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Hermann Kohn * 1885

Ifflandstraße 10 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
HERMANN KOHN
JG. 1885
DEPORTIERT 1941
MINSK
TOT 6.1.1945
KZ FLOSSENBÜRG

further stumbling stones in Ifflandstraße 10:
Sidonie Kohn, Haskel (Adolf) Lubelsky

Hermann Kohn, born on 4 Apr. 1885 in Altona, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk, murdered on 6 Jan. 1945 in Flossenbürg
Sidonie Kohn, née Stransky, born on 14 June 1892 in Beraun/Bohemia (today Beroun in the Czech Republic), deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk, murdered there

Ifflandstrasse 10


Johanna Kohn, née Feilmann, born on 13 Apr. 1885 in Hamburg, fled in 1939 to Brussels, from there committed to the Kazerne Dossin, Mechelen (Malines), deported further on 15 Jan. 1943 to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, murdered there
Edgar Kohn, born on 17 Jan. 1923 in Hamburg, fled in 1939 to Brussels, from there committed to the Kazerne Dossin, Mechelen (Malines), deported further on 15 Jan. 1943 to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, murdered there

Loogestieg 6, Eppendorf

In 1933, Hermann and Sidonie Kohn moved from Altona to Hamburg with their son Walter, who was 12 years old at the time. Until then, Hermann had lived with his parents – first alone for a while after his siblings had moved out, then with his wife, and finally the three of them with their child Walter. His parents were the Jewish merchant Wilhelm Kohn and his Jewish wife Therese, née Schreiber. Wilhelm Kohn had come to Altona from Zarch in Bohemia (today Carka in the Czech Republic) around 1870 and had operated a sack store there. He died in 1920 at the age of 82. His wife Therese, eight years his junior and Hermann’s mother, came from the small town of Beraun near Prague in Central Bohemia, today Beroun in the Czech Republic. After the death of her husband, Hermann and Sidonie Kohn took care of her until she passed away in 1932 at the age of 86. Soon after that, Hermann and Sidonie gave up their apartment at Wielandstrasse 23 (today Suttnerstrasse) in Altona and looked for their first home in Hamburg for themselves and their son. At that time, Hermann was already 48 and his wife 41 years old.

Hermann Kohn had five other, older siblings, all of whom had been born in Altona as he had: Julius Albert, Regina, Leander, Martin, and Emma. Since Hermann’s father Wilhelm was a Czech citizen and did not become a citizen of Hamburg, all of his children were also Czech citizens. Regina had already passed away in 1902 at the age of 26 and Leander died as a soldier in the Greifswald reserve military hospital in Nov. 1914, at the age of 38. He left behind his wife Emma Elise Pauline, née Fister, as a widow at a young age. They did not have any children.

Just like his brothers, Hermann had completed a commercial apprenticeship. He then spent about a year in Buenos Aires, probably to deepen his knowledge of the import and export sector. Like Julius, his oldest brother, he worked in the fur trade, more specifically, in the wholesale of peltry (Rauchwaren), i.e., dressed and tanned animal skins that had not yet been processed into fur. And just like Julius, he soon founded his own company, which he ran from his parents’ apartment on Wielandstrasse in Altona.

As early as 1910, Julius had established himself with his business in Hamburg, initially renting an office in the elegant Brandenburgerhaus on Hohe Bleichen. A little later, he found an apartment for himself and his wife Johanna, née Feilmann, 12 years his junior, at Loogestieg 6 in Eppendorf. Since the turn of the century, numerous new houses in Gründerzeit style had been built here, also attracting wealthier Jewish families.

Hermann’s brother Martin, on the other hand, had initially worked for various companies as a commercial employee after his apprenticeship. In the fall of 1913, he married Anna Demuth, a non-Jewish woman from Hamburg. The union remained childless. In 1914, he also had to participate as a soldier in World War I. Unlike Leander, he survived frontline action, but he spent three years in Russian captivity. After the war, in 1919, he found a leading position at Butterfachhandlung Hammonia Carl Ehlers, a Hamburg-based butter specialist. In the same year, his wife and he first moved within Altona – from Wielandstrasse to Blücherstrasse – and then, in 1927, from there to Ulmenau (in the Uhlenhorst quarter), which ran along the subway viaduct built a few years earlier.

