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Dr. Jakob Sakom, 1909 in Berlin
Dr. Jakob Sakom, 1909 in Berlin
© StaH

Dr. Jacob Sakom * 1877

Curschmannstraße 13 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)

1941 Litauen

see:

further stumbling stones in Curschmannstraße 13:
Martha Goldschmidt, Sophie Sakom

Dr. Jakob Sakom, born on 9 July 1877 in Panevezys/Lithuania, missing in Lithuania in the fall of 1941
Sophie Sakom, née Kagan, born on 14 Aug. 1880, place of birth unknown, missing in Lithuania in the fall of 1941

Curschmannstrasse 13

"My grandfather wanted to take me to the opera for the first – and last – time. The Magic Flute was on the program. During intermissions, we walked up and down, and since Sakom was very well known among the musicians and the audience, one would assume that people would greet him. Throughout, he would say, that is so-and-so … but the so-and-sos turned their backs and did not greet him.” His granddaughter later recalled this traumatic experience in 1935/36.

Jakob Sakom was born as the first child of a lawyer’s family in Lithuania. After attending high school in Riga, he began studies in natural sciences, which he completed with a doctorate, obtaining the title of Dr. rer. nat. Concurrently, from 1897 until 1902, he studied cello with Friedrich W. Mulert at the Imperial School of Music in Kiev. In 1902, he went with his wife Sophie to Leipzig, where he continued his musical studies until 1905.

In 1905, still in Leipzig, their daughter Valentine was born. The family moved to Hamburg, for at the beginning of the 1905/1906 season, Jakob Sakom signed up for an engagement as a solo cellist in the orchestra of the Philharmonische Gesellschaft, to which he belonged for 28 years, until his dismissal in 1934. He participated in chamber music ensembles and performed as a solo cellist at the "Volkstümliche Konzerte,” popular concerts organized by the Association of Hamburg Friends of Music (Verein der Hamburgischen Musikfreunde) to familiarize new listeners with works of classical music. Added to this were performances at the "Volkstümliche Kirchenkonzerte” ("popular church concerts”) by Alfred Sittard and at the annual stagings of Bach’s St John Passion, featuring Jakob Sakom playing the solo cello.

At the beginning of the 1920s, he participated in the concert cycle for new music (Konzertzyklus für Neue Musik) established in 1923. For instance, he played the cello in Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire on 3 Mar. 1924, conducted by the composer himself. In addition to this work as a practicing musician, Sakom was also in very high demand as a teacher. From 1907 until 1916, he taught at the Bernuth Conservatory in Hamburg. This time also saw the publication of the violoncello etude tutor (Violoncello-Etüden-Schule) published in six issues. Starting in 1928, he was a teacher at the Vogt Conservatory based in the Curiohaus. Aside from that, he also gave lessons to private students at home.

The year 1929 saw the founding of the Gesellschaft Hamburger Tonkünstler, a music association aspiring to revive music making in the home. Jakob Sakom, too, was among its sponsors. For instance, on 22 Feb. 1929, the Hamburgische Correspondent wrote, "From this new institution … one can expect only the best, especially since it is under the patronage of well-known personalities, such as: … Dr. Jakob Sakom.” However, even before 1933, his fame did not protect him from anti-Semitic comments. According to Robert Jaques, at one performance, Karl Muck, conductor of the Philharmonische Orchester since 1922, had muttered, audible to all members of the orchestra, "Now, I march through the Jews’ Gate.” Both the concertmaster Heinrich Bandler to the left and Jakob Sakom, who stood to the right of him, were Jews.

After the Nazis assumed power, Sakom continued to be employed for the time being. Since the 1920s, there had been plans to merge the two big Hamburg orchestras, the Philharmonische Orchester and the orchestra of the City Theater, for financial reasons.

