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Herbert Maidanek
© Sammlung Matthias Heyl

Herbert Maidanek * 1920

Wilstorfer Straße 70 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
HERBERT MAIDANEK
JG. 1920
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ
ERMORDET 23.8.1942

further stumbling stones in Wilstorfer Straße 70:
Karl Maidanek, Helene Maidanek

Helene Maidanek, née Rosenbaum, born on 3 Jan. 1891 in Zierenberg, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, died on 25 Aug. 1942
Herbert Maidanek, born on 5 Apr. 1920 in Harburg, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, died on 23 Aug. 1942
Karl Chaim Maidanek, born on 7 Dec. 1889 in Unter-Wikow (today Vicovu de Jos), deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, died on 16 Mar. 1942

District of Harburg-Altstadt, Wilstorfer Strasse 70

"In consideration of the fact that I, too, bled for Germany’s honor in the war, I request that I would kindly be permitted to mend shoes requiring repair for welfare recipients,” the leather retailer and shoemaker Karl Maidanek wrote to the Harburg-Wilhelmsburg City Council on 17 May 1933. However, the references to his military service in World War I, his reliable cooperation with the municipal welfare office, and his long-standing work experience did not change the minds of the new lords in the city council of the twin city. The decisive factor in their refusal of this application for continuation of the previous cooperation was solely the fact that Karl Maidanek was Jewish. They did not tolerate any exception from their decision dated 30 Mar. 1933 to terminate cooperation with Jewish merchants, lawyers, and physicians effective immediately.

In the letter, Karl Maidanek frankly confessed that he was already suffering from the effects of the economic boycott, not knowing whether soon he would still earn enough to be able to support his family. His worries concerned his wife Helene, who came from a Jewish family in Hessen, as well as his sons Herbert and John, who had been born in Harburg on 24 Apr. 1924. For his part, he had left his birthplace in what used to be the Austro-Hungarian and today’s Romanian Bukovina in 1909, and in the course of his search for a new home, he had chanced upon the industrial city of Harburg, which obviously held an appeal for him. In 1920, he obtained German citizenship. Initially, he collaborated with Robert David Mandel in operating a shoe and leather goods store at Wilstorfer Strasse 70, and subsequently, he opened his own shoemaker’s workshop on Lassallestrasse and later at Bergstrasse 73 (today: Schwarzenbergstrasse).

The Maidaneks were among the families with a more decidedly traditional-religious orientation within the Harburg Synagogue Community. They adhered to kosher cooking, went to the synagogue on Saturday evenings, and celebrated Jewish holidays, at which time Karl Maidanek often closed his workshop to concentrate fully on his religious duties.

Herbert and John Maidanek first attended a close-by primary school in Harburg, then changed to the Talmud Tora School in Hamburg’s Grindel quarter. In this way, they believed to be better able to evade the increasing anti-Semitic hostilities.

When the situation did not ease, Karl and Helene Maidanek made the decision to bring their youngest son John abroad in Feb. 1934. He spent the next years living with several Jewish foster families in the USA. After his university studies, he stayed there and became a teacher.

Herbert Maidanek, too, looked for opportunities to leave Germany. In several agricultural camps of the hachshara movement, he prepared for emigration to Palestine, which he was unable to realize, however.

Very likely, his father saw as a profound humiliation the deprivation of his German citizenship. The Nazis had created a new legal situation based on which naturalization could be reversed (Law amending the German Reich and Citizenship Law [Gesetz zur Änderung der Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeit] dated 15 May 1935). "Since 16 May 1935, all four of us have been stateless,” he wrote to his son living in exile. "As stateless persons, the three of us have received one alien’s passport each, valid for one year and renewed by police for one year at a time prior to the year running out.”

In these difficult times, Karl Maidanek persevered in his Jewish faith, something that seemed more imperative to him than ever before, as he wrote his son John a short time afterward: "Jewish history teaches us that there were repeatedly times in which Jews, whenever they denied their faith, were suppressed and persecuted by other peoples. The destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem was also a consequence of the degeneration of Judaism. Jews in Germany have been experiencing the same thing since 1933, because Jews turned away from Judaism and became assimilated. Therefore, all Jews should be aware of their tribe and profess to Judaism.”

