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Oscar Strelitz, Foto aus Kennkarte vom 13.2.1945
© Terezin Memorial

Oscar Strelitz * 1900

Neubertstraße 56 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
OSCAR STRELITZ
JG. 1900
VERHAFTET 1938
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
DEPORTIERT 1945
THERESIENSTADT
ERMORDET 10.3.1945

Oscar Moritz Strelitz, born 13 Aug. 1900 in Hamburg, held in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp Nov. 1938-Jan. 1939, deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto 14 Feb. 1945, died there 10 Mar. 1945

Neubertstraße 56

Lotte Lion, née Strelitz, born 2 May 1908 in Hamburg, deported "voluntarily” to the Minsk Ghetto 8 Nov. 1941, murdered there

Werderstraße 18, Harvestehude

"He always lived his life in the fast lane,” his wife Elli said later of Oscar Strelitz. His job often took him away from home, but when he was in Hamburg the couple like to gather with friends and neighbors for social events. Oscar Moritz Strelitz was the son of Emil Strelitz (*1866 in Hamburg) and his wife Ida, née Weinthal (*1868). Both parents were Jewish. Emil Strelitz had taken over his father’s agency and was a member of the Versammlung Eines Ehrbaren Kaufmanns zu Hamburg, an association of Hamburg merchants founded in 1517. When Oscar was born, his parents were living on Lappenbergsallee in Eimsbüttel. They already had one daughter, Elisabeth Henny (*31 Aug. 1899). Nearly eight years later, on 2 May 1908, Oscar would get a little sister, Lotte Rebecka.

Oscar attended the Oberrealschule vor dem Holstentor in what is today called the Karolinenviertel. The building still stands, and today houses a public night school. At the time that Oscar was in school, Albrecht Thaer was the rector. He had reformed the school curriculum so that it prepared the students for the practicalities of life. It was possible, for example, to graduate without having to learn Latin. That Oscar’s parents chose to send him to this particular school showed their hanseatic nature – a broad education is good when it can be put to practical use. During Oscar’s school years the family lived on Hallerplatz in the Grindelviertel, which meant the boy had quite a long way to school each day. Apparently his parents did not find it necessary that he receive a Jewish education, since the Talmud Tora School had moved to Grindelhof in 1911, and was just down the street from their home. Oscar finished school at 16, then entered a commercial apprenticeship. After its completion, he worked for many years in sales. In 1919 he began working as a sales representative for the M.H. Lissauer company, based in Lübeck. He later became head of the company’s Hamburg branch.

On 5 Mar. 1927, Oscar Strelitz married Elli Henriette Auguste Christine Emma Warnstedt at the Ottensen registry office. She was born on 22 June 1896 and was Protestant. Her father was Georg Warnstedt, a master potter. At the time of her birth, the family lived at Mittelweg 40 in Harvestehude. Elli Warnstedt attended the Emilie Wüstenfeld School, then studied for one year at the Heinrich Grone tradeschool. She then worked as an office clerk until she married. The couple had no children. When Oscar and Elli married they lived in two rooms of a shared apartment on Fichtestraße in Eilbek. In 1929, Oscar’s father Emil died, aged 63, in the St. Georg general hospital. The couple moved in with Oscar’s mother Ida on Tornquiststraße in Eimsbüttel for a time, then moved to another shared apartment at Neubertstraße 56 in Hohenfelde, where the Stolperstein for Oscar Strelitz is located.

According to the Lissauer company’s records, Oscar Strelitz was diligent, motivated, and dependable. He had a good reputation among his business colleagues. His boss was thus sorry to see him go when he opened his own business in 1933. He registered as a merchant for semi-finished goods (ropes, wool, and cloth, among other things), and had his offices at Vereinsstraße 78. Among his customers were a hemp mill and various harbor traders. Oscar and Elli’s residence was at the same address.

Adolf Hitler had become Reich Chancellor on 30 Jan. 1933, and the Nazi Party won the Reichstag elections on 5 March of the same year. On 1 April the Nazis organized a boycott of Jewish doctors, lawyers, shops and companies – the first step towards forcing Jews out of the country’s economic structure. The boycott had no effect on Oscar Strelitz’s business, presumably because his wife was non-Jewish. In 1934 the couple moved to Altona, which at that time had not yet been incorporated into the city of Hamburg. They found an apartment at Rothestraße 104. Oscar’s mother Ida died in March 1935, aged 69. In the summer of 1936 the couple moved again, this time to a ground-floor apartment at Fischers Allee 41. Oscar’s warehouse was in Hammerbrook at Wendenstraße 404. He had added a rag-sorting shop to his business, so that he no longer had to buy his goods separately, but could gather them from rag collections.

