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Johanna Hinrichs (née Hesse) * 1887

Deichhausweg 12 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
JOHANNA HINRICHS
GEB. HESSE
JG. 1887
VERHAFTET 1942
RAVENSBRÜCK
ERMORDET MAI 1942

Johanna Hinrichs, née Hesse, born on 8.10.1887 in Harburg, concentration camp Ravensbrück, murdered in 1942

Deichhausweg 12 (formerly: Deichstraße), Harburg

Johanna Hesse was born as the daughter of the Jewish merchant David Hesse (Apr 27, 1844 - Apr 13, 1904) and his wife Friederike Hesse, née Magnus, (Febr 11, 1850 - Oct 18, 1911).

The Deichhausweg, which even then connected Harburg's Rathausstraße (formerly Rathausstrasse) with Lüneburger Straße, was called Deichstraße in those days. David Hesse was first active as a fur and product trader and later as an agent (representative), since 1890 also together with his son Jacob in the insurance business.

The way from Deichstraße to the Harburg synagogue in Eißendorfer Straße was not far. This place of worship had been built in 1863, after the local Jewish community had slowly grown following the gradual dismantling of many legal restrictions - though nowhere near as much as the overall population of the city. In 1864, 13.179 people lived in the city, among them 175 Jews; in 1900, there were 49.163 inhabitants, among them 312 Jews. But they contributed in a considerable way to the economic boom of the city in the second half of the 19th century.

When Johanna Hesse was 17 years old, her father died, and seven years later she also lost her mother. Both parents were buried in the city's Jewish Cemetery on the Schwarzenberg, where their graves can still be seen today.

It has not yet been possible to clarify when Johanna Hesse married and thus took her husband's name, and when and why she was later sent as a prisoner to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. This concentration camp for women had been built in 1939 near Fürstenberg at river Havel. An estimated 132.000 people were registered here over the next six years until the camp was liberated by the Red Army in April 1945. Tens of thousands of the inmates died of hunger, the exhausting labor and hygienic conditions, as well as from targeted extermination. Approximately 14% of the prisoners were Jewish women, whose chances of survival were the lowest. In the spring of 1942, 700-800 Jewish women were suffocated in gas at the Bernburg killing facility, and in the fall of the same year another 522 Jewish women were deported to Auschwitz.

Anna Hinrichs was not among the prisoners who were still alive in 1945. The exact circumstances of her death are unknown.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© 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, Bundesarchiv (Hrsg.), Koblenz 2006; Yad Vashem. The Central Database of Shoa Victims´ Names: www.yadvashem.org; Harburger Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, Bezirksamt Harburg (Hrsg.), Hamburg 2003.