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Martin Perlstein (o. J.)
© Algemeen Rijksarchief/Brüssel

Martin Perlstein * 1889

Mohlenhofstraße 2 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg-Altstadt)

HIER WOHNTE
MARTIN PERLSTEIN
JG. 1889
FLUCHT 1938
BELGIEN
INTERNIERT 1940
SAINT CYPRIEN / DRANCY
DEPORTIERT 1942
ERMORDET IN
AUSCHWITZ

Martin Perlstein, born 27 Dec. 1889 in Berlin, fled to Belgium, deported 4 Sept. 1942 to Auschwitz

Mohlenhofstraße 2

Martin Perlstein was born in Berlin, the third of five sons, to the Jewish carton factory owner Max Perlstein (born in 1852) and his wife Bertha, née Jacob (born in 1853). His father came from the Russian town of Białystok (today Poland), his mother was a native of Berlin. Martin Perlstein attended school in Berlin until 1908 when he graduated with a high school diploma. While he wanted to study language and literature and become a head teacher, his parents did not grant his wish due to his extreme near-sightedness. Hence Martin began a commercial apprenticeship at the machine engineering company Orenstein & Koppel, where his older brother Arthur had already received training. He built on that training from 1912 to 1914 in the Belgian city of Liège (Lüttich) before returning to the company where he had his original apprenticeship. Evidently Martin Perlstein moved from Berlin to Hamburg, to Heinrich-Hertz-Straße 19, for professional reasons. In 1919 he took over management of the local branch of the company Walter Hoehne AG at Ernst-Merckstraße 12-14. Hoehne AG, with its headquarters in Berlin-Charlottenburg, sold light railway materials like railway superstructures, railroad ties and locomotives.

In Osnabrück on 24 Dec. 1920, Martin Perlstein married Julie Meyer (born 1 Sept. 1894) who also came from a Jewish family. Their daughter Marianne Eva was born on 12 Feb. 1923. The following year the Perlsteins left the German-Israelite Community. The couple divorced on 28 July 1926. Julie Perlstein and her daughter initially moved to Berlin, as of 1933 she was back living in Osnabrück with her widowed father, the merchant Louis Meyer (born 9 May 1855, died 29 Dec. 1933). Their last address was at Kaiserwall 14 (today Hasetorwall) as lodgers. Her mother Cäcilie Meyer, née Samkowy (born 24 Dec. 1875 in Russia, died 9 July 1929), was an author and editor of the Housewife Magazine Women’s World. Julie Perlstein managed to immigrate to England in Jan. 1936, where her daughter Marianne had previously been taken in.

Martin Perlstein was a member of a German-French group for mutual understanding and was generally interested in culture. He attended events and lectures. His reasons for visiting his brother Arthur in South Africa were not purely personal. Arthur had become the managing director of the company Orenstein & Koppel in Johannesburg in 1911. Arthur Perlstein had lived in South Africa since 1903 and become self-employed with his Société Commerciale de L’Afrique de Süd-Africa, abbreviated as SCASA. The brothers also made plans for a joint business venture that later came to pass. After a brief stint as a sales representative for a vacuum cleaner company, Martin Perlstein began in about 1931 to build his own operation for selling light rail materials at Ferdinandstraße 35. As of 1936 he ran his business and lived at Mohlenhofstraße 2. He maintained a warehouse in Eidelstedt with a rail connection to the Altona-Kaltenkirchner railway.

In 1930, Martin Perlstein met Gertrud Fehrs who was not Jewish. They became engaged in May 1932.

Gertrud Fehrs was born on 23 Feb. 1905, the daughter of the master locksmith and merchant Carl Fehrs and his wife Frieda, née Köster, in Neumünster at Roonstraße 11.

As she later wrote, they could not marry quickly because the general economic crisis meant her fiancée’s company was not earning enough money to allow a marriage, according to the thinking of the time. Martin Perlstein also had to support his mother Bertha financially and he paid child support for his daughter Marianne.

Martin Perlstein did not benefit from the economic upturn in 1933 when the National Socialists assumed power since the large, established construction companies did not give him contracts as a Jew. In 1935 he hit upon the idea of transferring his company on paper to his friend and employee whom he knew from the free mason lodge, as Gertrud Fehrs recalled. All business transactions then ran under the name Walter Lehnardt & Co. and were intentionally kept within limits so as not to attract attention. No change was made in the trade registry, only the stationary and company documents showed Walter Lehnardt as the owner. They took on no contracts from unfamiliar companies and "although that camouflage was extremely primitive and equally dangerous for everyone involved, it immediately had a positive effect.” Yet 1935 was the year the "Nuremberg Laws” came into force. Their wedding which had been postponed for financial reasons was now prohibited by the "blood protection law” that banned future "mixed marriages”. So as not to endanger one another, the fiancées only met in secret at the home of a teacher friend at Mettlerkampsweg 10.

