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Stolperstein für Selma Mankiewicz
© Johann-Hinrich Möller

Selma Mankiewicz * 1872

Eppendorfer Weg 210 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)

1942 Theresienstadt
1942 Treblinka ermordet

further stumbling stones in Eppendorfer Weg 210:
Dora Mankiewicz

Dora Mankiewicz, born on 9 Oct. 1873 in Hamburg, deported on 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 21 Sept. 1942 to Treblinka
Selma Mankiewicz, born on 8 June 1872 in Hamburg, deported on 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 21 Sept. 1942 to Treblinka

Eppendorfer Weg 210

"The transport. On the open space in the middle of the garden of the Warburg-Stift [a residential home] in Hamburg, a truck with a trailer stopped in front of the entrance to the house one early morning. With lips sternly pressed together and tough features, several people were busy lifting men and women on to the trailer. Many priers just coming this way stopped and they soon surrounded the gate in a large circle, repeatedly attempting to open it … but they were pushed back by two officers of the uniformed police force [Schutzpolizei – "Schupo”] standing guard. … Now the uniformed police officers put an end to the exchange of opinions. They pushed the spectators out of the garden and on to the street. The gate was opened wide, and the fully loaded truck started moving. Already, a new empty truck had approached, stopping in front of the entrance. From the front door, more inmates of the residential home appeared, prepared for being transported off. They proceeded with heads bowed like people sentenced to die on the scaffold and let themselves be lifted on to the truck like machines.” Berthie Philipp, one of the few survivors of the transport on 15 July 1942, described in her memoirs how the occupants were picked up from the Warburg-Stift, among them the sisters Selma and Dora Mankiewicz.

Selma and Dora, the daughters of Hermann and Jenny Mankiewicz, née Schnabel, were unmarried. Except for a brief period when Dora lived by herself at Gosslerstrasse 10 (today’s Eppendorfer Weg 210) according to the Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) card file, the sisters shared an apartment all of their lives, first on the ground floor at Grindelallee 9 and, starting in Apr. 1935, on the second floor of the house at Breitenfelderstrasse 6.

We do not know whether Selma Mankiewicz was gainfully employed. From 1925 onward, she paid to the Hamburg Jewish Community 2 RM (reichsmark) a year until 1932.

Dora Mankiewicz was already listed as a member of the Jewish Community one year earlier. She worked as an office employee at the law firm of Hermann Jacob and Rudolf Samson, Andreas Blunck, Carl and Carl Albert Leo and M. E. Adler in the "Kaufmannshaus” at Bleichenbrücke 10.

After the occupational ban on Jewish lawyers as of 30 Nov. 1938, Dora Mankiewicz also became unemployed. By then she was 65 years old and received a small pension of 95 RM a month. Together with her sister Selma, she then moved into the central part of the John-R.-Warburg Stift at Bundesstrasse 43. In this residential home, usually 93 persons lived. In the first months of 1942, the number of occupants rose drastically. As in the case of other "Jews’ houses” ("Judenhäuser”), Jews were committed by force into the John-R.-Warburg Stift. In the fall and winter of 1941, a notice in the entrance hall served to announce who among the younger ones was to be "evacuated” to Lodz, Minsk, and Riga. Selma and Dora Mankiewicz had to read their names on the list half a year later.

On 15 July 1942, 103 persons were deported from the John-R.-Warburg Stift to the "ghetto for the elderly” ("Altersgetto”) in Theresienstadt. Selma and Dora had invested their savings, 1,293.25 RM, in bonds. They were now forced to use them to enter a "home purchase contract” ("Heimeinkaufsvertrag”). The contract promised them life-long room, board, and medical care free of charge. In fact, they encountered an overcrowded ghetto where they were fed only very poorly. The assets later fell to the German Reich.

Two months afterward, on 21 Sept. 1942, a transport with 2,020 persons, including Selma and Dora Mankiewicz, departed the Theresienstadt Ghetto for the Treblinka extermination camp.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Maria Koser

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 7; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden, 992e2 Band 4; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden Abl. 1993, Ordner 10; AB 1928, 1934; Philipp, Die Totgeweihten, in: Schwarz, Die Vaterstädtische Stiftung, Schriften zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftgeschichte, Bd. 10, 2007, S. 196; Morisse, Jüdische Rechtsanwälte, 2003, S. 140, S. 155, S. 156.
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