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Bertha Uhink (née Casper) * 1887

Münzstraße 11 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hammerbrook)

HIER WOHNTE
BERTHA UHINK
GEB. CASPER
JG. 1887
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
LODZ

Bertha-Betti Uhink, née Casper, divorced Nussbaum, born 12/1/1887 in Magdeburg, deported to Lodz on 10/25/1941

Last address in Hamburg: Münzstrasse 11

"There are no payments to me that do not come from the monthly mortgage interest ... of 200 RM. Nor do I receive any gratuitous payments from a Jewish Religious Association, to which I have no connections, as I belong to the Roman Catholic Church.” In her letter to the "Chief President of the Currency Office in Hamburg”, Betti Uhink desperately defended herself against the imposts of the Chief Financed Administrator unacceptable to her:

With proven monthly expenses for her subsistence of 215 RM, he set her monthly allowance at only 200 RM. She was in a financial dilemma from which she thought she could only free herself with the help of an "Aryan” attorney instead of a Jewish "consulent.” That she was allowed to mandate the Attorney Dr. Friedrich Schulte was in the interest of the Chief Finance Administrator, who considered "the administration of the assets by a Jew as inappropriate” – the issue was dispute with a non-Jewish mortgage creditor.

Bertha Uhink came from Magdeburg, where was born on December 1st, 1887 as Bertha-Betti Casper; a sister still lived there. Nothing is known About the circumstances that brought her to Hamburg. She was first married to a man named Nussbaum, her second husband Carl Uhink was not Jewish. Both marriages remained childless. The assets Karl Uhink left his widow as provision for her old age were exclusively mortgages, the largest one in Magdeburg. She could "just barely make do” with the 200 RM per month in interest, Bertha Uhink. To pay her "levy on Jewish assets”, her non-Jewish creditors were obliged to transfer large sums of their due mortgage instalments directly to the Finance Agency. This reduced Bertha Uhink’s income, while taxes and contributions increased and she was unable to unlock further assets. The attorney arranged for the conversion of the mortgage into an annuity and the provision of the sum of 500 RM made available by an application to the Chief Finance Administrator.

Bertha Uhink finished her first letter to the Chief finance Administrator of June 24th, 1939 with the request "not to add arduousness on top of great sorrow” by the settlement of her financial affairs and signed "most respectfully, Frau Karl Uhink Wwe." In the following letters, she replaced her husband’s first name with a "B.”, later with her full first name, and only in official forms she added "Sara.” Bertha Uhink had no understanding for the Nazi, for whose predecessor her husband had fought at the front in World War I, the state, who not only turned her, a Catholic, into a Jew, but also forced her into becoming a taxpaying member of the Jewish Religious Association. Nonetheless, she had to submit to this state’s demands, but, with the help of an attorney, fought to maintain her claim to the space due to her. Thus, she succeeded in being allowed to stay in her apartment and acquire the prescribed hearing-aid as well as a new pair of glasses "with case” from her money. Her handwriting remained sure and clear until her last letter.

On October 24th, 1941, Bertha-Betti Uhink followed the call of the Gestapo to the "evacuation” to the Lodz ghetto the following day, where her trace is lost. On February 17th, 1944, the Magdeburg district court deleted the remaining mortgage note in the land register, "because the death of the creditor – widow Betty Sara Uhink née Kasper (sic) – is proven.” It is interesting and also shocking that, in 1944, German civil authorities such as a district court obviously assumed that the deported German Jews had been physically annihilated.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2019
© Hildegard Thevs mit Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 5; 8; StaH, 213-13, 11688; 332-5 (Standesämter), 4397/74/1928; 522-1, Jüd. Gemeinden, 992 e 2 Deportationslisten; Stadtarchiv Magdeburg, Geburtsurkunden 2845/1886, 3052/1887; Heiratsurkunden 1086/1910, 1157/1911, Adressverzeichnis; Bezirksarchiv Berlin-Schmargendorf, Heiratsurkunden Uhink 165/1920 und Rosenthal; Mitteilungen zu Getto Lodz von Fritz Neubauer, Bielefeld, 2010, zu Magdeburg von Gertraud Zachhuber, 2013.
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