Hermann’s sister Emma, finally, settled in Hamburg on Alstertwiete in the St. Georg quarter with her husband, the merchant Ahron Arnold Kohn, after the wedding in 1907. In 1916, they moved to Blankenese together with their two little daughters, seven-year-old Else and four-year-old Gerda. Arnold Kohn bought a house there at Kahlkamp 1a around 1926.

After the death of his mother in 1932, Hermann Kohn first rented an office in Hamburg, at Admiralitätstrasse 71/72 on Rödingsmarkt, for his peltry wholesale. After that, he was looking for an apartment for himself and his family in Hamburg. After he found it in Hohenfelde, on the third floor of Ifflandstrasse 10, he moved his office there as well. Until the transfer of power to the Nazis in Jan. 1933, he had a relatively steady, good income, even though he did not generate sales as high as those of his brother Julius in the same industry. He even owned a second company branch on Leipzig’s Brühl, at that time also called the "world street of furs” ("Weltstrasse der Pelze”).

However, the call to boycott Jewish businesses on 1 Apr. 1933, which initiated the expulsion of Jews from professional and business life, spelled economic decline for Hermann Kohn. After this, he generated only modest revenues and had to continue to support his family practically on his own, since his wife, working as a packer, hardly had any income either and their son Walter was still going to school.

Martin Kohn, director of the company since the transformation of Hammonia Butterfachhandlung into a stock corporation in 1925, was also affected by the anti-Jewish measures: He was forced to resign on 1 Apr. 1933. A small-sized letter in the shop windows of all 120 Hammonia butter shops announced his departure and that the business was thus no longer a Jewish company. He then joined the Heinrich Schneider vanilla wholesale company as a co-owner ("Vanille-Schneider”). However, after about two years, he had to leave this company as well because he was Jewish. Eventually, he started his own small import and export company, as he was assured that a "gentleman” who would bring foreign currency into the country would have no difficulties whatsoever. He soon came to realize in a painful way that these were just empty words.

Hermann’s brother Julius was initially spared the economic plundering by the Nazis. From 1937 onward, his wife Johanna and he planned to leave Germany. In Sept. 1938, the family left for Belgium. Julius first went to Ixelles. At the end of the month, he met up in Brussels with Johanna and his then 15-year-old son Edgar, who had started an apprenticeship as a fur cutter in Hamburg. From there, Julius Kohn commissioned the Hamburg chartered accountant Willy Witzler with liquidating his peltry company – under compulsion. The proceeds went to the Nazi state. Since Jews were only allowed to take 10 RM (reichsmark) per person when leaving the German Reich, his family and he had also reached Brussels without any means. They depended on the support of the local relief committee for Jewish refugees.

Emma Kohn’s husband Arnold was also excluded from professional life. In 1936, he was still able to found Arno-Honig-Lager, Honigabfüllung und Kunsthonig, a company specializing in the storing and filling of honey as well in artificial honey, on Meissnerstrasse in Hamburg-Eppendorf. However, the business was short-lived. Three years later, he and his wife Emma emigrated as well, to Brazil, where their daughter Grete had been living since 1936. The older daughter, Else, had left for Palestine the year before. Arnold Kohn had wished to sell his honey factory in Aug. 1938. However, the purchase by the non-Jewish interested party failed because of the "Ordinance Concerning the Reporting of Jewish Assets” ("Verordnung über die Anmeldung des Vermögens von Juden”) issued on 26 Apr. 1938 by the Supreme Reich Authority for the Implementation of the Four-Year Plan (Vierjahresplanbehörde) under Hermann Göring, which was to achieve economic and military war capability of the German Reich within four years from 1936. According to the aforementioned ordinance, Jews had to declare all of their assets to the "senior administrative authority responsible for the applicant’s place of residence” if they exceeded 5,000 RM (reichsmark). These included companies and trade operations. In Hamburg, the "senior administrative authority along the lines of the ordinance” was Reich Governor (Reichsstatthalter) and Nazi Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann or the state administrative agency subordinate to him, respectively. Thus, a state body was also assigned supervision of Jewish business sales. The actual purpose of the ordinance was found accordingly in Sec. 7: "The Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan may take any measures necessary to ensure the use of assets subject to registration in accordance with the interests of the German economy.” Violation of the ordinance was punishable by a fine or prison sentence. This did not apply to Arnold Kohn; the request for the purchase by Emilie Krieger was simply rejected. Probably a deserving party comrade of the Nazi party was then found as a "suitable” buyer. By contrast, the sale of the property and house on Kahlkamp in Oct. 1938 was approved without any difficulty.