In Apr. 1934, all members of the orchestra were dismissed, though most of them were rehired based on new contracts. The exceptions were "non-Ayran” musicians. The official regulations of the new Hamburgische Philharmonische Staatsorchester established specifically that only "those of Aryan descent” might be members of the orchestra. The position of the solo cellist remained vacant. By this time, Sakom received a monthly old-age pension, which did not support him and his wife, however. He continued to teach private students but they, too, were allowed to be taught by "Aryan” instructors only. Thus, his granddaughter Nora related that as late as 1935, a young student had shown up wearing a Hitler Youth uniform, upon which Sakom explained to him that he was no longer permitted to teach him.

One of the few remaining opportunities for Jewish artists to perform was the "Jewish Cultural Federation” ("Jüdischer Kulturbund”) founded in Hamburg in Jan. 1934, initially operating under the name of "Jewish Society for Arts and Sciences” ("Jüdische Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft”). Jakob Sakom also performed there as a solo cellist, undertaking tours to other German cities, both with a chamber ensemble and as a soloist with the orchestra of the Jewish cultural federations based in Frankfurt/Main. From 1937 until 1938, he belonged to its artistic advisory board.

In 1938, Sophie and Jakob Sakom decided to emigrate. He had received an offer from Lithuania to teach at the conservatories of Vilnius and Kaunas. As Lithuanian citizens, the Sakoms had the right to emigrate. Nevertheless, they had a series of bureaucratic hurdles to take until they were able to depart along with their furniture for Lithuania. For instance, Sophie Sakom – like all emigrants – had to prepare a list in triplicate regarding the volume of the moving goods and their value and declare that the items had already been in her possession before 1 Jan. 1933. The registration and passport authority reported their move to Kaunas to the foreign currency office as of 5 Aug. 1938. Their moving goods did not follow until the end of Dec. 1938.

In Kaunas, Jakob Sakom taught at the conservatory and played in radio performances. Due to the changed political situation, in Nov. 1939, Ernst Kaufmann, Sakom’s Hamburg lawyer, tried to arrange for his account balance with the M. M. Warburg banking house and his pension payments to be transferred to a Lithuanian bank. This prompted an extensive investigation concerning his neediness. He made assurances that he did not have any assets, either in Lithuania or in Germany, and that he was therefore dependent on the support payments for his livelihood. The upshot was that his pension, reduced once more, was transferred to Lithuania starting in Aug. 1940. However, he never received his account balance with the M. M. Warburg banking house: In the last letter dated May 1940, the lawyer Ernst Kaufmann asked the foreign currency office to transfer the sum deposited in the special account to the "Garantie- und Kreditbank für den Osten” in Berlin, thus enabling Jakob Sakom to access the funds. This application was turned down.

For the period following, no application for a transfer permit was submitted to the foreign currency office. His granddaughter related she found out from Lithuania after the war that Sophie and Jakob Sakom "were shot in the forest by SS Einsatzgruppen [SS task forces, i.e., death squads] in about Oct. 1941.”

Since 1934, daughter Valentine was trying to reach a safe foreign country with her family. After the plans to emigrate to Palestine had foundered, they managed to move to the Netherlands, where Valentine’s husband, Wolfgang Meyer-Udewald, had a brother, for whom he could work. From the Netherlands, they fled to Belgium, where Wolfgang Meyer-Udewald was deported by the Germans to France. Following internment in several camps, he managed to flee to Cuba. Valentine remained behind in Belgium with the children, attempting to reach, with a helper, unoccupied Marseilles, where Cuban passports were waiting for them. However, this "helper” betrayed them to the German military police.

On 7 Mar. 1942, she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. Her 13-year-old son Hans Siegmund was murdered immediately. Valentine perished that same year, 1942. Only daughter Nora managed to live through three years of Auschwitz. She joined her father in Cuba in 1946 and eventually went to the USA.

Another Stolperstein was laid for Jacob Sakom in front of the Hamburger Staatsoper.


Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Maria Koser

Quellen: 2; 4; 5; StaH 314-15 OFP, F 2059; StaH 314-15 OFP, 6/1938; Petersen, Peter, Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit, Hrsg. Claudia Maurer-Zenck und Peter Petersen unter Mitarbeit von Sophie Fetthauer, ab 2005 Universität Hamburg, http://www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de/ eingesehen am 4.9.2008; Pfaff, Von Deutschen in Litauen ermordet, in: Zündende Lieder, Arbeitsgruppe Exilmusik am Musikwissenschaftlichen Institut der Universität Hamburg (Hrsg.), 1995,S. 66f.f; Gillis-Carlebach, Jedes Kind ist mein Einziges, 1992, S. 133; Weissweiler, Ausgemerzt, 1999, S.303; Faksimile des "Lexikon der Juden in der Musik", Berlin 1940; Petersen, Juden im Musikleben, in: Die Juden in Hamburg, Herzig/Rohde (Hrsg.), 1991, S. 304, S. 326; Hamburgischer Correspondent am 22.2.1929.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".

Dr. Jacob (Jakob) Sakom, born 9 July 1877 in Panevézys, Lithuania, immigrated in 1938 to Lithuania, probably shot to death in Oct. 1941 in the forest near Kaunas by SS death squads (Einsatzgruppen)

Johannes-Brahms-Platz 1 (in front of Laeiszhalle)
Curschmannstraße 13 (Hamburg-Hoheluft)

Jacob Sakom was born the son of David and Fanny Sakom in Panevézys, Lithuania and came from a Jewish family of lawyers. After graduating high school in Riga, he finished a degree in scientific studies at the University of Kiev. While still in Lithuania, he married Sophie Kagan, called Sonja. The couple moved to Leipzig where Jacob Sakom returned to studying music. Their daughter Valentine was born on 18 Jan. 1905. In Oct. of that year, the family moved to Hamburg. As of 1911 the family lived in Hamburg-Eppendorf at Curschmannstraße 8 and later moved to the building at number 13. Jacob Sakom first played as a cellist, later as a solo cellist in the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra and taught on the side at Vogtschen Conservatory in Curiohaus. It had been in the planning since the 1920s to merge the Philharmonic Orchestra with the orchestra of the State Theater (today the State Opera) to save money. When the merger finally took place in 1934, one year after the National Socialists came to power, the new Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra eliminated Jewish musicians from its rows. In doing so, they implemented the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service with its "Aryan paragraphs”. Jacob Sakom was forced into retirement, but only received a pension of 312 Reich Marks from the state pension. Subject to restrictions as to where he could play, he set up a private string orchestra, performed in concerts of the Hamburg Jewish Cultural Association, and gave private music lessons in his home, as he long had done. In her biography of Sakom, Martina Pfaff quoted a statement from his granddaughter Nora who reported that around 1935 a young student came to his music lesson wearing a Hitler Youth uniform. Shortly thereafter, he grandfather declared that he could no longer teach the young man, and the student never returned. In a further episode, she described Nora’s first and last visit to the opera with her grandfather in 1935 or 1936: During the intermission, the well-known musician was ignored by the other patrons.

When Jacob Sakom received an offer from the conservatories in Kaunas and Vilnius to teach, he and his wife Sophie immigrated to Kaunas, Lithuania as Lithuanian citizens with Soviet passports on 15 Aug. 1938. The couple was declared non-residents, and their assets were held in a frozen account. It was not until Mar. 1944 that the Foreign Currency Office of the Tax Authority issued permission for their cash assets to be transferred to an account of the Commissioner General in Kaunas. Jacob Sakom’s pension was initially re-directed to Lithuania, until the payments were discontinued in Mar. 1941. In Nov. 1938 and Aug. 1939 they stated that they intended to return to Hamburg, but that never came to pass.

According to a report from a Lithuanian Jew to their granddaughter Nora, the Sakoms were shot to death in Oct. 1941 by SS death squads (Einsatzgruppen) in the forest near Kaunas, four months after German troops invaded Lithuania. The Stumbling Stone outside the Laeiszhalle honors Jacob Sakom as a musician. A Stumbling Stone for Mr. and Mrs. Sakom has been laid at their last residence in Hamburg at Curschmannstraße 13. The work of several volumes that Jacob Sakom published around 1910 to learn cello, Violoncello-Etüden-Schule, is still in circulation today.

