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Rosi Wagschal * 1925

Thielbek 1 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
ROSI WAGSCHAL
JG. 1925
"POLENAKTION" 1938
BENSCHEN / ZBASZYN
SCHICKSAL UNBEKANNT

further stumbling stones in Thielbek 1:
Abraham Wagschal, Jacob Isaac Wagschal, Rachella Wagschal

Abraham Wagschal, b. 10.2.1882 in Żmigród, expelled on 10.28.1938 to Zbaszyn, Poland
Jacob Isaac Wagschal, b. 10.11.1910 in Krakow, fled to Poland in 1939, murdered in Auschwitz on 2.24.1943
Rachella/Rahel Wagschal, née Kohane, b. 10.22.1882 in Podlesie Dembowe, expelled on 10.28.1938 to Zbaszyn, Poland
Rosi Wagschal, b. 8.19.1925 in Hamburg, expelled on 10.28.1938 to Zbaszyn, Poland

Thielbek 1 (Großneumarkt 15)

Henry Heinz Hoffmann, b. 9.3.1909 in Leipzig, expelled on 10.28.1938 to Zbaszyn, Poland

Colonnaden 44 (Colonnaden 44-46)

The married couple, Abraham and Rachella Wagschal, were born in what was then Austrian Galicia on virtually the same day. Abraham was born on 21 October 1882 in Żmigród as the son of Jacob Isaac Wagschal and Reisel, née Gross. Rachella was born, the daughter of Lajb Kohane and Lea, née Gewirts, on 22 October 1882 in Podlesie Dembowe. They married on 10 March 1906 in Krakow, where their two older children were also born, the daughter Salomea on 25 October 1908 and Jacob Isaak on 11 October 1910. Heinrich was born on 10 June 1912 in Silesian Bestwina (today, Poland).

Soon thereafter, the family resettled in Hamburg. Initially, Rachella Wagschal ran a fancy goods stores (fashionable accessories) at Ditmar-Koel-Strasse 32, where the family also had its apartment. At the same address, Abraham Wagschal registered a haberdashery and leather goods business on 15 November 1920. On 17 July 1921, their son Willi Sef was born; he died on 21 February 1924, only two years old. Their daughter Rosie was born on 19 August 1925. From 1926, the family lived at Kielerstrasse 76 in the St. Pauli quarter; in 1933, they moved to Grossneumarkt 14 and opened a business featuring "bargains of all sorts,” at House no. 5, near their home. (Today, a postwar structure there is part of Thielbek Strasse.)

Abraham and Rachella Wagschal lived in comfortable and secure middle-class circumstances. Their sons, Jacob and Heinrich, had attended the Talmud Torah School and then received commercial training. Heinrich, who completed an apprenticeship in the Jacob Drucker import-export firm at Hopfenmarkt 11, worked in the hides and furs trade. He remained a merchant’s assistant in the Drucker firm until 1933 when, after the Nazi takeover, he emigrated to the Netherlands.

His brother Jacob finished his apprenticeship in the Jakobsohn & Sons firm, which also was in the import-export business. Later, as a clerical worker, he switched to the Hamburg Playhouse, where he remained until 1936 and was then let go because he was a Jew. From this point on, Jacob worked in his parents’ business.

On 28 October 1938, Abraham and Rachella Wagschal, along with their 13-year old daughter Rosi and approximately a thousand other Hamburg Jews of Polish descent, were arrested and expelled to Poland. According to a decree of the Polish government, the deadline had passed on 1 November 1938 by which time Poles living abroad had to have their Polish citizenship confirmed, which was not a possibility for a Jewish family. Thereby, they became "stateless Eastern European Jews” and ineligible to remain in Germany permanently. On this basis, the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Berlin ordered the expulsion to the border town Zbaszyn (Bentschen), even before the deadline expired.

Their former neighbor, Dorothea Schmidt, recalled after the war that the Wagschal family, on the day of its expulsion, was "loaded on to trucks” in front of the police station no. 10 at Grossneumarkt 16. Jacob Wagschal escaped the expulsion because he was by chance away from home. He took over the social affairs of his parents, dissolved the business, and took care of the necessary formalities in order to send to Poland what his parents had had to leave behind. The goods intended for relocation were stored with a shipping firm. In mid-1939, he followed his family to Poland. The household goods never followed. Jacob Wagschal, according to the death registries, died in Auschwitz-Birkenau on 24 February 1943; the place and date of his deportation are not known.

