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Helene Mainz (née Hirsch) * 1873

Hochallee 11 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
HELENE MAINZ
GEB. HIRSCH
JG. 1873
FLUCHT 1934
HOLLAND
INTERNIERT WESTERBORK
DEPORTIERT 1944
BERGEN-BELSEN
ERMORDET 29.2.1944

further stumbling stones in Hochallee 11:
Ludwig Moritz Mainz

Helene Mainz, née Hirsch, born on 14 Nov. 1873 in Halberstadt, deported on 11 Jan. 1944 from the Netherlands via Westerbork to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, died there on 29 Feb. 1944

On 3 Apr. 1908, Ludwig Moritz Mainz showed up at Records Office No. 3 in Hamburg to give notice that his wife Helene had delivered a daughter, Anita, in his apartment at Hochallee 2 on 1 April at 7 a.m. Anita already had four siblings: Dorothea, 12 years old, and the brothers Arnold, eleven, Helmuth, eight, and Franz, four years old. The family had moved three times before taking up residence on Hochallee. Probably the apartment there became too small for a family with five children, and thus, in the summer of 1909, Ludwig Mainz purchased the house at Hochallee 11, diagonally opposite on the other side of the street. In the house, it was still possible for a long time to discern the spot for the mezuzah, a small case containing a parchment with verses from the Old Testament attached to the doorpost, as well as the kitchens divided into milk and meat sections for kosher food preparation.

Helene Mainz was the fourth generation of the large Hirsch family of merchants and entrepreneurs based in Halberstadt.

From modest beginnings, starting in 1805, the "Hirsch Kupfer und Messingwerke AG,” a large enterprise manufacturing copper and brass products, developed into an "immense corporate group,” which provided "a living to probably about 50,000 employees.” The family was actively involved in the Jewish Community, both in poor relief and welfare assistance as well as concerning problems of Jewish emigrants from the Eastern European cities and issues of settlement in Palestine. Moreover, the family was committed in the city’s public life. Helene Mainz was the daughter of Esther Hirsch, née Hirsch, and Aron Joseph Hirsch. Her father is described as a gifted merchant, interested in economics in general and in questions of transport and railroads in particular. He belonged to the Halberstadt Chamber of Commerce and the State Railroad Council. When he died in 1880, aged only 35, he left behind his wife and four daughters. Helene was the second-born.

Her husband, Ludwig Mainz, originally a retail businessman, had been a general partner of the John M. Meyer banking house since 1895. In Dec. 1908, he became the sole owner of the bank. All three sons held different important positions in the bank until 1933. The bank, which maintained good connections, particularly in the foreign currency business, earned the family so much income that they lived in affluence.

Helene Mainz managed the household and cared for the children. We only know of Franz where he went to school. He attended the Eppendorf Oberrealschule [a secondary school without Latin] and finished his schooling after completing his one-year graduating class ("Einjähriges”). Afterward, he did a commercial apprenticeship. One may assume that the other siblings also attended public schools.

In 1933, Franz was the only one left living at his parents’ home. Arnold had taken his own life in 1927. The others had married and moved out. With his wife, Lore Bacharach from Frankfurt, Helmuth had two daughters, Eva Renate, born on 22 July 1930, and Marianne Susanne, born on 28 Aug. 1933. Anita, who married into the Oettinger family in 1928, had given birth to son Markus in 1929 (see Claire and Hans-Norbert Oettinger: Claire Oettinger). Dorothea, the oldest daughter, was married to the jurist Otto Julius Eisner from Frankfurt, and the couple had no children.

Ludwig Mainz, and particularly his son Helmuth, were quick to read the signs of the times in 1933. In Dec. 1933, Helmuth went with his entire family and his parents-in-law, the married couple Bertha and Hugo Bacharach, to Amsterdam, founding a new banking house there, which soon flourished. Ludwig and Helene Mainz followed their son to the Netherlands in the fall of 1934, while Franz Mainz attempted to continue operating the bank in Hamburg. However, two years later, the company was deleted from the company register. In 1936, Franz Mainz sold the house on Hochallee. He also emigrated to the Netherlands, though going from there to the USA in 1939.

In 1934, Anita and Norbert Oettinger as well as son Martin followed the mother-in-law, the widowed Claire Oettinger, to Amsterdam. She had already arrived there in 1933 with her son Fritz. In 1934, the mother and her sons founded a company trading in tobacco.

