Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Manfred Leipziger * 1910

Isestraße 49 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
MANFRED LEIPZIGER
JG. 1910
DEPORTIERT 1941
MINSK
ERMORDET 26.4.1944
KZ FLOSSENBÜRG
AUSSENLAGER LEITMERITZ

further stumbling stones in Isestraße 49:
Otto Streit

Manfred Leipziger, born 13 Feb. 1910 in Hamburg, deported 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk, sent from there to various forced labor and concentration camps, died 26 April 1943 in the Leitmeritz satellite camp of the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp

Manfred Leipziger was the son of a "pure Aryan” mother and a Jewish father. His father, Max Leipziger, was born in Hamburg in 1878. He had been a member of the Jewish Community since 1913. His non-Jewish wife had converted to Judaism. Max Leipziger ran an information bureau. When he died in 1935, his wife, Alma Leipziger, née Horn, and his son left the Jewish Community.

Manfred was thus no longer a member of any religious community. But the Nazi regime, which otherwise based its classification on the "racial” heritage of the grandparents, in this case counted his parents’ membership in the Jewish Religious Community, and Manfred was considered to be the son of a Jewish couple. Even though his mother had left the Jewish Religious Community, he was treated as a Geltungsjude – a half-Jew who was raised in the Jewish faith. He was forced to join the Reich Association of Jews, and was thus listed as a member of the Jewish Religious Association. He listed his profession as "office worker,” though he was later listed as an electrician in his prison records. He had a mid-level income until 1937, then was unemployed from 1940 onwards. He had considerable savings, however, possibly from an inheritance.

Manfred Leipziger had one older sister, who was two years his senior. All that is known about her is that she was married. We do not know if she survived the Third Reich. The Leipzigers had lived at Isestraße 49, 4th floor, since at least 1936. This was Manfred Leipziger’s last address in Hamburg.

In 1936 he was fined 200 Reichsmarks for "failing to turn in foreign currency to the Reichsbank within the allotted time.”

In October 1940 he began preparations to emigrate. He planned to travel with the Hamburg-America Line, first class, to Yokohama via Moscow, and then by ship to Haiti. He submitted the required inventory of the items he planned to take with him, which was no more than his normal luggage. He added items to the inventory list in February 1941, and requested an extension of the export permit, since his "departure was not possible at the moment.” The permit was extended to 16 May. In March 1941 he again requested an extension, but in the end he never left the country. The records do not indicate that he made later attempts to emigrate.

Manfred Leipziger was deported to Minsk on 8 November 1941. He was deported earlier than most of the other Geltungsjuden, who were sent to Theresienstadt beginning in the fall of 1943. The reason for his deportation was probably a secret Gestapo order to unobtrusively put members of those groups of Jews who were exempted from deportation onto the first transports. Manfred’s fate after his arrival in Minsk was also different than most of the others there. He was selected for forced labor, and, for unknown reasons, was sent to the Plaszow Forced Labor and Concentration Camp, which had been erected on the outskirts of Krakow. He was registered there with the prisoner number 15451. It is not known to which work detail he was assigned. Whether it was in the limestone quarries or in the workshops, we only know that he was assigned to work under extremely harsh working and living conditions in the Wielicka satellite camp 17 km south-east of Krakow. Between February 1943 and September 1944, during the time that Manfred Leipziger was there, the camp was run by the notoriously cruel SS Staff Sergeant Amon Leopld Göth, whose sadism was impressively portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Thousands of prisoners were killed by Göth’s murder and execution commandos.

The camp was evacuated as the Red Army advanced in the summer of 1944. The prisoners were put on several transports to other concentration camps. There is an entry in the records that Manfred Leipzger was transferred to the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp on 4 August 1944. Five days later he arrived at Leitmeritz, one of Flossenbürg’s satellite camps near Theresienstadt.

In 1944-45, around 18,000 prisoners were concentrated in this area, where they were to construct gigantic underground facilities in the Richard mine for the production of armaments, and camps for themselves. Metal workers in particular were sent from other Flossenbürg satellite camps. Manfred Leipziger was probably among those sent there because he had claimed to be an electrician. The working conditions were severe, the food supply situation for the prisoners, who had been undernourished for years, was catastrophic. More than 4000 prisoners died in a very short time, and because of the high death rate, a crematorium was erected. Manfred Leipziger was among those who did not survive the labor, starvation, and brutality.

He died shortly before the end of the war, on 26 April 1945. Like most of the prisoners who died between 2 April and 3 May, he was cremated in the camp, or possibly buried in a mass grave. In 1946 the bodies and the ashes were reinterred with honor at the nearby National Cemetery in Theresienstadt. After the war Manfred Leipziger’s mother lived at Isestraße 49.


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

Stand: March 2017
© Christa Fladhammer

Quelle: 1; 2, 5; 8; Auskunft per E-Mail von Johannes Ibel, Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg an Dr. Beate Meyer, IGDJ Hamburg, am 14.9.2009; http://www.gedenkstaette-flossenbuerg.de; http://www.deathcamps.org/ occupation/plaszow_de.html; Enzyklopädie des Holocaust, Bd. II, München/Zürich 1998, S. 1118f.; Wolfgang Benz/Barbara Distel (Hrsg.), Flossenbürg. Das Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg und seine Außenlager, München 2007, S. 204f.; AB Hamburg 1950.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".