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Erzähler: Thomas Karallus

Erna Kisch
© StaHH

Erna Kisch (née Spiro) * 1891

Wolfshagen 7 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

1941 Lodz
1942 ermordet in Chelmo

Erna Kisch, born 10 May 1891, deported to Lodz 25 Oct. 1941, deported to Chelmno 10 May 1942

"Don’t you know what’s happening to the Jews here, or don’t you want to know?” Erna Kisch’s desperate mother wrote from Berlin. Erna had been living in Hamburg for more than ten years, had joined the Jewish Community but, apart from that, led a careless life. Her worried mother tried in vain to bring her daughter to reason. Erna did not realize the danger, trusting her Protestant "Aryan” friend Martha Zacher, considering herself protected by her.

Erna Kisch was born on May 10th, 1891 as Erna Spiro in Freiberg in Saxony. Her parents were Hermann Spiro and Flora, née Steinberg; her father was a wealthy Berlin linen manufacturer.

On May 2nd, 1912, Erna Spiro married the Czech merchant Alfons Kisch in Prague, Jewish like she herself was, thus acquiring Czech citizenship, which she never gave up. According to the custom of the period, she brought a dowry into the marriage; it amounted to 70,000 marks (a very substantial sum at the time).
The couple lived in Berlin. On May 5th, 1913, a son was born. Alfons Kisch was in Spain on a business trip in July of 1914 and was detained there by the outbreak of World War I; he never returned to his family in Berlin. When his son was twelve years old, he took him in (the son survived in exile in London).

The divorce proceedings took almost 7 years. At the end, Erna Kisch got 18,000 RM form her dowry. Because she couldn’t handle money, her mother managed her assets, later on her brother and finally her friend Martha Zacher, who lived with her widowed mother. After the two ladies had consumed their inheritance, they lived from welfare support and rented out rooms. In 1935, Erna Kisch moved in with them. Thanks to Erna’s assets, the three of them could travel, take cures at health resorts and refurbish their household. The Nazi state ended this in the spring of 1939 by a security order for Erna Kischs’s assets.
In June, 1939, Martha Zach as Erna Kisch’s attorney contested the security order in a letter to the Reich Minister of Economics: "For more than 25 years, Frau Kisch has been associating exclusively with Lutheran circles of society, where she is still very popular, on account of her quite Protestant character. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the choice of her parents.” In December, 1939, Erna Kisch indeed had herself baptized at the Trinity Church in Hamm by Pastor Julius Heldmann and left the Jewish Religious Organization. Zacher’s intervention with the Reich Economics Minister remained without success.
At the same time, Martha Zacher tried to contest Erna Kisch’s disinheritance, because her parents had allowed her only the statutory share. In this action, however, Martha Zacher overdid things, so that she was indicted for "intentional false testimony”, which brought her and Erna Kisch to the attention of Gestapo Hermann Kühn, who demanded a written declaration from Martha Zacher that she would separate from her friend. Zacher signed the declaration, but failed to comply with it. Both friends did not realize the dangerous situation.

On September 19th, 1941, when Jews were ordered to display the "Jews’ star” on their clothing, Erna Kisch thought that she as a foreign citizen was exempt – on account of her citizenship, she did not carry the forced name "Sara”. Lieutenant Kühn took a different view, and came to take her into protective custody on September 26th. Mother and daughter Zacher blocked Kühn’s way to Erna Kisch, who was sick in bed. The Gestapo agent cast Martha Zacher aside, who crashed into the glass door of a book cabinet, causing a deep cut on her left upper arm. She was treated for six weeks at the remand center hospital; Erna Kisch spent three weeks in "protective custody” at the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp.
When Martha Zacher returned home, her friend was gone. Erna a Kisch had indeed been released from "protective custody" to her old address, but deported to the Lodz Ghetto only ten days later – she belonged to the first eastward transport to Lodz on October 25th, 1941. There, she was billeted at Rauchgasse 42/6. Being unable to work, she was even worse off than the Ghetto inhabitants who could work. Up to the end of the year 1941, there was still mail contact between the two lady friends.

When Martha Zacher tried to send her friend parcels and money at the beginning of 1942, she was denounced. Gestapo Lieutenant Kühn took her into protective custody for disobedience and subsequently dispatched her to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women, which she left in September 1944 ill, but at least alive. Erna Kisch was deported to the Chelmno extermination camp on May 10th, 1942 and most likely murdered on arrival.

Translated by Peter Hubschmid

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; 2 R 1939/2738; 4; 5; StaH, 522-1, Jüdische Gemeinden, 390 Wählerverzeichnis 1930; 391 Mitgliederliste 1935; 992 e 2 Deportationslisten Bd. 1; BA Bln., Volkszählung 1939; AfW 100591; Archivum Panstwowe, Lodz; Stiftung Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück: Schreiben vom 17.1.2006; Landeskirchliches Archiv der NEK, Kiel: 32.01 Landeskirche Hamburg – Landeskirchenamt, Nr. 2664, Bl. 289; Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Landesentschädigungsamt EG 7993.