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Ilse Mathilde Karlsberg
© Evelyn Karlsberg

Ilse Mathilde Karlsberg (née Heilbron) * 1900

Hallerstraße 5 (vormals Klosterallee 8) (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
ILSE MATHILDE KARLSBERG
GEB. HEILBRON
JG. 1900
VERHAFTET 1940 HOLLAND
1941 KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
1944 AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET

• http://www.spiegel.de/video/video-1119512.html
  (Stolpersteine für Familie Heilbron / Karlsberg auf Spiegel online)

Ilse Mathilde Karlsberg, née Heilbron, born 30 Sept. 1900, moved to Amsterdam in 1938, deported from Amsterdam to Hamburg in 1940, deported 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, killed 19 Oct. 1944 in Auschwitz

Hallerstraße 5 (Klosterallee 8)

The quotes attributed to R.M. are from Ruth Meissner, Ilse Karlsberg’s daughter, those attributed to E.K. are from Evelyn Karlsberg, Ilse Karlsberg’s granddaughter.

During the night of 9 May to the 10th in 1940, sirens rang out in the Netherlands and alarmed the population: The German Wehrmacht had invaded the neutral Netherlands. That event cast doubt on the security that Ilse Karlsberg and her family had sought by travelling to Amsterdam. After a brief period of apparent calm and normality, repressive measures began against the Jewish population that were in no way less severe than those already underway in Germany.

Ilse Karlsberg was arrested on 24 Sept. 1940, deported to Theresienstadt via Hamburg, and ultimately killed in Auschwitz. Bernhard Karlsberg and their three children Rahel, Ruth and Walter survived.

Ilse Karlsberg was born in Hamburg on 30 Sept. 1900 as Ilse Mathilde Heilbron. Her parents were Simon and Franziska Heilbron, née Fröhlich (see their names, Stumbling Stone at Oderfelder Straße 25), and her family lived at Hansastraße 63. Ilse Heilbron had two younger siblings, Martin Philipp and Alice, born in 1903 and 1907. They went to school at the "Public Lyceum on Hansastraße with a college and women’s school”. In the class photo from Mar. 1918, she is in the middle of the first row.

"My mother attended a girls’ school in Hamburg and, after finishing her qualification as a kindergarten teacher, she took a job in a daycare center for children of poor families. Since this was the time during and after World War I, there unfortunately were very many of them. I remember she often told us that those children were hungry but did not want to eat any food they were not used to. Unlike my father’s family, the Heilbron household did not take religion so seriously. I think they celebrated the high holy days. My Uncle Martin had his Bar Mitzvah (a ceremony admitting a Jewish boy as an adult member to the Jewish community), but I remember that my mother had difficulty keeping kosher rules for the household at the start of her marriage.” (R. M.)

In 1922 Ilse Heilbron married Bernhard Karlsberg. Their daughter Rahel was born on 17 July 1923, their daughter Ruth on 8 May 1925 and their son Walter on 23 Dec. 1926. The family lived alternately at Hansastraße 63, a house belonging to the Heilbrons for a time, and at Klosterallee 8, a house of the Karlsbergs.

"My grandparents all knew each other because they most likely belonged to the same Jewish community, and they also lived in the same part of Hamburg. There’s a group photo of them from before 1920 showing them all together.” (R. M.)

Ilse Karlsberg married into a family with a well-known business. Bernhard Karlsberg, born in Hamburg on 11 Oct. 1899, had studied law and political sciences and after finishing his doctorate he joined his father Moritz Karlsberg’s company (www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de). Moritz Karlsberg had built his company B. Karlsberg into one of the largest passenger agencies on the European Continent for the British Cunard Line. Ilse Karlsberg’s biography is closely tied to her husband’s entrepreneurial and political work in Hamburg, but also to persecution and flight.

While he was at university, Bernhard Karlsberg observed the antisemitic currents within the student body at Hamburg University, which had just been founded, and reported on them in the Hamburger Jüdischen Nachrichten (Hamburg Jewish News). As a student in Munich, he became a member of a Jewish self-defense organization where he came together with other students to protect Jewish eastern European refugees from antisemitic attacks. Ilse Karlsberg was not only familiar with her husband’s stance, she shared it too. Until Jan. 1935, Bernhard Karlsberg lived and worked in Hamburg. Prior to 1933, he was politically active in the communist party, and after the National Socialists came to power, he maintained his political connections.