After a brief stay in Amsterdam, Helmuth Mainz settled in Heemstede, a municipality neighboring on Harlem. His parents-in-law followed the young family there, while Helene and Ludwig Mainz as well as his sister Anita with her family stayed in Amsterdam. In 1944, he wrote a detailed account about his family’s life after emigration. In it, he described the six years up to the occupation of the Netherlands by the Germans as the most wonderful in his life to date. The family settled in well, and the children and parents formed friendships with Dutch people, without religion playing any role. Connections to the parents or grandparents, respectively, in Amsterdam remained close.

In the meantime, Helmuth Mainz had been elected to the board of the Harlem Jewish Community, and this, in combination with his business connections, enabled him to establish many contacts, important especially with a view to the future.

On 10 May 1940, German troops invaded the Netherlands, and on 14 May, the German Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam. On 16 May, the Netherlands surrendered.

Immediately after the capitulation, Helmuth Mainz travelled to Amsterdam to check on his family. He observed great panic among the Jews there. His parents were safe and sound but his sister’s brother-in-law committed suicide along with his wife and two small children on the day of the surrender (see entry on Dr. Friedrich Oettinger, Friedrich Oettinger).

In quick succession, the same isolating and persecuting measures as in the German Reich were instituted: Jews were dismissed from the civil service, radio sets had to be surrendered, Jews were no longer allowed to go to the theater or the movies, go to the pool, use public transportation, they had to obey a curfew, Jewish children were no longer permitted to attend non-Jewish schools, and anyone older than six years had to wear a "Jews’ star” ("Judenstern”). As in Germany, Jewish assets were tied up in blocked accounts. Jews from all over the country were gradually concentrated in Amsterdam.

Along with his family, Helmuth Mainz moved in with the parents in Amsterdam. The parents-in-law were accommodated with Anita, Helmuth’s sister, and her mother-in-law, Claire Oettinger. For three generations, living together in a city apartment was not always easy. The numerous restrictions, such as the evening curfew, the ban on shopping at all times except for three hours in the afternoon, and the ban on using public transportation made everyday life even more difficult.

The instances of harassment rose. On Ludwig Mainz’ seventy-fifth birthday, 4 July 1942, authorized representatives of the Security Police showed up unannounced for a so-called stocktaking of Jewish household effects, searching the apartment for an entire day. For Ludwig Mainz, the shock was so great that he suffered a heart attack a short time afterward. Helene Mainz, together with her daughter-in-law, nursed her husband until his death on 17 August. Thus, he was spared the worst part of persecution. He did live long enough, however, to experience the "stock-takers” ("Inventariseure") coming once again, this second time with a moving van to transport off the more valuable furnishings.

Even during her father’s illness, Anita went underground with her husband Hans Norbert Oettinger and their son Martin to evade a call "by police for labor duty in Germany.”

Fear of arbitrary arrests began to dominate everyday life, and contact to persons having gone underground became life-threatening. "The terrible news from the circle of friends and acquaintances came in daily and hourly … I remember that every evening, we sat at home in suspense, listening for the doorbell to ring…” Helmuth Mainz wrote two years later. On 2 Sept. 1942, the parents-in-law Berta and Hugo Bacharach as well as Anita’s mother-in-law were deported to Westerbork, probably as a reaction to the children going underground. The children received no further sign of life from the Bacharach parents. Today we know that immediately upon their arrival, they were deported further to Auschwitz and murdered there, whereas Claire Oettinger was transported to Bergen-Belsen, perishing there in Mar. 1945.

In Oct. 1942, Helmuth Mainz, by virtue of his membership in the Jewish Community maintaining contacts to the "Jews’ council” ("Joodsche Raad”) founded in 1941, managed to prevent one more time his mother being deported.

However, in Mar. 1943, Helene Mainz was taken to the "Schauburg,” formerly a popular theater, in the course of an evening police raid. Young people and old, unmarried persons and families with children, orphans tracked down in their hiding places, all of them were meticulously registered there. Many had to spend more than a day crammed in a row of folding chairs in the extremely overcrowded theater auditorium, before things continued toward the unknown. Helene Mainz spent only one night there. The next day, the journey first went on a guarded streetcar to the train station and then onward to Westerbork by train. She reached the camp clearly weakened, physically and psychologically collapsed. Her daughter, Anita Oettinger, who arrived there with her family one month later, already had to visit her mother in the camp hospital. The persons having gone underground, Anita, Hans Norbert, and Martin had been discovered and were initially committed to a prison in Amsterdam and deported further shortly afterward.