When the municipal housing society terminated Karl Maidanek’s rental agreement in the summer of 1938, it took great efforts to find a new apartment. Christian landlords did not want any trouble with the other tenants and their neighbors, and Jewish landlords became increasingly more difficult to find. After some back and forth, Karl Maidanek was eventually offered the official residence in the basement of the Harburg Synagogue on Eissendorfer Strasse, which the family occupied on 1 Nov. 1938.

Ten days later, during the November Pogrom in Harburg, Helene Maidanek became a first-hand witness to the destruction of the place of worship by Harburg Nazis. When they had kicked in the door and went on a rampage in the interior, she heard some of them calling out, "Come out, Jew, the synagogue is about to blow up!”

At that, trembling with fear, she and two acquaintances left the basement apartment. Among the perpetrators having entered the synagogue and destroyed the interior, she discovered the Harburg Nazi district leader Wilhelm Drescher, whom she asked for protection. At least, he saw to it that she, though bathed in sweat, reached the apartment of her brother-in-law, where she found shelter for the time being.

Karl Maidanek was among some 1,000 Hamburg Jews who were arrested immediately following the events and spent the next weeks in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison, some of them also in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In this concentration camp, he was registered as prisoner no. 008568 and released again on 17 Dec. 1938. When he returned to Harburg, he was refused entry to his workshop. Based on the "Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from German Economic Life” ("Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben”), no business and craft enterprise was allowed to be in Jewish ownership any more as of 1 Jan. 1939. By then, Karl Maidanek was listed as a recipient of welfare assistance, dependent on support from the Jewish Community.

Returning to the official residence underneath the Harburg Synagogue was also out of the question by this time. It had been damaged so heavily during the November Pogrom as to make it uninhabitable. Initially, Helene Maidanek had found accommodation with friends and relatives, having sold a large part of their apartment furnishings, out of necessity and on unfavorable terms. Both spouses and their son were glad when they found lodging in the Grindel quarter at Dillstrasse 15, a subsequent "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”), in mid-Jan. 1939. They also gratefully seized any opportunity enabling them to earn a bit of extra money by doing odd jobs, since they were barely able to eke out a living with the assistance from the Jewish Community. In July 1939, Karl and Herbert Maidanek were enlisted as welfare recipients, like many other Jews, to perform compulsory labor duties at the Wilhelmsburg wool-combing works and the city cleaning department, in return for modest pay.

On 25 Oct. 1941, the married couple and their son received the order for "resettlement” ("Umsiedlung”) to "Litzmannstadt” (Lodz). Karl Maidanek suffered most from the dreadful living conditions prevailing in this ghetto. After a mere five months, he was no longer alive. He perished on 16 Mar. 1942, at the age of 52.

Barely six weeks later, his wife and son learned that they were scheduled for the first major "resettlement” ("Aussiedlung”) of German, Austrian, Luxembourg, and Czech Jews from the overcrowded ghetto. The large-scale operation started on Monday, 4 May 1942. Until then, almost exclusively Polish occupants of the ghetto had been transported off to the Chelmno extermination site. The inclusion of other parts of the ghetto inhabitants into the extermination operation can be traced back to an order of the Reich Leader SS and Head of German Police, Heinrich Himmler, dated Apr. 1942. However, initially, all persons – and their immediate relatives – employed in a factory or the ghetto administration were supposed to be exempted from the order, as were those able to document war decorations. Herbert Maidanek wrote an application to this effect and pointed to his employment with the ghetto fire brigade; he claimed a deferral for him and his mother, succeeding in this endeavor for the time being.

Ultimately, however, the withdrawal of the deportation order only meant an extension of the reprieve for the two doomed people. Herbert Maidanek perished of malnutrition in one of the ghetto hospitals on 23 Aug. 1942. His mother outlived him by two days.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: 1; 2 (FVg 6088); 4; 5; 8; StaH, 351-11, AfW, Abl. 2008/1 240424 Maidanek, John; StaH 430-5 Magistrat Harburg-Wilhelmsburg, 181-08 Ausschaltung jüdischer Geschäfte und Konsumvereine (1933– 1938); Heyl (Hrsg.), Harburger Opfer; Heyl, Synagoge; Heyl, "nicht mehr erinnerlich"; http://www. fasena.de/hamburg/maidanek.htm (eingesehen am 1.11.2009); Schriftliche Mitteilung der Gedenkstätte und des Museums Sachsenhausen vom 3.3.2011; USHMM; RG 15.083, Nr. 2559 302/343 Herbert Maidanek.
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