"My father joined a Zionist organization when he was a young man. Back then the Zionist movement was still quite young and many things still weren’t clear. Eventually he decided to leave the group and joined the communists. By that time he was already married, and the three of us had already been born. With my mother’s permission, they both joined the Communist Party. They didn’t keep their political activity at all a secret from us children. We learned all the songs like the Internationale and followed the developments in the Soviet Union with our parents’ enthusiasm. After Hitler came to power, that naturally became a great burden for us children since we constantly had to be reminded never to talk about what we did at home. Unlike my father, my mother remained a member of the party her whole life. It’s hard to say what my mother’s position was. She was a very private person. For instance, my father who came from quite a religious family and as a child might have even been more vehement than his parents, he left all that behind him. They raised us children without any religious beliefs and we only knew the traditions, like kosher food and Jewish holidays, from visiting our grandparents. Much to my surprise, not too long ago I read in a letter Ilse (Karlsberg) wrote to a relative that she fully believed there is a God. We didn’t celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas, but we received lots of presents for our birthday. On the morning of our birthday, we were blindfolded and led into the living room, there was a table covered with all kinds of presents. You could decide what we would have for dinner, those were good memories.” (R. M.)

In autumn 1934, Berhard Karlsberg was warned by a friend, a lawyer with whom he was preparing to defend political prisoners pro bono. A prisoner confessed, and the name Karlsberg was noted several times in his file. In Dec. 1934, Ilse and Berhard Karlsberg sent their children, pupils at Jahn School on Bogenstraße, to Switzerland as a precaution.

"I don’t know what motivated my parents to send us to Switzerland. The official reason was that we were in need of rest and had to go to the Swiss mountains for 6 weeks. My mother and our dear nanny Martha (my father was not with us) took us to a children’s home in Zweisimmen.” (R. M.)

One month later, Franziska Heilbron, Ilse Karlsberg’s mother, warned them that the Amtliche Anzeiger had announced a warrant had been issued for Bernhard Karlsberg’s arrest on suspicion of high treason. On 25 Jan. 1935, Bernhard Karlsberg left Hamburg and fled to Basel by train. That summer, Ilse Karlsberg sold their household in Hamburg and joined her family in Switzerland, where she stayed for nine months. Bernhard Karlsberg applied to France and the Netherlands for a residence permit, and in the meantime, Ilse Karlsberg moved to Prague with their children. Berhard Karlsberg received a residence permit for Holland and left for Amsterdam. He only saw his family when he visited them in Prague.

"I think my mother felt comfortable in Prague (1935–1938). She had a number of friends, Jewish and political refugees from Germany. On occasion she even had meetings with her fellow members of the communist party, and if my father happened to be visiting, he had to leave the apartment. Many of her friends didn’t have any means to earn money and had to rely on various charities so as not to starve. I don’t remember ever having lunch without guests at our table. She had a special fondness for classical music and often spent her evenings with friends who owned a gramophone and records. It must have been very hard for her to say goodbye when we left Prague in Mar. 1938, after the annexation of Austria.” (R. M.)

In the meantime, Bernhard Karlsberg had been expelled from the communist party because he had spoken out against conditions in the Stalinist Soviet Union. However the arrest warrant issued in Jan. 1935 and his investigation file that had been passed on to the People’s Court in Berlin in 1937 led to Bernhard Karlsberg being denied his German citizenship, and he along with Ilse Karlsberg and their three children were denaturalized. A warrant was also issued for Ilse Karlsberg’s arrest because of her membership in the communist party.

Ilse Karlsberg and her family were officially registered in Amsterdam on 5 Apr. 1938, their address was Merwedeplein 23a. Her parents-in-law Moritz and Emilie Karlsberg had lived there since Sept. 1938, and her mother Franziska Heilbron since Feb. 1939. Bernhard Karlsberg had been working as a lawyer in his own office on Herrengracht since autumn 1937 where he also advised refugees free of charge. There was some interest in that kind of legal advice in England, yet his renewed efforts to find work in England in the summer of 1939 failed. On 1 Sept. 1939, World War II began when the German Wehrmacht invaded Poland.

Once the Netherlands were declared German occupied territory on 15 May 1940, Ilse and Bernhard Karlsberg must have reckoned with their arrest. The Dutch authorities were forced to hand over their resident lists to the German occupiers and, in doing so, to the Security Police. They had sent their children to Wieringen (children of Jewish refugees were prepared for their emigration to Palestine at Werkdorp Wieringermeer). Ilse and Bernhard Karlsberg visited their children there several times. While Bernhard Karlsberg frequently changed the place where he stayed, thus escaping arrest, Ilse Karlsberg refused to go underground. She wanted to stay with her mother and her parents-in-law and be at home when her children returned. The couple saw each other for the last time on 22 Sept. 1940. Her husband’s urgent pleading that she move to a secure hiding place came to nothing. "They are not looking for me. I’m staying put.”

