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Abram Weltmann * 1882

Rathausstraße 13 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg-Altstadt)

HIER WOHNTE
ABRAM WELTMANN
JG. 1882
VERHAFTET 1939
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
SACHSENHAUSEN
ERMORDET 15.7.1940

Abram Weltmann, born 8 Nov. 1882 in Odessa, Russia, died 15 July 1940 at Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Rathausstraße 13 (Rathausstraße 4)

Abram Weltmann was born in the port city Odessa on the Black Sea. Back then Odessa belonged to the Russian Tsarist empire (today Ukraine) where there were often antisemitic clashes, like in 1905. Many Jews left the country. One of his brothers immigrated to the USA. Abram Weltmann went to Hamburg. His first entry in the address book shows him in 1909 as the owner of a commission agency at Rathausstraße 4. In 1912 he operated a business buying and selling Russian raw products at the same address. In 1924 he moved his business to the street Hüxter 12 and then ran an import-export business for drugs (pharmaceuticals), vegetables and oilseeds. In addition he was part-owner of the import-export business of Gustav Lüdecke.

Abram Weltmann met Gertrud Zander who was not Jewish. She was working either in his household or at his company. Gertrud Zander was born on 26 July 1896 in Bredow (Drzetowo), a district of the city Stettin (Szczecin, Poland). She had lived in Hamburg since 1918 and had completed training as a nanny.

The couple became engaged in 1929 but did not want to marry until he was finished expanding the company. Moreover, Abram Weltmann did not have all the necessary documents required for marriage in Germany. He held a Nansen passport which had been introduced in 1922 as a travel document for stateless refugees and emigrants.

Abram Weltmann employed three staff members and two apprentices.

After the National Socialists assumed power in 1933, his business first slowed then dropped precipitously due to the boycott of Jewish business establishments. His co-owner Gustav Lüdecke left the company in 1934. Abram Weltmann also experienced antisemitism on Rathausstraße. One of his neighbors went out of his way to call him "Jew Weltmann”, persecute and harass him at his office.

To avoid the daily hostilities and conflicts, Gertrud Zander and Abram Weltmann decided to live apart in May 1935, but maintained their relationship and their engagement. Gertrud Zander later reported they had misjudged the situation in Germany. They believed the National Socialists would not stay in power long and intended to hold off on their wedding until the political conditions improved. However the introduction of the "Nuremberg Laws” in Sept. 1935 made their marriage impossible.

Abram Weltmann set himself up in his office with the bare necessities. As his last employee recounted, an employee he could only afford to hire on an hourly basis, he lived there in dreary circumstances. Gertrud Zander frequently visited her fiancée, leaving his office late in the evening.

On 12 Aug. 1939 Abram Weltmann applied for a "clearance certificate” from Hamburg’s tax office. He intended to immigrate to Belgium and reported that he had 100 Reich Marks (RM) in cash and would pay for his emigration with the receivables still owed him of about 700 RM.

When the war broke out on 1 Sept. 1939 and the German Reich invaded Poland, Abram Weltmann was arrested at his office by the Gestapo under the pretext of being a Polish citizen, which he wasn’t. After briefly being detained in Hamburg, he was taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he perished on 15 July 1940. The official cause of death was pneumonia in both lungs. After the death of her fiancée, Gertrud Zander brought her mother to live with her and lived off of renting out rooms. She was bombed out of Rathausstraße in July 1944.

In 1951 Gertrud Zander fought in court for her marriage to Abram Weltmann be declared legal, retrospectively to 1 July 1936. In her proceedings, an acquaintance attested that she was not a National Socialist for the reason alone "that her fiancée was a Jew, for years she listened to foreign radio broadcasts, spread the news, and took bread to foreign prisoners.” She herself stated in her redress of wrongs proceedings, "I am appalled that the death of Abram Weltmann, who was solely a victim of the Nazis, should be brushed aside without the least penance to be found. I am the only survivor who can charge the Hitler regime with being responsible for his death. With his death I have lost everything that I ever owned. He had to die because, like millions of others, he was a Jew, and he was the best of them.”

Abram Weltmann’s gravestone is located at the Jewish Cemetery in Ohlsdorf.

Gertrud Weltmann passed away in Hamburg in Nov. 1968.

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

Stand: April 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quelle: 1; 9; StaH 351-11 AfW 18943 (Weltmann, Gertrud); StaH 332-4 Nr. 501 Aufsicht über die Standesämter, nachträglich anerkannte Ehen; StaH 314-15 OFP R 1939/2955; diverse Hamburger Adressbücher; http://www.jüdischer-friedhof-altona.de, (Zugriff 12.12.2014).
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