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Harald Meyer * 1923

Bremer Reihe 19 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

Verhaftet 1938 und 1942
KZ Fuhlsbüttel
KZ Auschwitz
Todesmarsch
ermordet 08.05.194

further stumbling stones in Bremer Reihe 19:
Siegfried Meyer

Siegfried Adolf Meyer, born on 16 Mar. 1895 in Hamburg, died on 15 Mar. 1939 in Hamburg
Harald Günther Meyer, born 29 July 1923 in Hamburg, deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and in Feb. 1945 to the Buchenwald concentration camp, missing

last residential address: Bremer Reihe 19

Siegfried Meyer was the son of Hirsch and Elise Meyer, née Masse, and as a boy, he attended the Jewish Talmud Tora Realschule in the Hamburg Grindel quarter until passing his school-leaving exam (Reifeprüfung). After leaving school, he completed a commercial apprenticeship with the Siegfried Freundlich Company in Hamburg, after which he went into the cigar industry as a salaried employee. His professional career was interrupted by his drafting to military service in June 1915.

After the war, he became, among other things, a salaried employee with the Karl Aksendorf Company, before eventually starting a business of his own as a general agent for several large cigar-importing firms in 1932. In 1922, he was married to the non-Jewish Martha, née Stapelfeldt, who after the wedding apparently joined the Hamburg Jewish Community. On 29 July 1923, they became the parents of the twins Harald and Heinz. By 1930 at the latest, the family resided on Bremer Reihe, but even before they had lived in the St. Georg quarter on Beim Strohhause.

Siegfried Meyer was banned by the Nazi authorities from practicing his work as a general agent on 1 Sept. 1938. One day after the November Pogrom of 9 Nov. 1938, he was arrested and transported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Only a few weeks into his imprisonment in the concentration camp, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the camp infirmary. Before the end of the year 1938, his wife Martha purchased four tickets for passage on a ship at a price of 2,000 RM (reichsmark) for the family in order to leave Germany for Shanghai.

At the turn of the year, she travelled to Berlin to get her husband released with the help of the local Jewish Community. She actually succeeded in doing so by mid-Jan. 1939, though apparently, Siegfried Meyer was already in a "dreadful state of health” by the time of his release. After his return to Hamburg, he was immediately admitted to the Israelite Hospital on Eckernförder Strasse. However, impaired to such an extent due to the imprisonment, the 44-year-old man was beyond any medical help. After nearly two months of struggling with death, he passed away on 15 Mar. 1939, one day before his birthday.

After the death of her husband, his widow was denied any pension. Following his arrest, the family’s gold jewelry had already been confiscated. Shortly after her husband’s death, Martha Meyer along with her two sons left the Jewish Community again, apparently to protect the family from further persecution. However, this step did not change the "racial” status of the sons as "Jews by definition” ("Geltungsjuden”) who were treated the same as Jews. A woman converted to Judaism was able to leave the Community and regain the status of an "Aryan;” her children, by contrast, remained "Jews” in the eyes of the Nazi authorities.

Despite their extremely difficult economic and social situation, the two sons began vocational training – Harald as an import-export merchant with Louis Schröter & Co. and Heinz as a decorator with the Jewish L. Wagner Company. In 1941, Harald even managed to complete the apprenticeship as a merchant’s assistant and continue to work as an office employee for the same company for some time until he, being a "Jew by definition,” was eventually forced out of the company. The apprenticeship of his brother Heinz, by contrast, lasted only until the end of Nov. 1938 because his training company was "Aryanized” after the Pogrom of Nov. 1938.

To be sure, in 1939, he was re-hired owing to his mother seeing the new company owner personally, but this happened without a formal apprenticeship contract and without the possibility of taking the final apprenticeship examination. In 1939, shortly before their father’s death, the twins received so-called Jews’ identification cards and had to bear the compulsory added first name of "Israel.” Since their mother had already cancelled their registration with the Jewish Community as early as 1939, she tried unsuccessfully in 1941 to get them recognized as "Jewish crossbreeds of the first degree” ("Mischling 1. Grades”).

In the early summer of 1941, they were even given a medical exam by the conscription office (Wehrerfassungsstelle), in the context of which Harald did not produce his "Jews’ identification card” ("Judenkennkarte”) or indicate his compulsory first name. As a result, he was fined 10 RM (reichsmark). Their mother’s application for exemption from wearing "Jews’ stars” ("Judensterne”) was turned down by the chief of police. The anti-Jewish persecution measures against Heinz Meyer set in as early as Mar. 1941 to the extent that he was "conscripted” for labor at the "Dynamit Actien-Gesellschaft, Werk Düneberg,” an explosives producer near Geesthacht. He was dismissed there in the summer of 1941, officially for health reasons. Several weeks later, he was forcibly enlisted along with his brother in connection with the so-called "Jewish labor deployment” (Judeneinsatz) as a worker in the Steen & Co. hemp spinning mill in Hamburg-Lokstedt.

However, the repression against the twins was to escalate considerably when, due to denunciations, they were arrested by the Gestapo on charges of "racial defilement” ("Rassenschande”) on 19 Jan. 1942, because they allegedly had intercourse with non-Jewish women, mostly prostitutes. Harald Meyer’s prisoner file from the pretrial detention facility contains the entry "Sec. 175” [of the Reich Criminal Code]. The reason for this is unclear because the preserved case records provide no clue that he was accused of homosexuality in the criminal proceedings, and the subsequent prisoner file card does not contain an entry to that effect anymore.

After nearly one and a half years of pretrial detention, in the course of which Heinz Meyer fell ill, requiring in-patient treatment for exudative pleurisy from October onward, the brothers were sentenced to three years in prison for "racial defilement.” Initially, they were committed to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison to serve their sentences. Until the time of their deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Apr. 1944, Heinz was treated for open pulmonary tuberculosis as well as diphtheria of the throat in different Hamburg hospitals until early Oct. 1943, while Harald was transferred to the Waldheim penitentiary in Saxony between Aug. 1943 and Feb. 1944, only to be returned to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp (KolaFu). The twins were imprisoned in Auschwitz until the end of Jan. 1945, when they were transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In Buchenwald, their paths diverged for good. Harald was taken to the Ohrdruf external camp, where he had to perform forced labor and all of his traces disappear. Heinz was deported to the Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace in early February, though he did return from there at the end of March. In Apr. 1945, he was assigned to an SS construction train (SS Bauzug) operating near Salzburg, from which he was liberated on 3 May.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; AfW, Entschädigungsakte; StaH, 213-11, Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht HH-Strafsachen, 7309/41; Schriftl. Mitteilung der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald v. 21.4.2005; AB 1933–38.
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