In Mar. or Apr. 1938, Martin Perlstein was warned by a business partner that his "cover” had been blown. He was able to sell part of his inventory at the time, which consisted of five locomotives, about 750 tipping wagons, track systems, several thousand ties and the accompanying material, to an associated company. On 15 July 1938 Martin Perlstein left Hamburg and immigrated to Belgium via the Netherlands. On 15 Dec. 1938 he registered with the Woluwe Saint Lambert Community on Avenue de Juillet in Brussels. In Brussels the Perlstein brothers were able to realize their professional dream. Martin took over the branch of the Société Commerciale de L’Afrique de Süd-Africa at Avenue des Cerisiers 110 which also bought and sold light rail materials along with mining equipment for the gold mines in South Africa. He quickly re-established himself as a businessman in Belgium. In Dec. 1938, he took in his brother Richard (born 10 Feb. 1891) and his wife Edith and son Rudolf. They had fled Düsseldorf and immigrated to the USA in Feb. 1940.

Gertrud Fehrs moved out of her apartment at Wulfsdorferweg 84 in Hamburg-Volksdorf, where she lived until 1939, and into an apartment at Hansastraße 40. Under the guise of being the secretary of a friend who was a businessman, she travelled to Belgium three times to see her fiancée there. Her longest visit lasted from June to Sept. 1939. However Gertrud Fehrs was unable to obtain a permit to stay in Belgium.

On 10 May 1940 following attacks by the German Wehrmacht on Belgium, Martin Perlstein was arrested by the Belgian government as a hostile foreigner and deported to France. In the south of France he was first interned at the camp Saint-Cyprien near Perpignan. From there he was sent to Gurs camp late in Oct. 1940 where he met his brother. The businessman Hermann Perlstein (born 6 Mar. 1883) and his wife Olga, née Gerson (born 3 June 1983 in Leipzig) were deported along with about 200 other people on 22 Oct. 1940 from Mannheim to Gurs.

Martin Perlstein was able to correspond from the camp through a connection in Switzerland. Gertrud Fehrs received her first letter in Oct. 1940. With the help of an acquaintance and her son who had already immigrated to the USA, Gertrud was able to send money to the camp on a regular basis. On 9 Dec. 1941 Martin Perlstein drew up his will in Pau. He described Gertrud as his wife, however he did not give her last name in order to protect her. Gertrud received his last letter dated 27 Dec. 1941.

Martin Perlstein stayed at the hospital in Pau from 26 Aug. to 1 Sept. 1942. From there he was taken to Drancy camp and four days later, on 4 Sept. 1942, deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the 28th transport and killed.

His brother Hermann and sister-in-law Olga were forced to leave the camp on 28 Aug. 1942 on the 25th transport to Auschwitz.

His younger brother Eugen Perlstein (born 14 Apr. 1885) was also killed in Auschwitz – along with his wife Else, née Ritzewoller (born 13 May. 1888 in Borna, Leipzig) and his son Rolf Max (born 26 Oct. 1930). They were deported from Berlin on 4 Mar. 1943.

It should not go unmentioned that Gertrud Fehrs’ own fears and worries did not keep her from forgetting the plight of others. She sent packages of food to the Minsk Ghetto which were urgently needed by her former neighbors the Rosenbergs at Hansastraße 40, as reported by their then 18-year-old son Heinz Rosenberg after the end of the war, the only member of his family to survive. He wrote in his memoir Jahre des Schreckens (Years of Terror), "(…) Finally it was time to pack our suitcases and backpacks. Ms. Fehrs, the neighbor above us, gave us warm clothing, sturdy shoes and as much food as she could find. She told us she thought our transport would take us to the east and we would need warm clothing there.”

In 1951 Gertrud Fehrs was able to get the Hamburg Administration of Justice to declare her relationship with Martin Perlstein a legal marriage, retrospectively as of 27 Dec. 1935. Gertrud Perlstein-Fehrs died in Hamburg on 25 Sept. 1975.

Stumbling Stones at Hansastraße 40 bear witness to the Rosenberg Family (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de).

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 5; 8; 9; StaH 351-11 AfW 11798 (Perlstein, Martin); StaH 351-11 AfW 30117 (Perlstein, Gertrud); StaH 351-11 AfW 45466 (Preston, Marian Eva); StaH 332-4 Nr. 573 (Aufsicht über die Standesämter, nachträglich anerkannte Ehen); Jüdisches Deportations- und Widerstandsmuseum Mechelen, Dossin-Kaserne, Belgien, Auskunft von Dorien Styven, E-Mail vom 29.8.2016; Auskunft von Filip Strubbe, Algemeen Rijksarchief/Belgien; Algemeen Rijksarchief/Belgien, Ausländerakte Nr. 1.003.027 (Perlstein Martin); Memorial de la Shoah, Musée, Centre de Documentation, http://bdi.memorialdelashoah.org/internet/jsp/core/MmsRedirector.jsp?id=45120&type=VICTIM (Zugriff 14.8.2013); Gemeindeblatt der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde zu Hamburg, 1925, Nr. 4, http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/cm/periodical/titleinfo/5444690, (Zugriff 8.4.2015); Berliner Adressbuch für das Jahr 1889, http://digital.zlb.de/viewer/image/10089470_1889/891/#topDocAnchor, (Zugriff 10.8.2015); Brümmer: Lexikon der deutschen Dichter und Prosaisten von Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zu Gegenwart, http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/bruemmer_lexikon04_1913?p=450; Junk/Sellmeyer, Stationen, S. 294, S.300; Rosenberg, Schreckens, S. 15.
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