"She (Ilse Karlsberg) was pretty unhappy in Amsterdam, as far as I could tell back then at my young age. I was only 15 years old the last time I saw her.” (R. M.)

Ilse Karlsberg was arrested in her home on 24 Sept. 1940. Houses were systematically searched for Jews, but Jews were also denounced by "Jew knowers”. ("Jew knowers” or "Jew hunters” were the terms for people who denounced Jews and received a bounty for each person they turned in.) The Security Police were looking for Bernhard Karlsberg and took Ilse Karlsberg hostage. She was told she would be released if her husband turned himself in. Ilse and Bernhard Karlsberg had promised not to betray each other if they were in danger or persecuted and would not give in to such a suggestion. Several days after her arrest, she was taken from the prison Klein Gartmanplantsoen (better known as Weteringschans) in Amsterdam to Hamburg via Cleve on a transport.

She was detained at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp and at Hütten Police Prison in the city center from 21 to 24 June 1941. Although the charges of high treason were dropped, Ilse Karlsberg remained in "protective custody”, meaning in prison. One of her daughters later reported Ilse Karlsberg was successfully treated for a shoulder ailment while she was there.

Max Plaut, lawyer and director of the Jewish Religious Association, managed to get Ilse Karlsberg released from protective custody on 2 July 1941.

"I had been called to town hall (Hamburg Town Hall, Stadthausbrücke, as of 1935 headquarters of the Gestapo) for a hearing, I saw her in the corridor as she was just being taken to a hearing. I managed to get her out of Fuhlsbüttel Prison on condition that she not disappear. Apart from Mrs. Karlsberg, the Gestapo turned several other concentration camp prisoners over to me, most of them over 70 years of age, since I had assumed responsibility for them. My responsibility meant that I had to keep the prisoners constantly under lock and key. I rid myself of that obligation by having a lockable gate installed outside the retirement home at Schlachterstraße 40/42. Mrs. Karlsberg also stayed at that home which had in total over a hundred occupants. Mrs. Karlsberg helped out in the administrative office. As of 19 Sept. I.K. was also obligated to wear the Star of David.” (Max Plaut)

Ilse Karlsberg was under house arrest, but she was allowed to receive visitors. Prior to his deportation to Riga in Dec. 1941, the painter Erich Brill wrote his mother, "… guess where I am”, and Ilse Karlsberg added to his letter in her own hand, "with me, Ilse Karlsberg.” Their former nanny Martha Hannchen Klan also reported to Amsterdam about having visited her.

"We were told that my mother was acquitted following a court trial and released from prison due to the efforts of Dr. Plaut. First she was held under house arrest at the Jewish retirement home where she helped care for the residents. She was said to have been completely emaciated during that time and only weighed 80 pounds. When we inquired whether she could return to her family, we were told we should be glad that she was being held under those conditions. When the retirement home was closed and the residents transported to Thersienstadt, she went with them. I don’t think anyone ever spoke of it as being ‘voluntary’.” (R. M.)

"We think she (Ilse Karlsberg) could have avoided being taken to Theresienstadt. She had been caring for some elderly Jewish people when they were arrested for deportation. We believe the reason may have been that she felt the old people needed her, maybe she also didn’t know what it meant to go to Theresienstadt, or maybe she thought the whole situation was hopeless anyway.” (E. K.)

On 22 Feb. 1943 Moritz Karlsberg, in Amsterdam, wrote to "Mr. Dr. Max Israel Plaut, District Office in Northwest Germany of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, Hamburg 13, Beneckestraße 2”: "One of my granddaughters has received a postcard from her mother, my daughter-in-law, from Theresienstadt, which contained only her own signature.” Moritz Karlsberg wrote Max Plaut in a postcard dated 12 Mar. 1943, thanking him for forwarding mail from his daughter-in-law with details of her address in Theresienstadt. The mail also showed his daughter-in-law’s number: L 314. On 5 Oct. 1943, Ilse K. sent a postcard from Theresienstadt, Langestraße 14, to the Israelite Community in Hamburg, Bornstraße 22. Beginning with the machine printed words "My Dears”, she confirmed receipt of a package on 8 Sept. 1943 The package was likely sent from Hamburg, perhaps by their nanny Martha. Packages could no longer be sent from Amsterdam as her husband and children were in hiding, and her mother and parents-in-law had been deported.

