Search for Names, Places and Biographies

David Lazarus
© Privatbesitz

David Lazarus * 1889

Düsternstraße (vormals Nr. 13/15) (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
DAVID LAZARUS
JG. 1889
VERHAFTET 1938
BUCHENWALD
TOT AN DEN HAFTFOLGEN
6.2.1944

David Lazarus, born on 27 Jan. 1889 in Hamburg, died on 6 Feb. 1944 in Hamburg of the effects of imprisonment

Düsternstrasse 18/Alter Steinweg 1 (Düsternstrasse 13/15)

David Lazarus was a son of the Jewish married couple Louis Lazarus (born in 1843) and Friederike, née Schwabe (born on 3 Oct. 1848). He was born on 27 Jan. 1889 in his parents’ home at 2nd Elbstrasse 38 (from 1900 onward, Elbstrasse 69, today Neanderstrasse). His father was a merchant, just like his father Raphael Lazarus. When David was seven years old, his father died of a stroke on 13 Apr. 1896, at the age of 52. Friederike Lazarus apparently raised her children on her own. The widow lived in the former Gängeviertel at Speckstrasse 44 when she passed away on 3 June 1922.

After his school years, David Lazarus decided first on a trade occupation – he became a metal lathe operator. On 23 May 1914, he married the non-Jewish woman Elsa Ida Reinholdt; the daughter of the shoemaker Fritz Reinholdt and Ida, née Pries, had been born on 16 Jan. 1892. Both had lived at Marienstrasse 26 (from 1940 Jan-Valkenburg-Strasse) at the time of the wedding.

David Lazarus was not a member of the Jewish Community. His and Ida’s five children, Erna Elfriede (born on 8 Mar. 1912), Maria Luise (born on 2 July 1913, died on 20 Dec. 1915), Hildegard (born on 6 Aug. 1918), Irmgard (born on 6 Sept. 1920), Karl Heinz (born on 11 Aug. 1925) and Helga (born on 9 Mar. 1928) were not raised in the Jewish faith.

Two of David’s sisters also had non-Jewish spouses: Henriette Thyssen, née Lazarus (born on 17 Sept. 1882) married the metal lathe operator Carl Ludwig Thyssen (born on 28 Dec. 1879, died on 17 Aug. 1936) in 1903. Helene Schulze, née Lazarus, (born on 29 June 1884, died on 5 May 1958), was married in her second marriage to Willy Max Schulze (born on 11 Jan. 1886 in Neustadt/Saxony). She left the Jewish Community in Hamburg in June 1933. The older brother Adolph Lazarus (born on 1 June 1880) had married the non-Jewish woman Anna Sophie Helmine Ringel (born on 26 Aug. 1887) in 1908. The assimilation process continued in the generation of their children, who later married or became engaged to non-Jewish partners.

In 1924, David Lazarus became a partner in the Köhler & Krüger distribution company, Bücher- und Zeitschriften en gros, specializing in the wholesale of books and magazines, until he was excluded from professional life because of his Jewish descent. His wife Elsa reported on this: "We supplied street vendors and shops with newspapers, magazines and books, later we leased advertising pillars from the city, where we set up newspaper stands. We had 30 columns. My mother had already run a newspaper stand on Rathausmarkt. In 1933, the contract expired and it was not renewed because my husband was Jewish. A newspaper center was formed, my husband was rejected as a partner, and we went bankrupt.”

The family had to give up the apartment at Marienthalerstrasse 47 in Hamburg-Hamm and Elsa Lazarus then took on the task of supporting the family. She sold part of her household and opened a bread shop with the proceeds on the ground floor of the house at Brauerknechtgraben 53; they moved into an apartment on the second floor. At first, the business also went quite well "until my husband’s Jewish descent became known, at which point the clientele gradually stayed away.” After an extended period of unemployment, David Lazarus found again a job as a lathe operator at a shipyard.

Like many Jewish men, David Lazarus was arrested in the course of the November Pogrom on 9/10 Nov. 1938 and taken to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. From there, he was committed to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was held until 14 Dec. 1938. However, Elsa Lazarus reported that her husband was also in the Buchenwald concentration camp and was only released home in Apr. 1939 in very poor health and with severe pneumonia. Later, he worked again in a small workshop as a lathe operator, but he did not recover from the health impairments he had suffered during his imprisonment.

According to the racial laws of the Nazi state, marriages like those of Elsa and David Lazarus were defined as "privileged mixed marriages” ("privilegierte Mischehen”), their children as "crossbreeds of the first degree” ("Mischlinge ersten Grades”). David Lazarus and his sisters Helene Schulze and Henriette Thyssen, as well as his brother Adolph Lazarus were therefore spared from deportations to the east.

Henriette Thyssen died on 30 July 1942 in the auxiliary hospital at Weidenstieg 29, following a traffic accident. She had resided at 31 Neustädter Strasse until her death. The brother Adolph Lazarus lived with his family at Gärtnerstrasse 130; he died on 9 Dec. 1942.

Helene Schulze resided at Habichtsweg 2 in Barmbek. She fled with her family to Neustadt/Saxony in 1943, where she pretended to be an "Aryan” in her husband’s hometown.

That same year, in July 1943, Elsa and David Lazarus were bombed out at Düsternstrasse 13/15, where they had lived since 1936. They were accommodated by their daughter Erna at Grossneumarkt 26. At the beginning of Dec. 1943, the couple had to move into the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Rappstrasse 15. Two months later, on 31 Jan. 1944, David Lazarus was admitted to the Israelite Hospital, where he died of pneumonia on 6 Feb. 1944, shortly after his fifty-fifth birthday.

His daughters, the sisters Erna, Hildegard, and Irmgard had established their own households. They were engaged, but could no longer realize their marriage plans as "half-Jews” after the introduction of the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” ("Gesetz zum Schutz des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre”), one of the Nuremberg Laws dated 15 Sept. 1935. Their applications for marriages had been rejected by the Reich Ministry of the Interior in Berlin. They were summoned to the Gestapo, which blackmailed them to lift their engagements. Their children were born out of wedlock and remained unprovided for after their fathers had been drafted into the German Wehrmacht. Erna Lazarus signed the dissolution of her engagement only after she had spent three months in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”). After the birth of her second child in 1940, she was to be sent to a concentration camp, but was able to elude arrest. Her sister Hildegard escaped deportation in 1945 with the help of her "mother-in-law.” After the end of the war, Erna and Hildegard married the fathers of their children. Irmgard’s fiancé did not return from World War II. Elsa Lazarus remained on Rappstrasse until the end of the war, and she died in Altona on 17 Jan. 1964.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 351-11 AfW 11678 (Lazarus, David); StaH 351-11 AfW 14237 (Lazarus, Elsa); StaH 351-11 AfW 37299 (Kaläne, Erna); StaH 351-11 AfW 42040 (Garcke, Hildegard); StaH 351-11 AfW 43399 (Kasch, Irmgard); StaH 351-11 AfW 5891 (Thyssen, Henriette); StaH 351-11 AfW 7533 (Schulz, Helene); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2033 u 4530/1882; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2195 u 494/1889; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 396 u 611/1896; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8660 u 529/1908; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3241 u 332/1914; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8182 u 744/1942; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8445 u 653/1942; StaH 242-1 II, Abl. 13 ältere Gefangenenkartei Männer; Auskunft aus der Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen von Monika Liebscher, E-Mail vom 2.8.2013; www.jüdischer-friedhof-altona.de/hhfriedhoefe.html (Zugriff 11.6.2016).