Jacob’s sister Salomea had worked as a saleswoman and in April 1934 married the commercial clerk, Henry Heinz Hoffmann (see the biographical entry for Lena Salomon). Henry Hoffman was born on 3 September 1909 in Leipzig. He was the oldest son of Munisch Hoffmann (b. 3.6.1881), who was born in Stanisławów (Stanislau) - today, Iwano-Frankiwsk (Ukraine) - in Galicia. His mother Marie Cilly, née Zuer (b. 4.5.1882), came from Leipzig. His parents married there in 1906. In 1918, the couple moved in 1918 to Altona, along with their seven children, and lived on Kleine Gärtnerstrasse, which was later named General-Litzmann-Strasse (and is, today, Stresemannstrasse). In 1937, they lived at Bundesstrasse 31. The Hoffmann family worked in the shoe repair and leather wares industry; they owned several shops in Hamburg and Harburg at Mühlenstrasse 26. Henry Hoffmann led the "Berlin Shoe Repair” branch in Berlin at Valentinskamp 86. The "express shoe establishment,” outfitted with the most modern machinery, had several employees.

Salomea and Henry Hoffmann lived in Hamburg with their son Leo, born on 8 March 1937, at Strasse Colonnaden 44-46. Although Henry was born in Germany, he possessed Polish citizenship through his father. Thus, Henry Hoffmann, his wife Salomea, son Leo, as well as his parents and brothers and sisters, were in the early hours of the morning "dragged out of their beds without warning” by the police and transported to the German-Polish border and expelled.

Salomea Hoffmann reported that, almost without pause, she made it out of the provisional holding camp at Zbaszyn (Bentschen) to Krakow, where she remained until the beginning of the war. Her parents settled in Wieliczka, approximately six miles southeast of Krakow. After the invasion of Poland by the German Armed Forces and their occupation of Krakow in September 1939, Salomea and Henry Hoffmann - by a German decree - had to wear a white armband with a blue star of David. They lost contact with his parents in the spring of 1941, when they had to resettle in the Krakow ghetto located in the Podgórze district of the city. In December 1942, Salomea managed to give her son Leo to a non-Jewish Polish woman. She was separated from her husband in March 1943 during the liquidation of the ghetto. Salomea went to the Plaszow (Płaszów) labor camp in the southeast of Krakow; it was turned into a concentration camp in early 1944, and was put under the command of Commandant Amon Göth (b. 12.11.1908 in Vienna, executed in Krakow on 9.13.1946). He had participated decisively in the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, and because of his brutality, was called the "butcher of Plaszow.” Salomea was assigned to a shoemaking collective as a forced laborer, until, in October 1944, she was sent in a sealed transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

While there and in order not to be separated from her friends, she smuggled herself into a transport with a total of 300 female prisoners and thereby in November 1944, in a sealed cattle car, managed to get to the Auschwitz satellite camp, Lichtenwerden (Světlá). There she had to do forced labor in the "G. A. Buhl & Son United Flax Mill and Textile Works.”

On 8 May 1945, Salomea Hoffmann was liberated by Soviet troops. She returned to Krakow, where she was reunited with her son Leo in a Jewish orphanage. Her husband remained missing.

The destinies of her parents Abraham and Rachella Wagschal, as well as her sister, Rosi, have not been clarified. Perhaps, they were among the people, who on 28 August 1942 were part of the "cleansing action” in Wieliczka, were segregated in the collection point of the freight depot and then murdered in the nearby Niepołomice Forest.

Salomea’s in-laws, Munisch and Marie Cilly Hoffmann, along with their four children, Bertha (b. 2.11.1916), Nitta/Meta (b. 11.19.1920), Hella (b. 2.10.1923), and Manfred (b. 10.20.1927), and their oldest daughter, Erna Tugendhaft, née Hoffmann (b. 2.18.1908), remained in the temporary camp in Zbaszyn (Bentschen); after its dissolution all trace of them was lost.

After the war, in Rzeszów, Salomea married again, this time to Abraham Nussbaum; they settled at first in Stettin (Szczecin), where they opened a small men’s clothing store. In 1950, they emigrated to Israel.

Her brother, Heinrich Wagschal, managed illegally to get out of the Netherlands to Switzerland in the summer of 1942, where he survived.

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: June 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 5; StaH 351-11 AfW 6399 (Wagschal, Abraham); StaH 351-11 AfW 6213 (Wagschal, Rahel); StaH 351-11 AfW 37630 (Wagschal, Heinrich); StaH 351-11 AfW 34363 (Hoffmann, Henry); 351-11 AfW 5232 (Hoffmann, Munisch); StaH 351-11 AfW 29589 (Tugendhaft, Alfred); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 882 u 108/1924; Klee: Personenlexikon, S. 191; Rudorff: Lichtewerden, in Der Ort des Terrors, Band 5, S. 275f.; Awtuszewska-Ettrich: Płaszów-Stammlager, in Der Ort des Terrors, Band 8, S. 235–287; Curilla: Judenmord, S. 398–401; http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/auschwitz-prisoners, (Zugriff 14.2.2015).
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