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Erwin Weissfeiler * 1900

Mühlendamm 47 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
ERWIN WEISSFEILER
JG. 1900
DEPORTIERT 1942
ERMORDET IN
AUSCHWITZ

further stumbling stones in Mühlendamm 47:
Hans Prawitt, Helene Weissfeiler

Erwin Josef Weissfeiler, born 31 Oct. 1900 in Berlin, deported 29 Nov. 1942 from Berlin to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, murdered there
Helene Weissfeiler, née Schaingold, born 13 Nov. 1875 in Hamburg, deported 9 July 1942 from Berlin to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, died there on 23 Feb. 1943

Mühlendamm 47

Helene Weissfeiler’s father Salomon Schaingold was a trader in linens and manufactured goods. He was from Warsaw, where he used the variation Szlama as his first name. At the time of his birth, 7 May 1847, Warsaw was the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, which was, however, de facto under Russian rule. In late 1864 it was officially incorporated into the Russian Empire, and Salomon Schaingold thus became a Russian citizen. Helene Weissfeiler’s mother Rieke Josephson was likewise born in Warsaw, on 18 Nov. 1844, and later became Russian. Szlama and Rieke married on 14 Oct. 1870. Two years later they left Warsaw for Hamburg, where Helene, their first child, was born. The family lived in Hamburg until 1878, then moved to Stettin, where Szlama, Rieke, and Helene became citizens of Prussia. With his new citizenship, Szlama officially changed his name to Salomon.

The Schaingold’s second daughter, Hulda, was born in Stettin on 31 Dec. 1878. Salomon apparently saw no professional future in Stettin, however, so the family returned to Hamburg in 1880. The following year Isidor was born, on 15 July. In May 1889, Salomon applied for Hamburg citizenship for himself and his family. The application was approved on 1 Dec.

All three children attended school in Hamburg. Hulda and Isidor both did commercial apprenticeships. In 1898, aged 20, Hulda emigrated to Argentina, apparently alone. On 12 Oct. she boarded the San Nicolas in Hamburg and traveled to La Plata in the Buenos Aires province. Perhaps it was a desire for adventure or the will to prove herself an independent woman far from home. Or perhaps the family had connections there, making it easier to adjust and to find a job and support herself. In any event, she never returned to Germany.

Helene Schaingold also left Hamburg, but didn’t venture so far from home. In March 1899 her parents announced her engagement to the merchant Salomon Weissfeiler in the Neue Hamburger Zeitung. The wedding was on 4 Dec. 1899 in Berlin-Schöneberg, where the newly-weds then lived. Before the wedding, Salo had lived at Hagelsbergerstraße 22 in Berlin-Kreuzberg, and Helene had lived at Sophienstraße 44 in Hamburg-St. Pauli.

Salomon Weissfeiler’s parents, both Jewish, were Jakob Weissfeiler, a restauanteur, and Fani, née Horschitz. He was born on 20 Apr. 1875 in Racistorf (German Ratzersdorf) near Pressburg. The family included two other sons, David and Simon. At that time, Pressburg was the second-most important industrial center of the Kingdom of Hungary. After the First World War it was called Bratislava and was in the newly-formed Czechoslovakia. Today it is the capital of Slovakia. Racistorf, a centuries-old wine-making village with a large German-speaking population, became a suburb of Bratislava in 1946, and since then has been called Raca.

Only four weeks after their wedding, on 8 Jan. 1900, Helene’s father died in Berlin. Later that year, on 31 Oct., Helene and Salo’s son Erwin Josef was born. Salo’s brothers also had children: David had a daughter named Irene, Simon’s son was named Karol.

Helene’s brother Isidor Schaingold followed his sister Hulda to La Plata in the summer of 1903. Before that he had also been living in Berlin-Schöneberg. He didn’t stay in Buenos Aires for long, however. In July 1919, shortly before his 38th birthday, he married Lucia Räsener in Berlin. She was from Schwedt an der Oder, and was 34 when they married. At the time of the wedding, Isidor was living with his sister and brother-in-law on Feurigstraße.

In 1923, Salo Weissfeiler died, aged only 48. Helene, likewise 48, remained in the apartment on Feurigstraße and continued to run their carpet shop for a year until she sold it. During this time Erwin often traveled to Ratzersdorf to see his relatives there. His cousin Irene had married a man named Emil Schwarz who was a hobby vintner. When Emil was there, he helped tend the vines. The two men became good friends.

Around 1927, Erwin moved from Berlin to Hamburg, where he had found a job as a film representative. He became a member of the Jewish Community, and lived in rented rooms, first at Uhlandstraße 85, then at Mühlendamm 13, and finally at Mühlendamm 47.

On 31 January 1933, Reich President Hindenburg ceded power to the Nazis and appointed Adolf Hitler Reich Chancellor. Less than four months later, on 3 May 1933, Erwin Weissfeller returned to Berlin to live with his mother Helene. They lived in the apartment on Feurigstraße in Schöneberg until 1938, then moved to rented rooms on Keithstraße, also in Schöneberg. Apparently they could no longer afford the Feurigstraße apartment, where Helene Weissfeiler had lived for nearly 40 years. Many Jewish shop owners had had to close down their businesses as a result of the April boycott, and beginning in 1936, more and more Jews were fired from their jobs and had to get by on badly-paid odd jobs and welfare subsidies or aid from the Jewish Communities.

