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Chaja Ester Schulz (née Rappaport) * 1894

Bremer Straße 103 a (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
CHAJA ESTER
SCHULZ
GEB. RAPPAPORT
JG. 1894
"POLENAKTION" 1938
BENTSCHEN / ZBASZYN
ERMORDET IM
BESETZTEN POLEN

further stumbling stones in Bremer Straße 103 a:
Meier Schulz, Nathan Naftalie Schulz

Chaja Ester Schulz, née Rappaport, born on 4 Sept. 1894 in Dolina, expelled to Zbaszyn on 28 Oct. 1938
Meier Schulz, born on 22 Jan. 1889 in Bohorodczany, expelled to Zbaszyn on 28 Oct. 1938
Nathan Naftalie Schulz, born on 17 Nov. 1930 in Hamburg, expelled to Zbaszyn on 28 Oct. 1938

Bremer Strasse 103 a

Considering this last name, who would have guessed that Nathan Schulz’ parents came from Eastern Europe? His father had been born in what was then Austrian Galicia (today Ukraine), and his mother had grown up in Hungary. Unfortunately, no more details are available about his parents’ paths through life before they went to Harburg and participated in the religious services at the synagogue built on Eissendorfer Strasse in 1863. To date, no documentation could be found either about the childhood of their son Nathan, who attended primary school in Harburg. The hostility toward Jews that Ester and Meier Schulz had experienced since the days of their birth – in their old home and later above all in Germany – reached its saddest climax up to that time when they were arrested by police without any warning on 28 Oct. 1938 and taken to Hamburg along with their son. That same night, the police expelled them as well as approx. 17,000 fellow sufferers, mostly of Polish descent, to the neighboring country to the east in an operation spanning the entire German Reich. At two border crossings, they were driven on to Polish territory and abandoned to their subsequent fate. The Polish government protested vehemently against this unannounced arbitrary measure, interning the expellees in several camps in the frontier region for the time being. They stayed there until the dissolution of the camps in the summer of 1939, unless they were able to produce a permit for departure abroad or an invitation to stay with Polish relatives. After the German invasion of Poland on 1 Sept. 1939, the traces of most expelled persons disappear in one of the numerous ghettos that the German occupational authorities set up all across the country shortly afterward. No details are known either about the subsequent fate of the Schulz family following the occupation of Poland. All later efforts to obtain information about their possible transfer to one of the many ghettos and about the exact circumstances of their murder have remained futile to this date.


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

Stand: April 2018
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: Hamburger jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Gedenkbuch, Jürgen Sielemann, Paul Flamme (Hrsg.), Hamburg 1995; Gedenkbuch. Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der national-sozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933–1945, Bundesarchiv (Hrsg.), Koblenz 2006; Yad Vashem. The Central Database of Shoa Victims´ Names: www.yadvashem.org; Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Magistrat Harburg-Wilhelmsburg, 430-5 Religionswesen, Synagogengemeinde; Harburger Adressbuch 1930; Beate Meyer (Hrsg.), Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der Hamburger Juden 1933–1945. Geschichte. Zeugnis. Erinnerung, Hamburg 2006; Linde Apel (Hrsg.), In den Tod geschickt, Hamburg 2009.