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Friederike Oppenheim (née Hirsch) * 1863

Billhorner Kanalstraße 18 (Hamburg-Mitte, Rothenburgsort)

HIER WOHNTE
FRIEDERIKE OPPENHEIM
GEB. HIRSCH
JG. 1863
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
TREBLINKA
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Billhorner Kanalstraße 18:
Helene Oppenheim

Friederike Oppenheim, née Hirsch, born 6 Mar. 1863 in Oldesloe, deported 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported 21 Sept. 1942 onward to Treblinka
Helene Oppenheim, née Hirsch, born 10 June 1876 in Oldesloe, deported 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk

Billhorner Kanalstraße 18

Within family circles from time to time the same name occurs, sometimes due to kinship, sometimes purely by accident. Often it demands intense research to discover their origin or the family relationships, as was the case with Helene Oppenheim.

On 19 Sept. 1938 she informed the welfare office: "I do not have any other income, quite the contrary, I also have to provide for my mother-in-law who lives with me and is herself entirely without means.” A year and a half later, on 27 Feb. 1940, she wrote: "I do not have any savings, and I ask that you take into consideration that until now I have fed my destitute sister Ms. Sara Oppenheim (76 years old), living at Im Tale 13 c/o Hirsch.” It soon became apparent that "Ms. Sara Oppenheim” meant her sister Friederike, but who was her mother-in-law?

Helene’s husband was Martin Oppenheim who had passed away in 1938, son of Ahron and his wife Jettchen Oppenheim. Friederike, on the other hand, was Ahron Oppenheim’s widow from his second marriage. Ahron Oppenheim first married Jettchen, née Arensberg, and their only child was their son Martin. When his father re-married, Martin got a stepmother who was only fifteen years older than he. In 1908 Martin Oppenheim married her sister Helene Hirsch, his (step) aunt who was two years his senior. Thus, her sister became her mother-in-law.

Friederike and her sister Helene who was thirteen years younger came from what was at the time called Oldesloe, which was renamed Bad Oldesloe in 1919. Their parents Menny and Fanny Hirsch ran a business selling manufactured goods which went bankrupt in 1881. They had another daughter Clara, married name Gaede, and two sons Hugo and Julius who were also married. Julius Hirsch, a brush maker, stayed with his wife Bertha and their sons in Oldesloe. He was killed in World War I as a soldier.

After Ahron and Jettchen’s wedding in 1877, he 30, she 34, their son Martin was born on 17 Mar. 1878. He became a distributor like his father. The family first moved to Jacobi-Kirchenstraße 6 in the old town and in 1896 left the close quarters for Anckelmannstraße in Borgfelde. Shortly before Martin Oppenheim’s 19th birthday, his mother died. His father married a second time on 8 May 1898, Friederike Hirsch who was 16 years his junior. She had come to Hamburg in 1897. Ahron Oppenheim had one child with his second wife, their daughter Martha born on 20 June 1900.

Martin Oppenheim left his parents’ home and established a haulage firm in Winterhude. At the age of 30 he married Helene Hirsch on 10 Apr. 1908 who until that point had lived in her sister’s household on Anckelmannstraße. She and her husband moved Lattenkamp 12 in Winterhude. They had two sons, Arthur, born on 16 Jan. 1909, and Werner, born on 27 Sept. 1910. Arthur attended the elementary school on Alsterdorferstraße.

Roughly at the same time as Friederike Hirsch, her brother Hugo Hirsch (born on 3 Mar. 1861 in Oldesloe) and his wife Johanna, née Unger, moved to Hamburg where he set up a white goods dealership. The couple’s three children were called Elfriede, Kätie and Menni, the latter named after his grandfather Menny Hirsch who died young.

It is now known when Friederike’s sister Clara came to Hamburg. She probably lived in a "mixed marriage” and first joined the Jewish Religious Association in 1940, a branch of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany.

Friederike Oppenheim became a widow after 17 years of marriage on 28 Dec. 1915. Her husband Ahron died at the Israelite Hospital. She continued to live with her daughter Martha in Borgfelde and registered as a member of Hamburg’s German-Israelite Community. Her brother Hugo Hirsch, also a member of the Community, died on 18 Nov. 1920. His wife Johanna continued to run his business. Their daughter Elfriede married Dagobert Bernstein who was a severely disabled war veteran. They had one child, Else born on 31 Dec. 1923. Elfriede died the following year, and Dagobert Bernstein married her younger sister Kätie.

In 1923 Arthur Oppenheim finished school and began commercial training. After finishing it, he joined his father’s haulage business. Martin Oppenheim gave up the business in 1932 for health reasons and in one of the following years moved to Rothenburgsort on Billhorner Kanalstraße for unknown reasons.

Martha Oppenheim trained as a typist and accountant. She found a job at a law practice on am Neuen Wall and moved on to other practices until she got married. On 11 Aug. 1927 Martha Oppenheim married Wilhelm Jonas, born on 7 July 1892 in Neuwedell in West Pommerania. He moved in with her and her mother at Anckelmannstraße 73 where their daughter was born in 1931. Friederike Oppenheim took care of her granddaughter when Martha worked on a temporary basis. From 1936 on she was not able to find regular employment, but her past employers gave her work "illegally".

During the 1930s, Bertha Hirsch, née Magnus, Julius Hirsch’s widow, and her sons Max and Hans moved from Bad Oldesloe to Hamburg. They took an apartment in Eppendorf, Im Tale 13. Bertha Hirsch lived off of her survivor’s pension which she had received since her husband’s death in 1915. Max Hirsch’s income as an elevator operator was small. He was the first of his cousins to emigrate from Germany in 1935.