On 26 May 1943, Helmuth Mainz and his family arrived in Westerbork. Helmuth Mainz described the stay in Westerbork in detail, though one must take into consideration that this happened only after his stay in Bergen-Belsen and that in this comparison perhaps he retrospectively saw some aspects somewhat too positively. In summary, he stated at one point, "If it had not been for the transports to Poland departing almost every week, the stay in Westerbork would definitely have been bearable. Most people coming to Westerbork managed to settle in well with a bit of good will.” The new arrivals were quartered in large barracks, with hardly any privacy. However, they also met up with many friends and acquaintances. The inmates did not have to wear prison clothing and they could move freely within the camp.

As Helmuth Mainz mentions, once a week, on Tuesday to be specific, a train made up of cattle cars departed "for Poland.” Every Monday, people were in great fear of being called up to go on such a transport. However, about 4,000 inmates of the camp had in their possession "certificates,” papers entitling them to be exchanged with Germans interned in "hostile” foreign countries, for instance, in Palestine, which was a British mandate. Alternatively, they had entry papers for countries overseas. The Mainz and Oettinger families were among the latter.

The medical care on which Helene Mainz depended was described by her son as good "in the context of what was possible.” The necessary medications were available and "required operations were carried out by a first-rate surgeon in the modern operating room on a daily basis.”

However, for Anita and Helmuth’s mother Helene, the nursing available in the hospital did not suffice. She would have needed more intensive and individual care but the visiting hours were short and the children had to work, thus not having the necessary time to give fresh heart to her. In the winter, a distant female relative was able to care for her more intensively, and her condition improved a little. Then, however, the transport to Bergen-Belsen was ordered. It was scheduled for 26 Nov. 1943, then suddenly canceled, even though the train made up of passenger cars, in contrast to the cattle cars heading to the East, was already on standby at the train station. The "travelers” had to return to their quarters with bag and baggage. Thus, the Mainz family spent the turn of the year still in Westerbork.

Eventually, on 11 Jan. 1944, a train with 1,024 prisoners in eleven passenger cars left the Netherlands. Helene Mainz was transported in a car declared an ambulance car, though not equipped as such.

Helmuth Mainz reports that he went on the journey in high spirits because he was convinced of the exchange materializing. The family of his sister remained behind and followed on 2 February on the next transport.

The train was overcrowded, with ten persons having to find room in one compartment, and since they were allowed to take along an unlimited amount of luggage, the aisles were blocked with luggage. The train traveled at night. In the moonlight, the passengers saw the first damages through war in Germany when passing through Bremen. In Soltau, the train was held up until daybreak, then continuing onward to Bergen-Belsen on narrow-gauge railroad tracks. The Hamburg residents knew the area around Soltau from outings in the past.
In Bergen, they all had to line up in fives, flanked by SS men, and march to the camp on foot for two hours. Like all sick and weak persons, Helene Mainz was transported in on a truck primarily intended for the luggage. "On the way, we passed one big modern barracks after another. The entire area seemed to have been transformed into one large-scale military camp and exercise ground.” To this very day, one still gets the same impression when approaching the Bergen-Belsen memorial site.

In her book entitled Star Children (Dutch original: Sterrekinderen; German: Sternkinder) which she wrote in 1946, Clara Asscher-Pinkhof calls Westerbork a "star wasteland” and Bergen-Belsen a "star hell.” In doing so, she captures very well the difference between the two camps, which emerges from Helmuth Mainz’ account as well. To be sure, the so-called exchange camp in Bergen-Belsen was not an extermination camp but intended as a transit place. However, there were no longer any freedoms as there had been in Westerbork. The quartering in barracks, women and children separate from the men, was far more primitive, the sanitary conditions inhuman. The inmates had to perform hard labor. Hunger was the dominant problem and often the only topic of conversation. People took guesses at what the next watery soup would taste like or they told each other about meals in better times. Added to this were the cold winter temperatures in the barely heated barracks.

The Jews from the Netherlands were not required to wear prison clothing in the part of the camp in which they were quartered, but they did have to attach the "Jews’ star” ("Judenstern”) on their own clothing. This is the origin of the designation "star camp” for this subcamp.

