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Martha Polack (née Haarburger) * 1865

Zeughausmarkt 33 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
MARTHA POLACK
GEB. HAARBURGER
JG. 1865
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
1942 TREBLINKA
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Zeughausmarkt 33:
Arthur Polack

Arthur Jacob Polack, born 11 Oct. 1889 in Hamburg, deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz where he died 3 Feb. 1942
Martha Polack, née Haarburger, born 12 July 1865 in Hamburg, deported 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported 21 Sept. 1942 to Treblinka

Zeughausmarkt 33/34

The widow Martha Polack lived with her son Arthur in very modest circumstances at Zeughausmarkt 33/34, in a former hotel, in room number 12. In 1940 she was given accommodation at the Nordheim Foundation, one of the remaining old age homes belonging to the Jewish Religious Association. The building at Schlachterstraße 40/42 was under control of the Gestapo and was then being used as a so-called Jewish house to prepare Jews for deportation.

Martha Polack, née Haarburger, had grown up in Grindel District. Sie was born on 12 July 1865, the daughter of Siegmund Sußmann Haarburger (born 20 July 1827, died 1 May 1904) and his wife Marianne, née Posach (born 6 Mar. 1825, died 7 Feb. 1904), in their home at Durchschnitt 60. Her father had first worked as a gravedigger at the Israelite Community’s cemetery and was later appointed cemetery inspector (see Alice Graff).

On 28 Dec. 1888 at the age of 23, Martha married the merchant Harry Polack, born on 7 Sept. 1854, who was ten years her senior. The son of Nathan Jacob Polack and Hannchen, née Löwenberg, from Wexstraße 12 was a trained engraver and chaser but had, like his father, become self-employed as an agent.

Martha and Harry Polack moved into an apartment at Neuen Fuhlentwiete 110, where their son Arthur was born on 11 Oct. 1889. Over the course of the following year, the family moved several times. They lived at Gerhofstraße 44 (1890), then at Gänsemarkt 58 (1895). In 1904 they moved from Carolinenstraße 9 to Bundesstraße 28a and finally in 1913 to Pilatuspool 15. That same year, Harry Polack transferred his office from Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 11/15a to Düsternstraße 22/26. After World War I, the Polacks resided in a four-room apartment at Mühlenstraße 9 (today part of Gerstäckerstraße).

Arthur Polack attended the neighboring Foundation School of 1815, later called Anton-Ree-Realschule at Zeughausmarkt (today the public vocational school Anna-Siemsen-Schule). After finishing high school, he began an apprenticeship at an import-export business which he completed in 1909. Afterwards he worked as a commercial clerk at the company J. Silberberg & Co. which sold sewing machines at Bleichenbrücke 3.

Arthur Polack remained single, he never married the mother of his daughter Marga, born in 1915. In 1916 he was drafted, served in World War I, and was discharged in Nov. 1918 with distinctions.

Following a brief period of unemployment, Arthur Polack worked at the Export Company Rudolf Sylvester, at Pickhuben 4. He lost that job in the summer of 1923 for lack of contracts. He then became a shipping clerk at the company Arthur Büchting & Co., Lacquers, Paints and Chemical Products at Brauerstraße 27/28. He quit that job at the end of 1923 to help his father, who had taken ill, with his business. Harry Polack only had a marginal income during the world economic crisis, so his family was forced to turn to the welfare office. Harry Polack died on 1 July 1928 at Friedrichsberg State Hospital, his widow Martha survived him with no pension rights.

Arthur first tried to continue running his father’s business. However, soon after the National Socialists came to power, the economic situation became even more difficult for him. One by one several textile factories removed him as their sales representative, the manufacturers stopped supplying him as a "non-Aryan”, and the shops stopped ordering from him. The boycott measures forced him to give up his business in 1936. For a brief time, Arthur tried to launch marketing and distribution for bread spreads for the company Georg Leissner at Brahmsstraße 88, but he could not live off of the revenue he took in. In 1930 Arthur moved with his mother to a smaller apartment at Pastorenstraße 10. They moved into the room at Zeughausmarkt 33/34 at the end of 1933.

Arthur Polack was no longer able to find a job in sales. As of June 1936 he was called in to work as a support laborer for so-called compulsory work at various jobs set up explicitly for Jews. He worked in Waltershof at a mud field where a colony of garden allotments was set up for a kindergarten, athletic center and playground. Then he worked at the Horner Race Track, followed by a job in Tiefstaak (today Tiefstack) where he toiled building roads. In the summer of 1938 the employment office got him work at the company Peter Dammann, a civil engineering company in Buxtehude, where he was let go after a few days since he was not able to do heavy excavation work. The next jobs he was given at the street, underground and railway construction company W. u. M. Wiede, at Mittelstraße 45, and at the Reich highway construction site at Meckelfeld in District Harburg also ended for the same reason.

At the end of 1938 Arthur Polack lost his welfare support because he had gotten into a fight with the manager of his job at Wulfsdorf Manor near Volksdorf for alleged poor work performance. An official of the welfare office wrote a letter to the "State Crime Police”, informing them: "We have repeatedly found that P. does not like to perform physical labor; his behavior is insubordinate and defiant. As a consequence, he had to be suspended from his job. […] We request that P. be taken into preventative custody.”

Arthur Polack received a summons from the police and declared in the subsequent interrogation that he was not adverse to work and would do any job he was offered. "I am not accustomed to heavy physical labor, that’s why I had a very hard time doing the excavation work and was not able to perform like the other workers who had been doing that kind of work for a long time.” The officer doing the questioning believed him: "P. is not guilty of anything.” Arthur Polack was released and sent home.

Early in 1939, Arthur Polack found a job as an assistant, not described in greater detail, at the Jewish Cultural Association at Hartungstraße 9/11. His last known employment was as a care giver for the widow Ella Davidson, née Hildesheim (born 4 Oct. 1872, died 9 Mar. 1943 in Theresienstadt), at Woldsenweg 5.

When his name was placed on the supplementary list for "possible no-shows” for the deportation to "Litzmannstadt” ghetto in Lodz on 25 Oct. 1941, Arthur Polack was living as a lodger of the merchant Bernhard Rosenthal (born 7 Apr. 1877, died 14 Jan. 1963) at Großneumarkt 3, who was living in a "mixed marriage”. Arthur Polack did not survive the first winter in the ghetto. He died of emaciation, completely drained and exhausted, in the "ghetto hospital” on 3 Feb. 1942.

His mother Martha Polack was deported from the Marcus-Nordheim Foundation to Theresienstadt on 19 July 1942, which for her was a stopping place on her way to Treblinka extermination camp where she was taken on 21 Sept. 1942.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2203 u 4229/1889; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8539 u 1544/1888; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 7974 u 1084/1904; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 7972 u 343/1904; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge 1689 (Polack, Martha); StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 1; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 5; Lodz Hospital, Der Hamburger Gesellschaft für Genealogie zur Verfügung gestellt von Peter W. Landé, 2009, USHMM, Washington, bearbeitet von Margot Löhr; diverse Hamburger Adressbücher.
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