Spouses Alfred and Hedwig Apfel settled in Dortmund in September/October 1919. They had married on 25 July 1919 in Bochum, the home town of the bride, and now took up their first joint home in Dortmund. Dortmund was also where the couple’s two children, Günter (born 2.1.1921) and Margot Regina (born 24.3.1926), were born.

Until 1930, the Apfels lived at Steinstrasse 6, where they had a shop selling toys and household goods. From 1934 until their forced relocation in 1939, the family live in a flat at Mallinckrodtstr. 119.

In July 1939, they were forced to give up their business and move into a “Jew house” at Münsterstrasse 80.

From January 1941, son Günter was forced to do slave labour for a building firm.
Margot Regina was able to flee to England one week before outbreak of the war. Her parents and brother were deported on 27 January 1942 to Riga, where the parents lost their lives; they were officially declared dead by Dortmund Local Court with effect as of 8 May 1945.
Günter Apfel was brought in October 1944 to Stutthof concentration camp and survived the Holocaust. According to a report by the compensation agency, he received a bullet wound during the evacuation of the camp and was left behind because he could not keep up with the trek. He was found and looked after by Russian soldiers. He returned to Dortmund in November 1945, and until October 1948 was employed by the Jewish community. He subsequently emigrated to the USA, where he married Emmi Rosenthal, another Holocaust survivor who also hailed from Dortmund.

This Stolperstein was laid on 13 August 2010 in Mallinckrodtstrasse, though not outside No. 119, but further eastwards, on the edge of the playground of Nordmarkt junior school.