Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Ruth Wertheimer (née Cohen) * 1913

Rutschbahn 3 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
RUTH WERTHEIMER
GEB. COHEN
JG. 1913
FLUCHT 1937 HOLLAND
DEPORTIERT 1943
AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Rutschbahn 3:
Isaak Wertheimer, Marion Wertheimer, Heinz Wertheimer

Ruth Wertheimer, née Cohen, born on 1 Jan. 1913 in Hamburg, deported from the Netherlands to Auschwitz on 7 Sept. 1943, murdered there on 10 Sept. 1943

Rutschbahn 3

Ruth was born as the daughter of Jakob Cohen and his wife Sarah Selma. Both died before the National Socialists came to power: the mother in spring 1926, the father two years later. Ruth was the third child of the couple.

Her older siblings, Paula and Josef, and the younger brothers Kurt, Eric Herbert, and Alfred, survived the Holocaust. The brothers emigrated to Great Britain in time; the sister married a Hamburg merchant of non-Jewish descent and thus managed to survive the persecution of the Jews. Her brother Herbert, five years younger, however, became a victim of the Nazis. In 1938, he was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and died there on 5 Dec. 1938 as a result of external force applied.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Ruth met her future husband, Isaak (see corresponding entry), and married him on 12 Aug. 1932, after which she moved into his small apartment at Rutschbahn 3. No details are known about the financial situation of the young couple at the time. One can assume, however, that it was not easy for the two of them at any rate – also due to the husband’s founding of the business about one and a half years earlier. Isaak Wertheimer opened his own window cleaning business on 1 Sept. 1931 under the name "Blitz-Blank” and seems to have had some difficulties, especially at the beginning.

Exactly one year after the marriage – on 12 Aug. 1933 – Ruth gave birth to her first child, daughter Marion (see corresponding entry). On 14 Feb. 1935, the young family moved into a larger apartment at Bornstrasse 26, in expectation of the second child, and five months later, son Heinz-Emanuel (see corresponding entry), was born.

One year later, on 2 July 1936, the family moved a second and last time within Hamburg, again to a larger apartment at Rothenbaumchaussee 101/103.
After her husband had already left the German Reich for the Netherlands in Nov. 1936, Ruth followed him with the children at the end of Feb. 1937. Isaak had already arranged for accommodation and work there, and after initial difficulties and several moves, the family of four finally lived at Nieuwe Prinsengracht 114 in Amsterdam from Nov. 1938 onward.

After some more or less undisturbed years in Amsterdam, the circumstances escalated in the Netherlands, too, following the invasion of the country by the German Wehrmacht. Ruth and her children were detained in the Westerbork concentration camp on 27 May 1943. The arrest was probably part of a raid carried out in Amsterdam on 25 and 26 May. Approx. 3,000 Jews were arrested and imprisoned in the concentration camp.

Westerbork had originally been a reception camp for escaped German Jews. After the invasion of the Nazis, it was used as a transit camp from where the Dutch and foreign Jews were deported further east after a short stay. The living conditions there – in comparison with other camps – were probably bearable, but nevertheless inhumane.

Ruth, Marion, and Heinz-Emanuel spent almost two months in Westerbork and were released on 17 July. However, the joy of freedom regained lasted only for a short time. One week later, the whole family – this time with their father – was taken back to Westerbork.

From there, Ruth was deported to Auschwitz together with her husband and children on 7 Sept. 1943. Three days later, the transport reached the extermination camp, where she, along with her children, was probably murdered immediately upon arrival, at the age of 30.

Ruth was, like her husband and children, subsequently declared dead as of 31 Dec. 1945.


Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2019
© Anna-Katharina Kresin

Quellen: StaHH, 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 20789 Isak Wertheimer; StaHH, 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992b, Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde Hamburg, Kultussteuerkarte Isak Wertheimer; StaHH, 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 38501 Ruth Wertheimer; www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch (Zugriff 29.07.2014); Stadsarchief Amsterdam, A64-24 Wertheimer, Isak; www.annefrank.org/de/Subsites/Zeitleiste (Zugriff 29.07.2014); Gutman, Israel (Hg.): Enzyklopädie des Holocaust. Band 3: Q–Z. München 1998.