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Erwin Keibel * 1892

Marienthaler Straße 145 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

1941 Minsk
ermordet

further stumbling stones in Marienthaler Straße 145:
Erna Keibel, Hans Keibel, Ruth Keibel, Lieselotte Schmul, Kurt Schmul, Berl Schmul

Erna Keibel, née Silberberg, born 23 July 1896 in Hamburg, deported 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Erwin Keibel, born 11 June 1892 in Rostock, deported 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Hans Keibel, born 7 July 1933 in Hamburg, deported 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Ruth Keibel, born 29 Mar. 1924 in Hamburg, deported 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Berl Schmul, born 5 Apr. 1941 in Hamburg, deported 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Kurt Schmul, born 17 Jan. 1918 in Berlin, deported 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Liselotte Schmul, née Keibel, born 23 Mar. 1921 in Hamburg, deported 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk

Marienthaler Straße 143 (formerly: Marienthaler Straße 145)

On 24 Nov. 1939 the 18-year-old merchant’s daughter Liselotte Keibel married the 21-year-old painter Kurt Joseph Schmul in Hamburg, after their independent attempts to emigrate had failed.

Liselotte Keibel was the oldest daughter of the Jewish couple Erna, née Silberberg, and Erwin Keibel. Erwin Keibel came from Rostock. His father Nissan/Nishan Keibel had had his first name changed to Ernst. Ernst Nissan was born on 19 Nov. 1854 in Wilhelmsburg in Ückermünde (Western Pommerania), married Rosa, née Heine, born 20 Mar. 1865 in Strelitz, in 1890 and lived with his family in Rostock until they all moved to Hamburg. Their daughter Johanna was born in Rostock on 9 May 1891 as the first of three children. One year later Erwin followed (11 June 1892) and finally Elsa was born on 16 Apr. 1894. Nissan/Ernst Keibel arrived in Hamburg with his family in 1897. Initially he ran a wholesale cigar business out of his apartment in St. Georg and then in the district Uhlenhorst, before later taking a partner into the business and having it entered into the commercial register. In 1912 he moved his family and his business to Grindelallee 62 and founded a further business with his son Erwin, specializing in tailor supplies, a business which was also entered into the commercial register. On 6 July 1914, he joined the German-Israelite Community. During WW I, business was very bad, and he was not able to pay his community dues. By the end of the inflation period in 1923, he was able to pay off his accumulated tax debt almost in its entirety.

His two daughters Johanna and Elsa Keibel became teachers. Elsa entered into a mixed marriage and left her service as a school teacher when she married in 1924. Her husband Heinrich Kittler, also a trained elementary school teacher, described himself as having no religion. The couple had one daughter. Johanna stayed single and taught at the public school Berliner Tor 27 until she was dismissed in 1933 due to the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” (Gesetzes zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums). Afterwards she taught at the Talmud Torah School until she was deported in Nov. 1941. The Kittler Family survived the National-Socialist regime.

The son Erwin Keibel married Erna Silberberg, a native of Hamburg, on 4 May 1920. Erna Silberberg’s parents, the "agent” (sales representative) Hermann Silberberg, born on 22 Oct. 1872 in Hoerde/Westfallen, and Ida, née Magnus, born 17 Mar. 1874 in Uelzen, had married on 23 Aug. 1894 in Wandsbek. Their son Siegfried was born on 14 June 1895, and they subsequently moved to a rental apartment at Steindamm 25 in Hamburg’s St. Georg.
Their daughter Erna was born there on 23 July 1896. (A second daughter was erroneously noted on the culture tax file card of the widowed Ida Silberberg. This person was actually her daughter-in-law Gertrud, née Kaufmann, born on 21 May 1898.) Erna’s father left Hamburg after six months and headed to Dortmund, but in 1897 he returned once for a month and then left again, this time for Hoerde.
Hence, Siegfried and Erna Silberberg grew up without their father. When Erna got married, he lived in Berlin and worked as an accountant. Hermann Silberberg died on 11 Oct. 1925 in Berlin-Neukölln. While Erna stayed in Hamburg, her brother Siegfried and his wife Gertrud Silberberg moved to Berlin in 1932. Their only child, Vera, had died the day after she was born on 22 May 1930. On 24 Feb. 1942, the Silberbergs adopted the five-year-old boy Binner (born on 3 June 1936 in Berlin).

