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Helene Kohn (née Aschenbrandt) * 1888

Klosterallee 102 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)

1941 Riga
ermordet

Helene Kohn, née Aschenbrandt, born 1 Jan. 1898 in Sontra, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga, deported on to Stutthof concentration camp on 1 Oct. 1944, where she died 1 Jan. 1945

Klosterallee

Helene Aschenbrandt grew up in the Rotenburg District of Hesse where she trained to be a seamstress. It is not known when she moved to Hamburg and married.

She lived with her husband, the self-employed carpenter Eugen Kohn, at Bornstraße 5, later at Heinrich-Barth-Straße 17. The couple had two children: Berthold, born on 13 July 1912, and Walter, born on 3 Dec. 1913.

After her husband died on 23 Apr. 1934, Helene Kohn took over the well-equipped carpentry workshop at Bismarckstraße 82, which she later moved to Bornstraße. From Dec. 1935 to Dec. 1938, Helene Kohn was proprietress of the carpentry company Eugen Kohn, Hamburg 13, Bornstraße 5, registered in Hamburg’s Register of Craftsmen.

Their son Berthold trained as a carpenter in the family business from 1933 to 1935 and later worked there as a journeyman. In 1938 he became manager of the company and a master craftsman was hired as technical director when, in the wake of the "Aryanization" of Jewish companies, the business had to be shut down. The company was removed from the trade register due to Article II § 5 of the decree to implement the Order to Eliminate Jews from German Economic Life from 23 Nov. 1938.

Helene Kohn then ran a guest house from her apartment at Klosterallee 5, where she lived. At least four longterm guests lived in the seven and a half rooms. In Dec. 1941, she received the order to be deported. She was told to leave the key to her apartment with the police and afterwards was summoned by the Gestapo.

Together with her son Berthold, she was deported from the collection point on Moorweidenstraße in Hamburg to Jungfernhof near Riga on 7 Dec. 1941. During her internment, Helene Kohn was able to spend most of her time with her son. She was later moved to the Riga Ghetto where she met the couple Erwin and Else Sekules. Both partners survived and, once the war ended, wrote eyewitness accounts of their time at the camp in which they remembered Helene Kohn. Else Sekules was the director of the "Vienna Work Group" in the Riga Ghetto. She and Gertrude Schneider, who headed the "Vienna Work Group", each had a desk in the "Work Assignment Office". Schneider also survived and published a book about her time in the Riga Ghetto.

Following a work assignment at Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga which was cut short due to illness, Helene Kohn was transported back to Riga Ghetto in Oct. 1943. When the ghetto was dissolved in Nov. 1943, she was moved to Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. That move irrevocably separated her from her son Berthold who survived persecution and later was able to bear witness. (His account of Riga: http://www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035/ Riga.html).

According to a note in the files, Helene Kohn perished in the early morning of 1 Jan. 1945 at Stutthof concentration camp from cardiac insufficiency. Her second son Walter managed to emigrate in time, probably to England where he changed his name to Walter Collins.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Claudia García

Quellen: 1; 4; 6; 8; StaH 351-11 AfW, 10138 Kohn, Helene; StaH 552-1 Jüd. Gemeinden, 992e2 Band 1; Schneider, Gertrude, Exile and Destruction: The Fate of Australian Jews 1938-1945, Westport Conn, 1995; Schneider, Gertrude, Reise in den Tod: Deutsche Juden in Riga 1941–1944, Dülmen, 2006, S. 47, S. 89, S. 112; History of Jews in Hamburg: http://www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035/Riga.html ; Primary Source Media: http://microformguides.gale.com, Erwin Sekules: Evidences against Unteroffizier Franz Schwellenbach, Summer 1944 in: WL, Reel 57, P.III.h., No.1034, S. 3–8.
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