His brother Hans married a Catholic woman and immigrated with her to Japan in 1938. Werner Oppenheim was already living in Japan. He had worked in the Hamburg branch of the French grain company Louis Dreyfus. After it was dissolved due to the government’s measures against the Jews, he was moved to the company’s office in Osaka, Japan in 1936. Werner urged his brother Arthur to follow him to Japan. As the pressure grew and he saw no other way out for himself as a Jewish businessman, Arthur sold his fleet of four trucks in 1938, gave his parents his household furnishings and left for Japan on 1 July. He reached Osaka on 13 July 1938, having travelled via Siberia and Manchukuo. Six days later his father Martin Oppenheim died.

Martha, Wilhelm and Ingeborg Jonas immigrated along the same path to the same destination. Wilhelm Jonas planned to work at a girls’ school in Osaka. However he did not receive a work permit, and after a roughly six-week stay in Osaka, he took a steamship to Tianjin, China. The Japanese authorities made it impossible for Arthur Oppenheim to find a job which is why after two months in Osaka he moved to Shanghai where he eked out a living with the help of an aid organization. Tianjin was occupied by the Japanese. Martha, Wilhelm and Ingeborg’s passports, marked with a "J”, were confiscated by the German consulate, which meant they lost their freedom to travel and were ghettoized, similar to the emigrants in Shanghai. Martha Jonas was able to communicate with her mother through the Red Cross.

In Hamburg in the meantime, Friederike Oppenheim had moved in with her sister in Rothenburgsort. Until his father’s death, Werner Oppenheim supported his parents and Friederike Oppenheim who lived with them through remittances from Japan of 150 RM each month. With that sum they were able to pay their rent, living expenses and a part of Martin Oppenheim’s hospital costs. Martin Oppenheim suffered two strokes in Apr. and July 1938. He died on 19 July 1938 at the Israelite Hospital. Helene Oppenheim received an advance from the welfare office which she paid off in instalments of 10 RM each month. She needed more money for her husband’s funeral. Due to an agreement between the welfare office and the German-Israelite Community from 1925, the welfare office contributed to his funeral costs "with the usual amount”. Helene Oppenheim fell into dire circumstances. Since her son’s money transfers were sent to her husband, the money was not paid out to her until Werner Oppenheim granted the Reich Bank permission to do so. Helene Oppenheim’s sister-in-law Johanna Hirsch died only two months after her husband on 29 Sept. 1938.

On 2 Mar. 1939 Friederike and Helene Oppenheim moved in with their sister-in-law Bertha Hirsch in Eppendorf, Im Tale 13, where they were able to live rent-free. After both her sons had emigrated, Bertha lived alone in her apartment. Friederike Oppenheim and her sister Helene wanted to follow her daughter Martha Jonas to Tianjin. The two sisters applied in Mar. 1939 to immigrate to Shanghai, intending to journey on from Shanghai to Tianjin. Their asset declaration from 9 Mar. 1939 listed a mere 12 RM and 380 RM in cash at home, a wedding band for each of them and silverware which was rejected by the purchase office for not being real silver – it was only 90 gram silver plated. Their emigration costs were to be paid by the Jewish Relief Association. Their moving goods were mostly used clothing and household items with a total estimated value of 450 RM. It was released by the customs investigation office on 17 Apr. 1939, and the clearance certificate was issued.

Yet one week later Friederike and Helene Oppenheim received a summons due to their removal goods. It was about real silverware, a typewriter which they were taking as a present, and a "subsequently purchased new” hotplate with a cooking pot and two thermos bottles. The summons ended with the stipulation that the silver be specially packed, the typewriter be left behind, and no more new items be purchased. It is not clear from the files whether that delayed their departure so long that it ultimately failed.

In Sept. 1939, Helene Oppenheim once again fell into desperate circumstances. She stopped receiving money from her son after his employer fired him, since he was German.

At the start of 1940 the welfare office investigated Helene Oppenheim’s financial situation and came to the conclusion that she was not in a position to pay off her debt which was in arrears. Her reserves were gone that she likely had acquired by selling her furniture when she moved out of her apartment on Billhorner Kanalstraße. The outstanding payment was waived in light of her financial situation. In the end the "Jewish Religious Association” paid the two women 46 RM monthly.

Although Helene and Friederike at 65 and 78 far exceeded the age limit for deportation "to the east” set by the Gestapo, they were called up for deportation to Minsk on 18 Nov. 1941. Friederike Oppenheim’s departure was deferred. Helene reached the Minsk Ghetto with over 400 other people deported from Hamburg, where all trace of her was lost.

Friederike Oppenheim and her sister-in-law Bertha Hirsch were forced to leave her apartment in Eppendorf and were sent to so-called "Jewish houses” by order of the Gestapo, Friederike Oppenheim and her sister Clara Gaede to Schlachterstraße 40–42, Bertha Hirsch to Sonninstraße 12 in Altona.

All of them were deported to Theresienstadt on 19 July 1942. The oldest among them, Friederike Oppenheim, reached Treblinka extermination camp on 21 Sept. 1942 on a transport and was probably killed immediately after her arrival. Clara Gaede died on 21 Oct. 1942 at the age of 77, Bertha Hirsch, age 71, on 12 Feb. 1943 in Theresienstadt ghetto.

Dagobert Bernstein died on 15 Nov. 1941. The last living members of Hugo Hirsch’s family, Kätie Bernstein and her stepdaughter Else were deported to Auschwitz on 11 July 1942, leaving no further trace behind.


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

Stand: January 2018
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; 2 FVg 7261; 4; 5; 7; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen, K 6691; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 776, 3007, 160109, 200600; 552-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 e 2, Bd. 3, 4, 5; Stadtarchiv Bad Oldesloe, Personenstandsbücher; Auskunft Dr. Sylvina Zander, Stadtarchiv Bad Oldesloe v. 22.3.2011.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".