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© Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Hamburg
Hertha Josias (née Selig) * 1898
Breitenfelder Straße 44 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)
1942 Theresienstadt
1944 Auschwitz
Hertha Henriette Josias, née Selig, born on 30 Mar. 1898 in Hamburg, deported on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 23 Oct. 1944 to Auschwitz
Breitenfelderstrasse 44
Hertha’s parents lived at Rutschbahn 23. Her father, Adolf Selig, born on 13 Nov. 1864 in Hamburg, operated a printing company at Alter Steinweg 61. The mother, Rosalie Rebecka, born on 5 June 1865, née Frankenthal, came from Lübeck. Two years after Hertha, in Nov. 1900, her brother Walter was born. He trained as a printer as well and emigrated initially to Paris in 1933, subsequently to Barcelona, and eventually to São Paulo, where he died in 1972.
Hertha attended the school on Johnsallee and afterward probably completed an apprenticeship as a secretary or office worker. In 1923, she married David Nathan Josias, four years her senior and one of eight siblings born to a family of practicing Jews. It is not clear where they met – possibly, David Josias worked in the house adjacent to the printing company or even for his future father-in-law. In May 1924, daughter Hannelore was born. While Hertha was expecting their second child, David came down with a serious illness. Entirely unexpectedly, he died of pneumonia and peritonitis on 9 Jan. 1927. Four months later, Hertha gave birth to their daughter Inge. Along with her children, she moved in with her parents and started working as a secretary. She maintained contact to David’s siblings, and the children often met up with their aunts, uncles, and cousins.
One can learn further details about David’s brother Willi and his wife Rosa in the volume entitled Stolpersteine in der Hamburger Isestrasse. His sister Erna managed to emigrate initially to Britain in 1939 and later to Australia, passing away there in the early 1970s. Another sister had already died at an early age. From the next generation – David’s nieces and nephews – Willi and Rosa’s daughter Ruth succeeded in fleeing to the USA, and a nephew found refuge in Australia in late 1938. David’s five other siblings and their spouses and children were deported and murdered.
By 1933 at the latest, Hertha moved with Hannelore and Inge to an apartment of her own at Breitenfelderstrasse 44, the address at which she was listed in the Hamburg directory.
By then, she was working in the office of the Israelite Girls’ School on Carolinenstrasse, which her daughters attended as well. Helping the children understand Jewish values and traditions and live according to the religious laws was important to her. In her letters to them, she later inquired several times whether Inge and Hannelore were indeed living "the rites.”
Because she was working, she did not have very much time for the children but "we enjoyed the time we did spend together. My mother was a hard-working woman. I loved her very much and I miss her to this day,” remembered the daughter.
In Aug. 1937, Hertha’s parents moved to the "retirement home” of the Jewish Community at Sedanstrasse 23.
In Oct. 1938, Hertha had to take those girls out of their classes at the school on Carolinenstrasse who had Polish passports and were expelled from Germany along with their families.
After the Pogrom of November 1938, she registered her daughters for the children transport (Kindertransport). In the last months prior to departure, they were accommodated in the Paulinenstift, a home for orphans, children from poor families, and of single parents. Hertha was forced to give up the apartment at Breitenfelderstrasse 44, where she had spent "the happiest years of her life,” from then on living as a subtenant in frequently changing rooms. All efforts aimed at emigration failed. Her last address before the deportation was the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Kielortallee 22.
In Apr. 1939, Hannelore and Inge departed for Sweden. In the following years, their mother maintained contact with them by letters. Sabine Homann Engel from "Spurensuchen,” a network of Hamburg historians, has compiled and commented a selection of these letters.
Hertha’s father, Adolf Selig, passed away in June 1939. After the closure of the Talmud Tora School, which had been merged with the school on Carolinenstrasse, Hertha worked in the office of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland). Her mother Rosalie was deported to Theresienstadt on 15 July 1942; Hertha was forced to follow her four days later.
Thanks to "Spurensuchen,” it was possible to establish contact to her daughter Anne (formerly Hannelore) in 2008. In Dec. 1945, Hannelore emigrated together with her husband and their daughter, born in Sweden, to the USA. She has maintained close contact with her Swedish foster family to this day. In 2002, she visited Hamburg again for the first time. Together with her daughter, she was a guest invited by the Hamburg Senate’s program for persecuted former residents of Hamburg. Inge also emigrated to the USA and got married there in Dec. 1954. Her two daughters were born in 1955 and 1957. She died after a long illness in June 2010, at the age of 83.
Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.
Stand: October 2016
© Sabine Brunotte
Quellen: 1; 4; AB 1933; Schriftliche Auskünfte Anne Bertolino vom 27.5.2008 und 21.6.2008; telefonische Auskunft Anne Bertolino vom 28.6.2010; Ingrid Lomfors, Breven fran Hertha, Göteborg 1987, Anmerkungen dazu von Björn T. Hückel; Lehberger/Randt, Aus Kindern werden Briefe, 1999.
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