In the mornings, at noon, and in the evenings, a roll call took place. "Everyone line up!” the order resounded through the camp, and the prisoners had to line up in rows of five in a large rectangle, and then the roll call began until the number was correct. This might drag on for hours until the inmates, completely weakened, were allowed either to go back to work or return to the barracks. Sick persons could remain in their barracks and were counted there.

For Helene Mainz, her son managed to arrange, by going to a lot of trouble, to be taken to the "hospital.” He describes the "hospital” where his mother was to spend the last six weeks of her life: "If the sick person has the great fortune to be admitted, he or she is taken to one of the spacious halls, where the patients are quartered just as they are in the barracks, in two beds above each other. The food provisions are also the same as in the general camp. In exceptional cases, seriously ill patients receive a bit of milk pudding or soup. There is a great lack of nursing supplies. For 80 patients, initially there is only one chamber pot, and the night stool – a sick barracks does not have a toilet at all – consists of a barrel with a lid used by 50 patients, night and day, women and men together! Initially, medications were not available at all, later in very sparse supply, as were dressing materials. … The Jewish doctors working in the hospital did everything they could but their capacities to assist were very limited under the prevailing circumstances, especially as the medical officer, just like the camp commandant, remained unapproachable in the face of any complaints.”

Helene Mainz did not recover anymore. Her son writes, "29 Feb. 1944: Gray and black clouds are lingering over the parade ground. A cold easterly wind blows over the field, swirling snowflakes across the expanse. You do not see any human being anywhere around. From the barbed wire gate of the specially fenced hospital, a wooden open-framed cart moves slowly through the sand. A soldier, with a pipe in his mouth, walks next to it, driving the horses on. On the vehicle, otherwise used to transport camp refuse, sits a black coffin, made out of rough boards. With a friend, the old rabbi de Vries from Harlem, as the only escort, I follow this sad funeral procession. I am paying my last respects to my mother!”

Helmuth Mainz, put on the list with his wife and daughters at the very last minute, was among the 222 persons actually allowed to travel to Palestine as exchange prisoners on 30 June 1944. In his account, he describes in detail the ten-day journey overland in luxurious passenger trains with stopovers in Vienna and Istanbul all the way to Haifa.

His sister Anita and her son survived as well. On 23 Apr. 1945, they were liberated by Soviet troops from one of three trains scheduled to take exchange prisoners to Theresienstadt even shortly before the end of the war. Her husband, Norbert Oettinger, had perished in Nov. 1944. He had not been able to cope with the harsh prison conditions. His mother, Claire Oettinger, died in Mar. 1945, one month before the liberation.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Christa Fladhammer

Quellen und Literatur: 1; 2; 8; StaH 314- 15 F 1612 und F1616; StaH 351 11 070911 und 150300; StaH 231-7 A1 Bd.46. HR A 1124;StaH 213 – 13 Z384; Wiener Library/Yadvashem P:III.i. (Holland) No. 722 / 02/601, Bericht von Helmuth Mainz (hier insbesondere die Seiten: 3,6,9,20, 22, 24f, 27, 29, 30ff, 36ff, 50ff ,61, 80f); joodsmonument.nl/person/528462/en; joodsmonument.nl/person/543975/en; joodsmonument.nl/person/456968/en; www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch; www.hollandscheschouwburg.nl/geschiedenis /www.uni-muenster.de/NiederlandeNet/nl-wissen/geschichte/vertiefung/judenverfolgung/index.html; A.N. Oppenheim, The Chosen People, The Story of the 222 Transport from Bergen-Belsen to Palestine, London/Portland 1996; Clara Asscher- Pinkhof, Sternkinder, Hamburg 2011; Frank Caestecker, Jewish Refugee Aid in Belgium and the Netherlands and the flight from Nazi Germany 1938 – 1940, in: "Wer bleibt, opfert seine Jahre, vielleicht sein Leben" Deutsch Juden 1938 – 1940 Hrsg. Susanne Heim, Beate Meyer und Francis R.Nicosia, Göttingen 2010; Peter Schulze, Die Halberstädter Kaufmanns- und Unternehmerfamilie Hirsch, Bd. 8 der Reihe Juden in Halberstadt, Halberstadt 2004, sowie telefonsiche Auskunft von Peter Schulze; Stiftung niedersächsische Gedenkstätten, Bergen – Belsen, Katalog der Daueraustellung, Göttingen 2009.
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