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Cerline Kristianpoller (née Jacobsohn) * 1873

Schloßmühlendamm 30 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
CERLINE KRISTIANPOLLER
GEB. JACOBSOHN
JG. 1873
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
1942 TREBLINKA
ERMORDET

Cerline (Lina) Kristianpoller, née Jacobsohn, born 30 Apr. 1873 in Harburg, deported 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, 21 Sep. 1942 to Treblinka

Schlossmühlendamm 30

Cerline Jacobsohn was the second-youngest child of the Jewish couple Charlotte and Moritz Jacobsohn. Her father was the owner of Jacobsohn Brothers, a store for manufactured goods and fashions. Her mother was originally from Schwerin. All of Cerline’s siblings – Richard (*12 Dec. 1863), Carl (*6 Oct. 1865), Ina (*28 Mar. 1867), Clara (*18 Mar. 1868), John (*2 Jan. 1869), Helene (*12 Oct. 1870), Rosa (*15 Mar. 1872), and Hermann (*12 Jan. 1875) – were also born in Harburg, and, like their sister, grew up in the second half of the 19th century in the budding industrial area. Her brother John and sister Clara both died as children, and were buried at the Harburg Jewish Cemetery on the Schwarzenberg.

Her father, Mortiz Jacobsohn, was not only a respected businessman, but also the chairman of the Harburg Jewish Community from 1877 until his death on 6 June 1915. In the years before the First World War, he, like other leading community representatives, strongly advocated good relationships between members of the community and their non-Jewish neighbors. This task was made easier through the increasing secularization of the Christian upper middle class, and, even more, through the workers’ movement, which strongly influenced the world view of the majority of the population in Harburg. The peaceful co-existence developed positively, and reached its apex at the outbreak of the First World War, when Jewish soldiers, in Harburg as well as everywhere else, enthusiastically took to the field alongside their Christian comrades.

Lina Kristianpoller spent the war years with her husband Siegmund, whom she had married on 26 December 1911, in Gdansk. Their children Werner and Arnold were born there, on 24 November 1913 and 26 July 1916 respectively. When Siegmund Kristianpoller died in 1930, Lina and the children returned to Harburg.

There, the peaceful co-existence of the Jewish minority with the non-Jewish majority came to an abrupt end three years later. Anti-Semitism, which had previously only been seen in isolated, short-lived incidents, was made state doctrine by the Nazis. One of the first steps toward pressuring the Jews out of German economic life was the so-called defensive boycott of Jewish businesses, doctors, and lawyers, which the Nazis had organized for Saturday, 1 April 1933. Two days earlier the Harburg municipal authorities had resolved to terminate further cooperation with 54 "Jewish businesses,” and published a list of the businesses’ names and addresses. Jacobsohn Brothers on Mühlenstraße (present-day Schlossmühlendamm) was among them. This list proved useful for the Nazi Party in Harburg. On 1 April, SA members took up position in front of the Jewish businesses, holding placards and distributing leaflets encouraging shoppers to buy only in "German stores.”

Despite this and many other hindrances, many regular customers remained loyal to the Jacobsohn Brothers clothing store over the next years, and Carl Jacobsohn, who had taken over the business when his father died, continued to achieve a profit. All future plans came to a halt, however, when the Decree Eliminating Jews from German Economic Life, issued on 12 November 1938, forced him to sell the business.

Lina Kristianpoller had become a member of the Hamburg German-Israelitic Religious Community. She was exempt from paying religious community taxes, as she had no assets and no income. She received financial support from her brother Hermann and her two sisters Helene Kalman and Rosa Zinner, with whom she later lived when she gave up – probably not of her free will – her own apartment on Grindelallee. When she left her apartment she had to leave a large part of her furniture and household goods behind. After living in rented rooms on Werderstraße for a short time, she moved in with her siblings Hermann, Helene, and Rosa on Schlüterstraße. The last address at which they all lived together was Bundesstraße 43, the Jewish residential trust founded by John R. Warburg in 1891. Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, ownership of this trust was transferred to the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, and it was declared a "Jews’ house” in 1942.

This home for the elderly was quickly overfilled. 126 residents were deported to the Auschwitz Concentration and Extermination Camp or to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in July 1942 alone. On 16 July 1942, Cerline Kristianpoller was registered as a new resident within the walls of this old garrison town, named for the Austrian Empress Maria Theresia. It was not without reason that Theresienstadt was later called "death’s waiting room.” As a part of the "Final Solution,” the camp was only a layover on the way to extermination. Between 9 January 1942 and 28 October 1944, around 88,000 people were sent from there to camps in the East. Cerline Kristianpoller was one of them. After two months in Theresienstadt, she was put aboard a transport to the Treblinka Extermination Camp in Poland.

Between July 1942 and August 1943, approximately 900,000 people were gassed to death in this "factory of death” north-east of Warsaw. As soon as the trains arrived there, the "passengers” were sent to the showers, which were in truth gas chambers, and locked in. Carbon monoxide was pumped through the ventilation system, and led to an agonizing death within at least 25 minutes. The bodies were dumped into mass graves, over which grass was planted in order to hide the traces and prevent anyone from knowing the identities of the dead and how they were murdered. The Stolperstein for Cerline Kristianpoller is a testament to the fact that at least this part of the Nazis’ plan failed.

Cerline’s son Arnold Moritz Kristianpoller was also a victim of the Holocaust. He was deported to Lodz on 25 October 1942. Her siblings Helene Kalman, Rosa Zinner, and Hermann Jacobsohn were on the transport that took 926 Jews from the Hanover Train Station in the Hamburg Port to Theresienstadt on 15 July 1942. Helene Kalman died there on 30 September 1942. Hermann Jacobsohn and Rosa Zinner, like their sister, were gassed in the Treblinka Extermination Camp.

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: Hamburger jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Gedenkbuch, Jürgen Sielemann, Paul Flamme (Hrsg.), Hamburg 1995; Gedenkbuch. Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933–1945, Bd. I-IV, Bundesarchiv (Hrsg.), Koblenz 2006; Yad Vashem. The Central Database of Shoa Victims´ Names: www.yadvashem.org; Theresienstädter Gedenkbuch. Die Opfer der Judentransporte aus Deutschland nach Theresienstadt 1942–1945, Prag 2000; Staatsarchiv Hamburg 552-1, jüdische Gemeinden, Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde Hamburg; Staatsarchiv Hamburg, jüdische Gemeinden, 992e, Deportationslisten; Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 351-11, AfW, Abl. 2008/1, 2920 Lina Kristjanpoller; Harburger Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, Bezirksamt und Bezirksversammlung Harburg (Hrsg.), Hamburg-Harburg 2002; Eberhard Kändler/Gil Hüttenmeister, Der jüdische Friedhof Harburg, Hamburg 2004; Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle, Die "Judendeportationen" aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1945, Wiesbaden 2005; Lexikon des Holocaust, Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.), München 2002; Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel, Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. München 2008; Wilhelm Mosel, Wegweiser zu den ehemaligen jüdischen Stätten in den Stadtteilen Eimsbüttel und Rotherbaum, Deutsch-Jüdische Gesellschaft Hamburg (Hrsg.), Hamburg 1985.