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Hermann Wellner * 1912
Schloßmühlendamm 16 (Harburg, Harburg)
HIER WOHNTE
HERMANN WELLNER
JG. 1912
AUSGEWIESEN 1938
ZBASZYN POLEN
ERMORDET
further stumbling stones in Schloßmühlendamm 16:
Anna Weinstein, Helene Chaja Wellner, Samuel Wellner, Josef Wellner
Chaja Helene Bromberger, called Wellner, née Freifeld, b. 9.17.1883 in Chrzanów, expelled on 10.28.1938 to Zbaszyn, deported to Auschwitz
Hermann Bromberger, called Wellner, b. 6.21.1912 in Harburg, expelled on 10.28.1938 to Zbaszyn, date of death unknown
Josef Bromberger, called Wellner, b. 5.27.1913 in Harburg, expelled on 10.28.1938 to Zbaszyn, in Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp 1939, Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1941, died there on 5.25.1942
Samuel Bromberger, called Wellner, b. 10.12.1881 in Chrzanów, expelled on 10.28.1938 to Zbaszyn, deported to Auschwitz
City District Harburg-Altstadt, Schlossmühlendamm 16
When Samuel and Chaja Helene Bromberger, called Wellner, left their place of birth in Austrian Upper Silesia before the First World War, they did not foresee that their dream of a better world would, thirty years later, come to an end in this very place and in such a terrible way. The metropolis of Krakow, was as quickly reached from their parental home as the little town of Oświęcim on the River Sola. Chrzanów in 1910 numbered approximately 11,000 inhabitants, of whom Jews made up about half. After 1918, the flag of the newly founded Polish Republic waved over the town.
In search of a new homeland, the young Jewish couple from Upper Silesia reached Harburg, where they found a home at Mühlenstrasse 18 (today: Sclossmühlendamm 16) and where Samuel Wellner sought to make a living as a peddler in the public squares and on the streets of the city. His wife supported him according to her powers, first of all because there were in the following years five children to care for. After the first son, Oskar (b. 6.13.1911) followed two brothers, Hermann and Josef. Afterwards came two sisters Erna (b. 8.4.1916) and Peppi (b. 6.2.1922).
Money was always scarce in the Bromberger-Wellner household. The situation eased only after the children finished their schooling and contributed to the support of the family. With their help it was finally also possible to obtain a slightly larger dwelling on Turnerstrasse (today: Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Straße).
The strong sense of responsibility among the children is evidence of the close coherence of this Orthodox religious family. The religious holidays, like the dietary laws (Kaschrut),were scrupulously observed. While other children played outside on the Sabbath, Erna Wellner and her siblings were at home, praying and learning to speak Hebrew. After the three boys attended a school in Harburg, they later switched to the Talmud Torah school in Hamburg. After their schooling, all five children completed apprenticeships, which facilitated a successful entrance into occupational life.
Family solidarity became even stronger after 1933 when the pressure of state persecution intensified day by day against the Jewish population – and particularly against "Eastern Jews." In the summer of 1936, after an unknown perpetrator threw a stone into their bedroom, Samuel und Chaja Wellner, no longer believed they were safe in Harburg. They hoped that they would be better protected from such attacks in an apartment on Rappstrasse in the Grindel quarter of Hamburg. In September 1936, they switched to the German-Israelite Congregation in Hamburg.
The entire family was, within the framework of the nationwide so-called Pole Action, pushed off to Zbaszyn, a little border town on the Berlin-Posen-Warsaw railway line; in the first days and weeks they lived in cattle pens. From here, Erna and Peppi Wellner succeeded in their flight through Hamburg into exile in Great Britain; this after a friend had arranged a visa for their entrance as domestics into the United Kingdom.
The three brothers also went back to Hamburg in 1939, hoping to find better chances than in Poland for emigration to a land of exile. In addition they wanted to liquidate their dwellings and those of their parents on Rappstrasse. All their efforts remained stuck in more or less the initial stages. Oskar Wellner and his two brothers could not even get permission from officials to send their parent’s household goods, which were stored with a forwarding agent, to them in Poland. After a short time and without having achieved anything, Oskar and Hermann Wellner returned to Poland, while their brother Josef remained in Hamburg.
In vain, he hoped to be able to follow in the fastest way his pregnant wife Sonja, née Schütt (b. 4.3.1914), whom he had married a short time before in Zbaszyn and who had left the Hanseatic City on 2 August 1939 with an English visa. Shortly after her departure, the Second World War began. On 9 September 1939, Josef Wellner, as a member of an enemy state and as a Polish Jew, was interned in the Fuhlsbüttel police jail. On 24 February 1940, he was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where his life ended on 25 May 1942, shortly before his 29th birthday.
His brothers and parents went in the summer of 1939 to the place in Upper Silesia from which Samuel and Chaja Helene Wellner had once broken away "for a better world.” The Wehrmacht occupied it on 2 September 1939. Chrzanów soon became Krenau and Oświęcim was renamed Auschwitz after this part of Upper Silesia was annexed by the German Reich.
After the invasion of the German armed forces, for the Jews in Chrzanów and vicinity there began a terrible martyrdom. Following the terror and plundering of the early days of the war came an unending number of rules, regulations, and requirements which increasingly destroyed the life foundations of the Jewish population. In all the larger locales – thus, also in Chrzanów – the officials quickly established a Jewish council, which had to implement its orders for the registration of Jews and their later deportation to the neighboring Auschwitz extermination camp. The "resettlement” of the last 1000 Jews from the ghetto of this city began on 18 February 1943 and ended in the short trip to the gas chambers of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
One day, Samuel, Chaja Helene, Hermann, and Oskar Wellner also had to make this trip to Auschwitz. Only Oskar Wellner survived this hell – miraculously. After a long odyssey through several other camps he was in May 1945 in Ebensee, an outpost of the Mauthausen concentration camp, when liberated by American troops. His hopes for a reunion with his parents and his brothers remained unfulfilled.
Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.
Stand: May 2019
© Klaus Möller
Quellen: 1; 2 (FVg 5913 Samuel Bromberger, FVg 5680 Josef Bromberger, FVg 4855 Erna Rosa Bromberger, FVg 4856 Peppi Bromberger); 4; 5; 8; StaH, 351-11, AfW, Abl. 2008/1,101281 Wellner, Samuel, 130611, Wellner, Oscar, 270513 Bromberger, Josef, 020622 Lamm, Peppi, geb. Bromberger, 030414 Weiner, Sonja, geb. Schütt, 250340 Bromberger, John-David; Heyl (Hrsg.), Harburger Opfer; Heyl, Synagoge; Interview mit Erna Handler, geb. Bromberger vom 19.5.1989, in: Heyl, Synagoge; Czech, Kalendarium, 2. Auflage, S. 416; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrzanów (eingesehen am 20.3.2010); Wiener, Name, S. 19ff.
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