After he married, Erwin Keibel joined the Jewish Community as the head of his household and paid his dues regularly, like his father, until 1923. In 1928, father and son parted ways as business partners. Erwin Keibel moved with his wife Erna and their two daughters Liselotte, born 23 Mar. 1921, and Ruth, born 29 Mar. 1924, to Hamburg-Hamm and an apartment at Marienthaler Straße 145.
Erna Keibel gave birth to their son Hans on 7 July 1933 as a late arrival. The same year, Erwin Keibel launched a business manufacturing linens at Kantstraße 36 in Eilbek.
Johanna Keibel stayed with her parents Ernst and Rosa. Together they moved to Winterhude at Groothoffgasse 3 where Ernst Keibel continued to sell textiles.
Apparently Liselotte Keibel planned to immigrate to Palestine and prepared herself for the transition by training as a gardener. From 27 Feb. 1936 to 27 Jan. 1938 she worked in Hessisch Oldendorf near Hamelin for 20 Marks a month and free board. During the same period, her relatives moved again in 1937. Her grandparents and Johanna moved to Hansastraße 64 and her parents with Ruth and Hans to a basement apartment at Durchschnitt 8. There they ran a sewing shop which gave them an irregular, modest income below the threshold for tax liability.

Erna Keibel was temporarily imprisoned at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp in 1938, presumably in connection with the pogrom during the night from the 9th to the 10th of Nov. Afterwards Liselotte pushed to immigrate to Holland along with her sister Ruth. They filled out the appropriate form in Dec. 1938. Since they were not yet of age, their parents signed the papers. During the summer of 1939, she applied for a new destination for immigration, England, more precisely Edinburgh, Scotland, without naming Ruth as her travel companion. On 10 Aug. she had gathered together all of the necessary certificates and on 25 Aug. 1939 she requested the relocation of the belongings she wanted to take with her. The Jewish Aid Organization helped her purchase two suitcases and outer garments. Her list of items for the move was three pages long, primarily including household linens which she had received as engagement presents in 1939. By the time she finished the lists on 2 Sept. 1939, the war had begun. On 7 Sept. it was noted in her file "not emigrating for the time being (war)”, and on 5 Feb. 1940, "In the event of emigration, a new application must be submitted with all clearance certificates”. That never happened. In Nov. 1939 Liselotte Keibel married Kurt Joseph Schmul.

Kurt Schmul was born on 17 Jan. 1918 in Berlin as the illegitimate son of Gertrud Schmul. His father Max Schulz was not Jewish. Nevertheless, Kurt Schmul was classified as "fully Jewish” because he was raised in the Jewish faith. For the first three years of school he attended a general elementary school and finished his schooling at a boarding school belonging to a Jewish orphanage. He stayed there until the age of 15 because he was unable to find an apprenticeship in his desired craft of carpentry. He joined his father in Hamburg, who lived in Eilbek at Jungmannstraße 21, where he began an apprenticeship as a painter at the company of Ivan Levy at Kippingstraße 25 in Eimsbüttel. He successfully completed the apprenticeship in 1936. During his apprenticeship he moved once more within Eilbek, to Auenstraße 9a where he sublet from Wulfken, and then changed to the Grindel quarter. First he moved to Dillstraße 20 in 1937. After two further moves, he sublet from Cossloff at Dillstraße 16 where Hermann Schmul, born 6 Mar. 1907, hat lived in Nov. 1935.

In 1936 Kurt Schmul, now a painter, earned a taxable income. He worked for various companies as an assistant painter, until his arrest in conjunction with the November pogrom of 1938 and imprisonment at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, then at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. Soon after his release, he found work again as an assistant painter through the employment office. Simultaneously he pursued his immigration to Shanghai with the help of the Jewish Aid Organization Jüdischen Hilfsverein. In Mar. 1939 he had all the necessary clearance certificates together but was unable to find passage to Shanghai. His file ends on 8 Sept. 1939 with the words "emigration uncertain”.
As with Liselotte Keibel, his emigration was foiled by the start of the war. When Liselotte Keibel and Kurt Schmul were married, she moved in with him at Dillstraße 16 at Cossloff. She worked and had health insurance through the AOK.

On 19 Feb. 1940, Nissan/Ernst Keibel died. His widow, Rosa Keibel, now over the age of 85, was immediately sent with her daughter Johanna to live at the Samuel Levy-Stift at Bundesstraße 35, a building that had in the meantime become a "Jewish house”.