On 27 Nov. 1941, Helene Weissfeiler’s brother Isidor Schaingold and his wife Lucia were deported from Berlin to the Riga Ghetto. Lucia’s brother Max, his wife Meta and their daughter Asta were on the same transport. All deportees on this transport were murdered immediately upon their arrival in the ghetto. They were among the victims of the Rumbula massacre – a collective term for incidents on November 30 and December 8, 1941 in which about 27,500 Jews were killed in or on the way to the Rumbula forest near Riga. The massacre was carried out by Security Police and SD units, with support from members of a Latvian auxiliary police squad and other Latvian police units. They forced the Jews to undress in the icy cold and climb into pits that had been dug out, then shot them in the back of the head.

Helene Weissfeiler was deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt on 9 July 1942 on the "18th Transport for the Elderly.” She survived the ghetto, but only for one year. She died on 23 Feb. 1943 of a stomach ulcer.

On 29 Nov. 1942 Erwin Weissfeiler was deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

The Friday, 9 Aug. 1946 issue of the German-Jewish weekly newspaper Aufbau, established in New York in 1934, contained a notice from Bertha Lewin from Los Angeles. She was searching for Helene Weissfeiler, Erwin Weissfeiler and his wife, and Helene’s brother Isidor Schaingold and his wife Lucia. Apparently she knew them from Berlin. We were unable to determine if Erwin Weissfeiler really was married or not. Bertha Lewin’s hopes of finding her friends from Berlin were dashed, as all of them had died in or as a result of the Holocaust.

In September 2015 Hanna Hareli, née Schwarz/Sochor, and her husband Mordechai, formerly known as Paul Herzog/Pavel Hora, visited Hamburg from their home in Modiin, Israel. Hanna Hareli’s mother Irene was the above-mentioned cousin of Erwin Weissfeiler. While doing family research on the internet, the couple had found the Stolpersteine-Hamburg website, and learned that Stolpersteine had been placed for Erwin and his mother Helene. Hanna had Mordechai Hareli had both survived the Shoah, along with their parents – Mordechai and his family in the Theresienstadt Ghetto; Hanna and her family hidden in Bergen near Bratislava. Six of their eight grandparents and other relatives had been murdered. Mordecahi Hareli is the chair of the Organization of Forced Laborers under the Nazi Occupation


Translator: Amy Lee
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 3; 4; 5; 8; StaH 332-7 Staatsangehörigkeitsaufsicht B III 32851; StaH 373-7 I, VIII Auswanderungsamt I, Band 100, Mikrofilmnummer K_1759; StaH 373-7 I, VIII Auswanderungsamt I, Band 100, Mikrofilmnummer K_1781; Heiratsregister der Berliner Standesämter 1874–1920, Standesamt Berlin IVa, Urkunde Nr. 657, Archivsequenznummer 416; Heiratsregister der Berliner Standesämter 1874–1920, Standesamt Berlin IVa, Urkunde Nr. 663, Archivsequenznummer 528; Sterberegister der Berliner Standesämter 1874–1920, Standesamt Berlin, Schöneberg I, Urkunde Nr. 26, Archivsequenznummer 179; Freie Universität Berlin, Zentralinstitut für die sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung (Hrsg.), Gedenkbuch Berlins der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, 1995; Berliner Adressbücher; ausführliches Gespräch mit Hanna und Mordechai Hareli am 17.9.2015 in Hamburg; E-Mail-Korrespondenz mit Helmuth Lölhöffel, Stolperstein Initiative Berlin-Charlottenburg und Wilmersdorf, 7.9.2015; Anna Hajkova, Mutmaßungen über deutsche Juden. Alte Menschen aus Deutschland im Theresienstädter Ghetto, in: Doris Bergen, Andrea Löw, Anna Hájková (Hrsg.), Alltag im Holocaust. Jüdisches Leben im Großdeutschen Reich 1941–1945, München, 2013, (Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte), S. 179–198; Brigitte Heidenhain, Juden in Schwedt. Ihr Leben in der Stadt von 1672 bis 1942 und ihr Friedhof, Potsdam, 2010 (Pri ha-Pardes, Bd. 7); "Aufbau", 9.8.1946, S. 33; Hilary Leila Krieger, "Holocaust victims feel cheated by the commission. Mordechai Hareli wanted to recover what was due to him, his wife and their siblings and cousins.", in: The Jerusalem Post, 17.11.2005, online: www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Holocaust-victims-feel-cheated-by-commission (letzter Zugriff 10.10.2015); The Todesfallanzeige Helene Weissfeiler, Nationalarchiv Prag, Zidovske matriky, Ohledaci listy – ghetto Terezin, Band 81, online: www2.holocaust.cz/de/document/DOCUMENT.ITI.17215 (letzter Zugriff 20.3.2015); Statistik und Deportation der jüdischen Bevölkerung aus dem Deutschen Reich, Berlin, 23. Osttransport, online: www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/list_ger_ber_ot23.html (letzter Zugriff 20.3.2015); Statistik und Deportation der jüdischen Bevölkerung aus dem Deutschen Reich, Berlin, 18. Alterstransport, online: www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/AT18-3.jpg (letzter Zugriff 20.3.2015).
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