The fate of their daughter Valentine and her family
On 17 Dec. 1923 Valentine married the Hamburg businessman Wolfgang Meyer-Udewald (born 17 Aug. 1893). Her parents-in-law, the physician Simon Siegmund Meyer (born 5 Nov. 1860, died 24 Mar. 1922) and Anna Sophie, née Udewald (born 5 June 1869, died 13 Feb. 1911), had already passed away. They lived at Welckerstraße 10, across from the Hamburg State Theater of the time.

Their granddaughter Nora, previously mentioned, was born on 8 May 1925, her brother Hans Siegmund followed on 16 July 1929. The family lived at Hansastraße 21, later at Jungfrauenthal 22.

Early on, in 1934, the Meyer-Udewalds decided to leave Germany with their two children. They applied for and received permission to undertake an information-gathering visit to Palestine – her uncle Joseph Kagan lived in Tel-Aviv – but the trip had to be cancelled due to illness. They also failed to receive a visa for the USA for the foreseeable future due to quota restrictions.

After 27 years of service, his last role as an authorized representative, Wolfgang Meyer-Udewald was dismissed from the company Gustav Zülzer, Seed Import and Export at Kleinen Reichenstraße 1 in the spring of 1937, and the company was "Aryanized”. The family immigrated on 23 Aug. of that year to Tilburg in the Netherlands where Wolfgang’s younger brother Paul Clemens Meyer-Udewald (born 11 Feb. 1898) ran a textiles factory. The family’s intent was to start a new life in a place where they could continue pursuing their plans to immigrate to the USA. From Tilburg the family moved on to Antwerp in Sept.

On 10 May 1940, after the German Wehrmacht invaded Belgium, Wolfgang Meyer-Udewald was arrested by the Belgian government as an enemy alien and sent to the south of France.

He passed through five different camps, including Gurs camp. Wolfgang Meyer-Udewald was put on an internment ship which was captured off the coast of Martinique by the Dutch and British. The "passengers” were taken to a camp in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Wolfgang Meyer-Udewald managed to obtain a visa for Cuba. On 11 July 1941 he arrived in Havana. From there he sent his wife and children entry visas, however they were deposited at the Cuban Consulate in Marseille as it was located in unoccupied France. Valentine Meyer-Udewald then tried to make her way with her 13 and 17-year-old children using counterfeit passports from Antwerp to the south of France so that she could escape to Cuba.

While crossing the demarcation line between the occupied and unoccupied zones in France, they were arrested on 7 Mar. 1942 at 6 a.m. by German field police in La Rochefoucauld. After a temporary stay in Angoulems Prison, they were taken to Poitiers camp. On 17 July 1942 they were transferred to Angers collection camp and three days later deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her son Hans was left behind in Poitiers camp and was likely taken along with the other children and elderly people to the collection camp for Jews in Drancy near Paris because his deportation to Auschwitz on 23 Sept. 1942 on the 36th transport was documented as starting from Drancy. He probably was killed in Auschwitz.

In Auschwitz-Birkenau Nora was issued prisoner number 10255 and was deployed along with her mother in street construction. After about three weeks, she was moved to the main camp Auschwitz I. Her mother Valentine stayed behind in subcamp Birkenau (Auschwitz II) located 3 km away. At the start of Oct., Nora learned from a fellow prisoner that her mother was last housed in Block 25 after making several attempts to escape and had been "gassed” sometime around the start of Sept. 1942.

