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Max Marcus * 1872

Lüneburger Straße 2 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
MAX MARCUS
JG. 1872
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
1942 TREBLINKA
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Lüneburger Straße 2:
Franziska Simon, Elsa Traub

Max Marcus, born on 20 July 1872 in Harburg, deported on 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 21 Sept. 1942 to the Treblinka extermination camp

District of Harburg-Altstadt, Lüneburger Strasse 2

Max Marcus was the oldest of seven children of the Jewish couple Julius and Rosa Marcus. Together with his siblings Hugo (born on 7 Dec. 1873), Franziska (born on 21 May 1877), Siegfried (born on 28 Apr. 1880), and Elsa (born on 20 Oct. 1883), he grew up in Harburg. His sister Laura (4 July 1875–27 Apr. 1876) and his brother Richard (17 Mar. 1893–12 Dec. 1897) were granted only short lives. They died while still children and they were buried on the Schwarzenberg in the Harburg Jewish Cemetery.

Their father owned the Julius Marcus Betten- und Konfektionshaus, a bedding and ready-to-wear clothing company at Wilstorfer Strasse 35 (today: Lüneburger Strasse 2), the main shopping street of the city back then. The family resided in the same house. When the senior boss died in 1925, his wife Rosa continued to operate the business, assisted by her children. After 1933, the Konfektions- und Bettenhaus Marcus lost the greatest part of its non-Jewish customers. 1 Apr. 1933 was not the only day on which placards of the Harburg Nazi Party pointed out to all passersby that the owner was a Jew. When Max Marcus once put aside one of these signs, there was serious trouble. The shop windows were also smeared with "Jews’ stars” ("Judensternen”) quite often.

After the death of his mother, the oldest son took over the store in 1935. On 20 May 1935, he was entered in the land register as the owner of the property at Wilstorfer Strasse 35. With his wife Ida, née Levy (born on 18 Oct. 1876) and his daughter Alice (born on 13 July 1903), he moved into the apartment above the store, appointed in solid middle-class style. The rooms were furnished with high-quality Persian rugs, and on the tables and in the display cases, precious crystal bowls sparkled.

However, soon the good old times were nothing but a memory. In light of declining sales, Max Marcus found himself forced, more quickly than expected, to rent out part of his store premises to the "Globus Schuh AG,” a shoe company. This measure was not suited to turn the tide either. On the contrary. More than all the others, his wife and daughter Alice suffered from the increasing persecution. The latter was no longer willing to wait for the subsequent developments. In early 1937, she and her husband emigrated to the USA, immediately after their wedding. Her mother had a tough time coping with this separation. Worn down with sorrow, she soon suffered a stroke, from which she did not recover any more. Ida Marcus died on 9 Mar. 1937 and she was buried in the Harburg Jewish Cemetery.

There was no stopping the economic decline of the Konfektions- und Bettenhaus Marcus any longer. On 10 Aug. 1938, the owner had no choice left but to transfer the store and the property to a new owner. After the loss of his apartment, Max Marcus moved, like many other members of the Harburg Synagogue Community, to the Hamburg Grindel quarter, where his address changed several times over the following weeks and months. Completely impoverished, he was grateful when friends or acquaintances invited him for lunch from time to time.

His last place to stay was the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Sedanstrasse 23, a retirement home of the Hamburg "Jewish Religious Organization” ("Jüdischer Religionsverband e.V.”), whose number of occupants constantly rose after the outbreak of war. Where 54 persons had lived before, 92 people had to share this space during the first years of the war.

Almost all of the occupants of this house were deported to Auschwitz or Theresienstadt in July 1942. Max Marcus was scheduled under the consecutive number 589 for the transport to Bohemia on 15 July 1942. Shortly before his seventieth birthday, he left the Hanseatic City of Hamburg forever.

As for many others, for him Theresienstadt was only a transit station on the journey to death. In Sept. 1942 alone, more than 13,000 people were deported from this ghetto to the death camps in the East. On 21 Sept. 1942, 70-year-old Max Marcus, too, had to leave the old garrison town on a transport that ended in Treblinka. In this extermination camp, new arrivals were murdered immediately.

His brothers Hugo and Siegfried Marcus as well as his sisters, Elsa Traub, née Marcus, and Franziska Simon, née Marcus, rank among the victims of the Shoah.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 7; 8; StaH, 351-11, AfW, Abl. 2008/1, 200772 (1792), Marcus, Max; StaH 430-2 Bestand Harburg, 2 Stadtbücher, III 1 Bd. IX, S. 54b; Heyl (Hrsg.), Harburger Opfer; Heyl, Synagoge, S. 34, 39, 118; Mosel, Wegweiser, Heft 2, S. 72ff.; Kändler/Hüttenmeister, Friedhof, S. 59, 89, 140.
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