Until Mar. 1938, Emma and Arnold Kohn still had had a Jewish subtenant on Kahlkamp: the former teacher and principal of the Anton Rée School on Zeughausmarkt, Josef Feiner. He took his own life on 11 Mar. 1938 (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Altona and www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de). After the sale of their house, Emma and Arnold Kohn resided with their sister-in-law Emma, the widow of Emma’s brother Leander, for the few months until they departed the country. By that time, she lived at Curschmannstrasse 2 in Eppendorf.

Hermann and Sidonie Kohn do not seem to have been able to leave Germany. After the November Pogrom of 1938, however, they at least managed to get their son Walter, by then 17 years old, to safety. The British government had agreed to accept about 10,000 Jewish children from the German Reich at short notice. On 14 Dec. 1938, an unusually warm, rainy winter’s day, Hermann and Sidonie Kohn took their son to Hamburg Central Station. He was only allowed to take one piece of luggage. He never saw his parents again.

Hermann and Sidonie Kohn were deported to Minsk on 8 Nov.1941. Sidonie Kohn was murdered there.

Hermann Kohn was one of the few Jewish deportees from Hamburg who not only survived the appalling living conditions and repeated executions in Minsk, but who was also spared during the massacre on 8 May 1943 because they were required as forced laborers. From Minsk, he first came to the Plaszow concentration camp near Cracow. Plaszow was built as a forced labor camp on a former Jewish cemetery and converted into a concentration camp in Jan. 1944. Starting in Feb. 1943, the camp commandant was the Viennese SS-Hauptsturmführer [an SS rank equivalent to captain] Amon Göth, known as the "Butcher of Plaszow” because of his particular brutality. Heinz Rosenberg from Hamburg described his first impression of the Plaszow concentration camp in his work The Years of Horror: An Authentic Report (German title: Jahre des Schreckens): "We did not see a single prisoner stand still, everyone worked, ran, or pulled heavy wagons.” And he continued: "In this camp, the daily roll call had been developed into a real means of torture. It took hours to count all the prisoners. All the while we had to stand at attention (...).” Hardly anyone survived Plaszow for more than four weeks.

Hermann Kohn was one of the few who succeeded. He was transferred from there to the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 4 Aug. 1944. There, too, the prisoners had to perform the hardest type of forced labor. By this time, though, his strength was no longer sufficient. On 6 Jan. 1945, he was killed in Flossenbürg.

His brother Julius, who fled to Brussels with his wife Johanna and son Edgar, died there as a result of an operation. After the occupation of Belgium by the German Wehrmacht, Johanna and Edgar Kohn were first taken from Brussels to the assembly camp for Jews and Sinti and Roma, to the Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen (Malines). From there, they were deported to Auschwitz on 15 Jan. 1943, where they were murdered. Johanna Kohn was 57 years old, Edgar Kohn 20 years old.

Hermann Kohn’s brother Martin was protected for a relatively long time by the fact that his wife Anna was not Jewish, although according to Nazi terminology both lived in a "non-privileged” mixed marriage ("nichtprivilegierte” Mischehe). Martin Kohn therefore had to wear the "Jews’ star” ("Judenstern”) starting in 1941 and he was not exempted from deportations, only deferred. In 1942, he and his wife Anna were ordered to move to the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) on Rappstrasse. In the same year, he, like many other Jews living in "mixed marriages,” had to perform forced labor.