Auschwitz concentration camp was evacuated on 18 Jan. 1945 as Russian troops were advancing. Nora stated about this time that after three days of marching in snow and ice, they were loaded onto cattle cars and arrived at Ravensbrück concentration camp on about 23 Jan. 1945. Two weeks later she was transported onward to Malchow subcamp in the south of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Ultimately she was taken to Leipzig-Schönefeld camp which was part of Buchenwald’s largest female subcamp. At that camp she was forced to work twelve hours a day in an ammunition factory. When that camp too was evacuated in Apr. 1945, she marched for days in the direction of Dresden. Her second attempt to escape was successful and during the first days of May, she ran into American troops on a country road. On 9 May 1945 she was returned to Belgium on a transport of prisoners of war and reached Brussels on 15 May. Nora, who had survived Auschwitz and other concentration camps over the course of three years, was finally able to travel to her father in Cuba in 1946. In 1951 she moved to New York and in 1960 she married Harry Stiefel who was also a native of Hamburg. Their son Lewis was born on 20 Mar. 1961. Her father Wolfgang Meyer-Udewald died on 31 Oct. 1964 in Miami, Florida. Stumbling Stones at Jungfrauenthal 22 in Hamburg-Harvestehude honor her mother Valentine and her brother Hans Meyer-Udewald.

Wolfgang’s brother Paul Clemens Meyer-Udewald and his family were deported from the Netherlands to Bergen-Belsen on 10 Apr. 1943. He died on 15 Apr. 1945 while on the last of three train transports from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt. According to information from the Dutch Red Cross, his body was left at Wittenberge train station. Paul Clemens Meyer-Udewald’s grave site is located at the Jewish Cemetery in Tilburg where his daughter Joan Anna Meyer-Udewald, born in 1925, is also buried. She died in Schilda, seven days after Germany’s surrender.

A Stumbling Stone has been laid for Paul Clemens Meyer-Udewald at Maria-Louisen-Straße 4, in Hamburg-Winterhude.

Wolfgang and Paul’s younger sister, the dentist Johanna Rosa Meyer-Udewald (born on 24 Sept. 1894), practiced and lived at Hansastraße 21, and in the end also in the building at Jungfrauenthal 22. After her license to practice was revoked, she followed her family to Holland in the summer of 1937 and in Feb. 1940 to Belgium. Two years after the German Wehrmacht invaded Belgium, authorities in Belgium too began concentrating Jewish men and women in camps in July 1942. She was taken to Mechelen (Malines) collection and transit camp in the Dossin military barracks, set up by the SS. The first transport destined for an extermination camp left Mechelen on 4 Aug. 1942; by 31 June 1944 all of the additional 27 transports were to follow. Johanna Meyer-Udewald was arrested and taken to Mechelen on 5 Aug. 1943 where she was placed on the deportation list of Convoy XXII A as number 97. She left Belgium on that transport on 20 Sept. 1943 and arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau two days later. Johanna Meyer-Udewald was killed in Auschwitz.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 4; 8; StaH 351-11 AfW 47461 (Stiefel, Nora); StaH 351-11 AfW 17893 (Meyer-Udewald, Wolfgang); StaH 351-11 AfW 24994 (Meyer-Udewald, Johanna); StaH OFP F 2059; StaH 314-15 OFP, R 1940/972; StaH 232-5 Amtsgericht Hamburg 1800; StaH 720-1_215 Sa 131; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2798 u 1158/1892; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2346 u 3431/1894; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2456 u 539/1898; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9795 u 803/1922; Dokumentationszentrum Kaserne Dossin (Mechelen/ Belgien), Auskunft von Dorien Styven, E-Mail vom 29.8.2016; Pfaff: Zündende Lieder, S. 67; Bruhns: Kunst, Band I, S. 251; http://www.communityjoodsmonument.nl/person/118620/nl (Zugriff 2010); Memorial de la Shoah, Musée, Centre de Documentation, http://bdi.memorialdelashoah.org/internet/jsp/core/MmsRedirector.jsp?id=40030&type=VICTIM (Zugriff 14.8.2013); http://resistancemalherbe.e-monsite.com/pages/temoignages/hans-meyer.html (Zugriff 5.4.2015).
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".

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