Anna Berditschewsky, née Scher was born in Swienciany near Wilna (Vilnius)/ Lithuania (which belonged to the Russian Czar’s Empire in those days) on August 27, 1896 as the daughter of Noah Scher and his wife Fanny, née Zerkinsky. Her father Noah worked as a fisherman there, but in 1899, he decided to move to Würzburg and earn his living as a travelling tradesman at markets and trade fairs. 

In 1903, the Schers opened a seasonal business for “Partiesachen”, things sorted out that were offered at extremely reduced prices. During the summer, they lived in Bad Kissingen, the winters were spent in Würzburg until 1916 when they moved to Bad Kissingen for good. As Eastern Jews they held an exceptional position in the Jewish community of Bad Kissingen. Anna Scher married the goldsmith and watchmaker Michael Berditschewsky who came from Mariupol/ Ukraine and at first lived with him in Fürth, where their daughter Marthe was born in November 1919. In the summer months of 1925 and 1927, the Berditschewskys lived with Anna’s parents in Bad Kissingen once again, where their son Rolf was born in June 1925. 

When the National Socialists came to power, the family's situation changed dramatically. The local press launched a massive smear campaign against them, making it clear to the family that they no longer had a secure future in Germany.

At the end of March 1933, an infamous article appeared in the Fürther Anzeiger with the title ‘Der Jud Berditschewsky sucht seinen Renommier-Goi’: ‘Times have changed in Germany. The German people have awoken from their long sleep and have now clearly recognised their enemies. It is not only in the political struggle that those in the know have repeatedly encountered the skilfully disguised Jew who is the driving force behind the SPD and KPD; the damage caused by racial Galicianism in German economic life is even greater. / There is one method of many that the Jew knows how to use. Since the German buyer usually recognises the Galician by his name as an annoying foreigner, he often hides his sneezable Polish-Galician name behind a German name. In short: the Jew looks for a renowned goi. Behind this company name, behind which the Jewish visage is not immediately recognisable, the Galician does his business in Germany. And, as experience has taught us, it is business on a large and grand scale that has come about in this way. 

 Among other Galicians in our town there is also a Jew, Mr B e r d i t s c h e w s k y, who owns a textile shop in Maxstraße. Due to the change of circumstances in our fatherland, Mr Berditschewsky no longer seems to be doing as good a business as he perhaps used to. The German buyer no longer trusts the strange name. But how does the Jew help himself? - He tries to get ‘someone’ to put a few hundred marks into the business and in return Mr Berditschewsky's company is allowed to bear a Christian German name! Missed, Ahasver! The German people can no longer be caught and fooled by this fairy tale. Whoever is no longer satisfied with his Galician figurehead, his name in Germany to run his business, should go back to where he came from. We certainly won't shed a tear for him!’ (Fürther Anzeiger, 27 March 1933; quoted from Hans Jürgen Beck, Chronik jüdischen Lebens in Bad Kissingen, who received the text from Helmut Steiner).

At the end of June in 1933, the Berditschewskys moved from Fürth to Straßburg/ Strasbourg, where they lived in the following years and were registered as “Russian Refugees”. Anna’s husband ran a radio shop there. In February 1939, their daughter Marthe Berditschewsky married Eric Weiss who had been born in Gera in 1904 and was 15 years her senior. She moved to Saint-Dié/ Vosges with him. Eric Weiss, who had gone underground in Périgueux during the war and had joined a resistance group, was arrested in March 1944, when he was on his way to Toulouse on a conspirational mission and was executed by the “Division Brehmer” in Montignac/ Dordogne. In Spring 1944, the “Division Brehmer” chased resistance fighters as well as Jewish refugees gone underground and carried out massacres of civilians. Anna’s daughter Marthe, who was married to Eric Weiss, survived the Nazi-era, but details are not known. In 2001, she died in France.

After the beginning of the war, Anna Berditschewsky and her husband Michael were evacuated in September 1939 according to the order of the French government and fled – like many members of the Jewish Community of Strasbourg – to Perigueux. Both of them survived the Nazi Era and returned to Strasbourg after the liberation of the city. In the course of restitution proceedings in 1958, Anna Berditschewsky and her brothers Samuel (who was living in Berlin again in the meantime) and Salomon Moses (who was living in Montevideo/ Uruguay) raised demands for withdrawn objects made of gold, silver and precious metals as well as furniture to be given back by Deutsches Reich (“German Reich”). She had even personally travelled to the court trial at the Landgericht (District Court) of Würzburg in November 1960. 

Anna Berditschewsky died in Strasbourg in August 1968 at the age of 71 (Information provided by Hans-Jürgen Beck after a phone call with Nadine Berditschewsky on April 5, 2020). Her husband had already died in Strasbourg in December 1957.