A female friend of the family who survived the deportation reported that Ilse Karlsberg worked as a nurse in Thersienstadt. Among others, she cared for Hans Heilbut, a friend of the family from Hamburg and Amsterdam who was very ill. When he was deported to Auschwitz with his family on 19 Oct. 1944, she was on the same transport.

Ilse Karlsberg’s exact date of death is not known. It is given as 1944 on her Stumbling Stone.

Ilse Karlsberg’s family survived. Bernhard Karlsberg managed to go undiscovered by changing his hiding places. When Wieringen was closed, Rahel and Ruth were separately taken to Westerbork at different times (prior to the invasion it was a camp for Jewish refugees, then became a concentration camp collection point). Walter was cared for by a foster family. Rahel Karlsberg had earlier married Claus Rawitscher (later Raven), they had met in Wieringen. Rahel and Ruth were fortunate to return to Amsterdam along daring routes through the help of couriers in official positions who also worked underground for the resistance. The central point of contact for all the Karlsbergs was Hanna Lendner’s apartment, a family friend who had moved to Amsterdam from Prague. She hid and provided for Bernhard Karlsberg, Rahel and Claus Raven, Ruth and Walter until liberation on 5 May 1945, for over two years. Bernhard Karlsberg got back his office on Herrengracht, later he went to England and married Hanna Lendner, he died in 1985. Rahel, Claus Raven and Ruth immigrated to the USA. Walter initially stayed in Amsterdam. All of them started their own families.

Ilse Karlsberg’s widowed mother Franziska Heilbron was also killed (www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de). After Franziska Heilbron’s children Martin Philipp and Alice left Germany in 1934 and 1936, she bought the company Philipp Fürst, one of the main receiving agencies for the Hamburg State Lottery which she continued to run after her husband’s death. In 1939 she followed Ilse to Amsterdam. Franziska Heilbron was arrested during a raid in 1943 and deported to Sobibor extermination camp via the transit camp Westerbork. Her date of death is recorded as 16 July 1943.

Ilse Karlsberg’s parents-in-law Moritz and Emilie Karlsberg (www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) were also killed. Moritz Karlsberg, born in 1865, moved to Hamburg in 1868 with his parents and siblings and at the age of 17 he joined his father’s business, an agency of the Cunard Steam Ship Company of Liverpool, as a trainee. In 1897, following his father’s death, he was appointed representative of the Company in the German Reich. The steam ship line checked that emigrants were healthy, possessed cash and skills, and had proof of accommodation to ensure that they would not become a burden to the country to which they were immigrating. Moritz and Emilie Karlsberg, who had married in 1892, had three children: Ilse, Ernst and Bernhard. When Moritz Karlsberg was forced to declare that the Cunard Line was "Aryan” in 1938, he quit his job, sold his shares in the company and emigrated. Despite the fact that the couple had a permanent visa to live in England, they stayed in Amsterdam with Bernhard and Ilse Karlsberg’s family. Following a raid in 1943, the couple was taken to Westerbork transit camp. On 20 June 1943 they were forced to board the train to Sobibor extermination camp where they were killed immediately upon their arrival. Their date of death was determined to be 23 June 1943.


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


Stand: September 2019
© Ursula Erler

Quellen 1; 7; 8; StaH, Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 351-11_978, _2002, _3652, _22140, _23886, _45883, _48012; Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Die Geschichte der Niederlande 1940–1945; Die Judenverfolgung in den Niederlanden, Wikipedia vom 23.10.2013; Wamser/Weinke (Hrsg.): Niederländer aus Überzeugung, in: dies., Ehemals in Hamburg zu Hause, S. 189–195; Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Familie Plaut, Dr. Max Plaut, Briefe, 622-1/173; Spiegel-TV zur Stolperstein-Verlegung, http://www.spiegel.de/video/video-1119512.html vom 1.4.2011; mündliche und E-Mail-Auskünfte: Jose Martin, Jose.Martin@kampvesterborg.de vom 24.1.2012; Ulf Bollmann, Staatsarchiv Hamburg vom 31.5.2012; Ruth Meissner, geb. Karlsberg, USA, Chester, Tochter von Ilse Karlsberg, Besuch Mai 2014; Evelyn Karlsberg, Edinburgh, Enkeltochter von Ilse Karlsberg.
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