In 1937, however, the power of the Nazi regime hit Oscar Strelitz with all of its might. The Gestapo confiscated his warehouse and rag-sorting shop from one day to the next because he was Jewish, leaving him in financial ruin. After the November Pogrom in 1938 he – along with 20 to 30 thousand other Jewish men throughout the German Reich – was arrested, and he was sent to the Fuhlsbüttel prison, where the conditions were catastrophic. The prisoners there were given nothing but dry bread and water, and had to sleep in overcrowded cells on stinking mattresses. They were at the mercy of the guards’ whims, and no one knew when, or even if, they would be released. After about six weeks the Gestapo let him go, but what was he to go back to? His business was gone, and he was unable to find work anywhere. His wife Elli resumed her job as an office clerk in 1939 in order to support the two of them. She found a job at the Paul Immenthal company on Grosse Brunnenstraße in Altona.

The couple nevertheless had to move out of their apartment on Fischers Allee, since Elli’s income was not enough to cover the rent. They moved into rooms in an apartment at Grindelberg 3a. Because Elli Strelitz was Protestant, their marriage was considered a "non-priviledged mixed marriage,” according to the Nazi categories, and Oscar was excluded from the deportations that began in Hamburg in 1941. He was, however, conscripted to forced labor. The corrupt and volatile head of the Bureau for the Deployment of Jews, Willibald Schallert, assigned him to the Steen & Co. hemp mill in Lokstedt. They put him to work in their rope factory at Horst-Wessel-Allee (pre-1933 and post-1945 Ebertallee) 104-108. He was "employed” there as forced labor, for 93 cents an hour, from 6 Apr. 1942 until 12 Feb. 1945. In 1942, Elli and Oscar were forced to move to a "Jews’ house,” first at Dillstraße 16, and then from August 1944 at Rutschbahn 25a.

Oscar Strelitz’s elder sister Elisabeth had married Paul Johann Lerchi, who was from the canton of Grisons in Switzerland. They had moved to his home, and were thus spared the persecution on the Nazi regime. After the war she lived in Zurich.

Oscar’s younger sister Lotte worked as a maid for the Marcus family at Werderstraße 18 in Harvestehude. She married the Jewish merchant Alfred Eduard Lion, who was 24 years her senior (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Eppendorf und Hamburg-Hoheluft-Ost and www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) on 6 Nov. 1941 – two days before he was deported to Minsk. In order to remain with him, she volunteered to go as well. Alfred and Lotte Lion were deported to Minsk on 8 Nov. 1941. They were later murdered there.

Beginning in 1945, Oscar Strelitz’s marriage no longer protected him from deportation. In January 1945, with the advance of Allied troops and the eminent loss of the war, the Nazis began deporting those few Jews who remained in Germany under the protection of their marriages. Oscar Strelitz received his "work orders for Theresienstadt” on 14 Feb. 1945. 294 Jews were on this last transport from Hamburg. 292 survived. Oscar Strelitz was one of the two who did not. Weakened by the three years of forced labor in Hamburg, he was able to withstand the disastrous conditions in Theresienstadt – hunger, sicknesses, epidemics – for only four weeks.

Oscar Strelitz died on 10 Mar. 1945 in the Ghetto hospital on Parkstraße, aged only 44. Five days later he was cremated in "Furnace No. 2,” as was noted, with nearly unbearable meticulousness, on the death certificate. On the back side of the certificate is the laconic remark: "The patient Strelitz had no jewelry in his possession.”


Translator: Amy Lee
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 3; 4; 5; 8; 9; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 950 u. 1712/1929; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 18816; StaH 552-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 390 Wählerlisten 1930; StaH 552-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 992 d Steuerakten, Bd. 31; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden Nr. 992 e 2 Band 2, Transport nach Minsk am 08. November 1941, Liste 1; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden Nr. 992 e 2 Band 5, Transport nach Theresienstadt am 14. Februar 1945; Meyer, Jüdische Mischlinge, S. 62ff; Beate Meyer, Fragwürdiger Schutz – Mischehen in Hamburg (1933–1945), in: dies., Verfolgung, S. 79ff.; Uwe Schmidt, Hamburger Schulen, Bd 2, S. 845; Claudia Garcia, "Alfred Lion", in: Maria Koser, Sabine Brunotte, Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Eppendorf und Hamburg-Hoheluft Ost, S. 270f.; Oscar Moritz Strelitz, Totenbegleitschein, Nationalarchiv Prag, Zidovske matriky, Ohledaci listy, ghetto Terezin, Band [1945a], online: www2.holocaust.cz/de/document/DOCUMENT.ITI.20228 (letzter Zugriff 31.1.2015); Oscar Strelitz, "Kennkarte", The Terezian Memorial Archives, Museum Theresienstadt; The National Cemetery in Terezin, online unter: www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/vyhledavani/Ahrbitov/detail.php?table=hrbitov&col=id&value=890 (letzter Zugriff 20.8.2015); D. Stoltenberg, Zur Geschichte – die Frage der Kontinuität. Festschrift zum 120-jährigen Bestehen des AThs (1993), online: www.albrecht-thaer-gymnasium.de/index.php/home/schulgeschichte (letzter Zugriff 12.4.2015).
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