the doctor's practice had to be left behind. For the valuable Bechstein-piano somebody paid only 500 Reichsmark. "In total", so the couple remembered after the war, "we received barely 1800 Reichsmark for all the sold furniture."

So Ernst and Edit emigrated to Palestine in 1936. Their son Heinz had already left the country in 1933 for Tel Aviv, where he earned his living as a tradesman – unavoidably, because he had to abandon all his plans for an adequate education.

Before emigrating, the family had to sell the house in Konstanz, also the mother had to be looked after. She must have accompanied the couple to Palestine. Her furniture must have been sent to Switzerland.

Ernst is listed in the Palestine Gazette dated July 23, 1936, his approbation to work as a doctor was handed out some time between Februar and June. In a Tel Aviv telephone guide of 1944, there is also a hint at the gynecologist Dr. Ernst Picard. Restitution files show that the couple lived in Hess Street 6a in Tel Aviv.

The death certificate for Ernst Picard could be applied for in England. Originally, it had been issued in 1959. A son with the initials "C.W." had notified the officials of the death of his father, who had died of a heart desease on April 27 in St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington. The home address is Longcroft Lane in the beautiful Welwyn Garden City.

Even after her husband's death, Edit tried hard to have some of the belongings of her family restituted, mostly in vain. Only in 1960, the Dresdner Bank found out that the bank files concerning Edit's brother Günther Russ who had committed suicide before deportation had been destroyed during the war. Therefore, the money on his savings deposit could not be refunded.

According to the data base of Yad Washem, there are 37 persons in Berlin named Russ (Edit's family) that had become victims of nationalism in one way or the other.

On the tomb stone in Konstanz, Edit's name is missing. Was she the one who ordered to turn the stone into a memory of the Picard family?