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Dr. Julius Lewinnek * 1874

Kreuzweg 12 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

1943 Sobibor
deportiert aus den Niederlanden

further stumbling stones in Kreuzweg 12:
Paula Lewinnek

Dr. Julius Lewinnek, born 03/23/1874 in Neustadt near Danzig
Paula Lewinnek, née Kahn, born 02/28/1885 in Eschwege/Werra

Jewish married couple, deported from the Westerbork concentration camp in the Netherlands to the Sobibor extermination camp on 05/28/1943 and murdered there on 05/28/1943

Last residence: Kreuzweg 26

Julius and Paula Lewinnek and their daughters Ilse and Edith had lived at Kreuzweg 26 in the borough of St. Georg since 1900. Julius Lewinnek had studied medicine at the universities of Wurzburg and Berlin and opened his doctor’s office at Pulverteich 2, just around the corner from his home. Julius Lewinnek was obviously a well-known and respected citizen of the borough and had been a member of the "Bürgerverein zu St. Georg”, a traditional civil society association. In World War I, he had served as a major in the medical corps. In the days of the Weimar republic, his medical practice flourished.

In 1933, however, his economic and social situation – like that of all Jewish doctors – deteriorated due to the discriminating professional restrictions by the Nazi regime. Effective January 1st, 1938, he lost his accreditation with the statutory health insurance, and on September 30th, 1938, his approbation as a physician was revoked.
On account of this depressing situation, the Lewinneks decided to emigrate to the Netherlands in 1939. Their daughter Ilse (born 1908), who had married the physician Julius Rosenberg, and their daughter Irene had had already fled to Holland in 1937; their second daughter Edith (born 1911), who had studied medicine, had emigrated to the USA in 1938 and later practiced medicine there.
The family had to pay a staggering price to the Nazi regime for the right to leave Germany: the "Reich flight tax” of 8,240 RM was levied on the parents, plus the "levy on Jewish assets” of 13,000 RM; in addition, they were forced to cede the balance of 28,500 RM of their blocked account to the " Deutsche Golddiskontbank”, of which 94 percent went to the Reich ministry of economics, and presumably the Lewinneks did not even receive the rest of the proceeds.

The "Reich Flight Tax” was also applied to the money reserved for daughter Edith and the medical instruments purchased for the emigration: 6,211 RM, plus 1,072 RM levy on relocation goods. In the Netherlands, the German occupation regime interned the Lewinneks at the Westerbork concentration camp, from where they were deported on May 25th, 1943 to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, where they were killed shortly after their arrival. The Lewinneks’ daughter Ilse suffered a similar fate: together with her husband and their daughter, she was also imprisoned in Westerbork and later deported to the east.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2017
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 4; AfW, Entschädigungsakte; AB 1939; Verzeichnis der jüdischen Ärzte, Zahnärzte, Dentisten, Bandagisten, Optiker in Hamburg, Altona, Wandsbek, o.O., o.J.; Villiez, Anna von, Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Ärzte Hamburgs aus dem Berufsleben 1933-1945, M.A. Examensarbeit, Universität Hamburg, 2002, S. 181; Joho, Michael (Hg.), St. Georg lebt! 125 Jahre Bürgerverein St. Georg – ein Lese-Bilder-Buch, Hamburg 2005, S. 54–56.
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