On 5 Apr. 1941, Berl Schmul was born. His parents chose that name from a list of mandatory Jewish names issued by the Reich Minister of the Interior in 1938. By then, Kurt Schmul was employed by the company Wilhelm Baastrup, Rutschbahn 5, as an assistant painter with a weekly wage of 33 to 35 Marks. On 12 Aug. 1941, he received a summons from the Gestapo. When he changed to the health insurance "Hammonia”, he left out the compulsory name "Israel” because he assumed that name was only required in correspondence with government authorities. Kurt Schmul was arrested and sent to the Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison, as the concentration camp was euphemistically called, yet released on the same day. His employer had gone to see Willibald Schallert, the clerk at the employment office responsible for assigning work to Jews, and requested a replacement for the imprisoned assistant painter. Since no replacement was available, Schallert requested Kurt Schmul’s release from prison because he was urgently needed for work on newly built submarines. The company was experiencing extreme difficulties, "especially because a crew of French assistant painters had just been pulled out of the company”. The business owner Baastrup described Kurt Schmul as a diligent, willing worker who had never given him reason for complaint. Gestapo Senior Assistant Detective Götze recommended, "after a serious warning”, Kurt Schmul’s release which took place at 2 p.m. On 4 Sept. 1941, the penalty order for his offense was announced which became legally binding two weeks later: Kurt Schmul was sentenced to a fine of 35 RM and payment of 2.50 RM for procedural costs. With a weekly income of 35 RM and without any savings, he was not in a position to pay the fine all at once. His application to pay in installments of 3 RM each week was approved, so with an installment of 6 RM on 27 Oct. 1941 he had paid off 21 RM. At the beginning of Nov. 1941, he, his wife Liselotte, their son Berl, Rosa Keibel and her daughter Johanna, Erwin and Erna Keibel and their children Ruth and Hans and Ida Silberberg received the order for "resettlement”. Erwin Keibel was to resettle on 8 Nov., the rest of the family members on 18 Nov. Erna Keibel reported her occupation as "seamstress”, her husband Erwin’s as "linens cutter”, their daughter Ruth as "gardener”. Erwin Keibel, like quite a few other men, was deported to the Minsk ghetto ten days before the rest of his family members. Erna Keibel wrote her sister-in-law Elsa Kittler a letter en route:

"Schneidemühl, 19. Nov. 1941
My dear Else,
we’ve come this far, 23 hours we’ve been moving in furiously shaking, old Czech train cars, with no water supply, completely dirty, a little taste of things to come. Since we are 10 people to a compartment (a passenger car, of course), it’s impossible to even think of sleeping, it’s now the 3rd night. And yet the mood is not bad, we won’t let them get us down. We get along really well with our car representative, we worked together for the previous transports. The children, those under 6, are with their families in extra cars with little hammocks. The escorts (state police) are not as ferocious as their planted rifles first make them seem. The train driver is good too, but the farther to the east we go, the more we see the growing anti-Semitism at the train stations.
The Community organized everything marvelously, I just want to tell you one example, financing the last transport of 1,000 people cost 70,000 Marks. The journey will take 5 days, very nice, especially since Ruthi and I don’t have a regular seat and are camping in the corridor with our luggage. And washing yourself is a luxury considering the small amount of water that we’re allowed to carry in from some train stations.
Mama fell down the stairs at the lodge house on her way to the toilette during the night. The doctor said she didn’t have a concussion and nothing was broken, but her forehead and especially her eye sockets and eye lids are very bruised, like they were painted with copying ink, it looks ghastly. In Hamburg I once broke down crying under the weight of my monstrous back pack. Hopefully they’ll pick us up in M.! Otherwise I’ll have to throw away half of my belongings. I hope our husbands are allowed to pick us up. Everything will be fine. I’m only scared at night.
I’ll write you when I can. This will be my last letter for the time being.”
It is not know whether that was indeed her last.

As Heinz Rosenberg, the chronicler of Minsk, reported, the German occupiers had previously "cleared” the ghetto of local Jews, so that the new arrivals first had to remove the bloody traces of that operation. The family probably lived together again until they were annihilated person by person through sickness, emaciation, cold and selection.
Siegfried and Gertrud Silberberg were deported along with their adopted son Peter from Berlin on 12 Mar. 1943 to Auschwitz extermination camp where they were killed.

On 5 Dec. 1941 a letter arrived at Dillstraße 16 I, Hamburg 13 for Kurt Schmul – without the additional name Israel – from the district court. It was returned as undeliverable. That letter contained the summons to report for prison: "now that you have been deemed unfit to pay, you will serve three days in prison in lieu of the fine of 14 RM levied against you as an enforceable penalty order by the District Court on 4 Sept. 1941”.
On 15 Jan. 1942 the registration office sent the District Court the message, "Schm. was resettled to Minsk on 18 Nov. 1941 with his family.” A note was added "Having reached the two-year statute of limitations,” the case was filed away and regarded as finished on 22 Jan. 1944.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2018
© Hildegard Thevs und Eva Acker

Quellen: 1; 2 FVg 5732, FVg 7925; 4; 5; 8; 9; AB; StaH 213-1, 0701/44; 332-5, 2395-1776/1896; 8168-118/1940; 8741-260/1920; 332-8, K 6357, 6983; 351-11, 16420; Archiv FZH, 6262; 522-1, 992 e 2 Band 2,3; Heinz Rosenberg, Jahre des Schreckens: … und ich blieb übrig, dass ich Dir’s ansage, Göttingen 1985.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".