Willibald Schallert, the notorious head of the "Jewish labor deployment” ("Judeneinsatz”) department at the Hamburg Employment Office, arranged the assignments to the respective companies. Early one morning, two Gestapo officers arrested Martin Kohn in his apartment on Rappstrasse and took him to a ragman, in whose basement he had to sort waste paper day in, day out, for four months. He sustained frostbite on both hands. Subsequently, he was used at the Georg Dralle perfume and fine soap plant in Altona. This company had also registered a need for forced laborers with the employment office. He had to stay at Dralle for one and a half years, from 10 June 1942 to 14 Dec. 1943. One false remark or a "momentary underperformance due to indisposition” – Martin Kohn later said – could mean death there. From Dralle, he was assigned to Rasch & Jung, a wholesaler of footwear products located at Grosse Bleichen 31. There, he performed forced labor as a warehouse worker until 13 Feb. 1945. On 14 Feb. 1945, Martin Kohn was transported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. It was the last deportation from Hamburg.

Martin Kohn survived the Holocaust. In 1948, the two partners of the former butter specialist Hammonia, Carl and Bruno Ehlers – who had dismissed him in 1933 because he was Jewish – offered him a position as a general manager and partner in the legal successor of the former company, Hammonia Handelsgesellschaft. Martin Kohn accepted the offer. As compensation for all claims arising from his "retirement” from the company, he also received 10 percent of the company’s annual net profit from 1946 onward, for life. If he were to die before his wife, the payments would pass on to her. Anna Kohn died in 1949 and Martin Kohn outlived his wife by 17 years. He died on 24 Sept. 1966 in Hamburg. After the Second World War, he received a monthly pension due to health problems caused by forced labor. In 1950, he informed the personal accident insurance of the then Hamburg Employment Authority that his income had improved to an extent that he no longer needed this pension. The money ought to be given to other, more needy people.


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

Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 5; 8; 9; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen 01658/39; StaH 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident F 1330; StaH 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident FVg 7155; StaH 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident R 1939/5; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 709 u. 1047/1914; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 3926; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 5903; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 6737; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 17184; StaH 992 e 1 Jüdische Gemeinden Deportationslisten Bd. 2, 8.11.1941, Minsk; Hamburger Adressbücher; Amtliche Fernsprechbücher Hamburg; Bundesarchiv, R1509, Ergänzungskarten für Angaben über Abstammung (Volkszählung v. 17.5.1939) Wohnortliste Hamburg; Birgit Gewehr/Frauke Steinhäuser, Josef Feiner, in: Gewehr, Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Altona, Hamburg, 2015; Grenville, The Jews and the Germans of Hamburg, S. 82; Meinen, Shoah in Belgien; Meyer, Verfolgung und Ermordung, S. 64; Walk (Hg.), Sonderrecht, S. 223; Rosenberg, Jahre des Schreckens, S. 102ff. u. S. 107ff.; E-Mail-Auskunft Boris Behnen, KZ-Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg, vom 27.11.2013; USHMM/ITS Auskunft Peter Landé vom 30.11.2013; viermalleben.de/4xleben/namensliste.htm (letzter Zugriff 19.11.2013); denkmalprojekt.org/Verlustlisten/rjf_hh_a-k_wk1.htm (letzter Zugriff 18.11.2013); Verordnung über die Anmeldung des Vermögens von Juden vom 26. April 1938, RGBl I., S. 414, in: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, ALEX. Historische Rechts- und Gesetzestexte Online, http://kurzurl.net/Jf0mW (letzter Zugriff: 31.3.2015); Reichsgesetz über die Verfassung und Verwaltung der Hansestadt Hamburg vom 9. Dezember 1937, online auf: www.verfassungen.de/de/hh/hamburg37-1.htm (letzter Zugriff 27.10.2015); Kazerne Dossin: Mahnmal, Museum und Dokumentationszentrum Holocaust und Menschenrechte, www.kazernedossin.eu/DE/ (letzter Zugriff 31.3.2015).
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