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Salomon Schwarz * 1916

Weißenburger Straße 14 (Hamburg-Nord, Dulsberg)

1943 Auschwitz

Salomon Schwarz, born on 2 July 1916 in Balagansk (Siberia), deported to Auschwitz on 12 Feb. 1943, missing

Weissenburger Strasse 14

Salomon Schwarz was born in Siberia, on the Angara River, north of Lake Baikal. This fact was owing to the turmoil associated with the First World War: His mother, Anna Lehrer, had been born in 1895 in Suceava in Romanian Bukovina, which belonged to Austria-Hungary until 1918. In 1915, this area was occupied by Russian troops, which in December of that year deported the pregnant young woman to Siberia. In captivity, Anna Lehrer met Hermann Schwarz, born in 1885, whom she married in 1918. The couple, as well as their children Salomon and Bertha, who was also born in captivity in 1919, were released only in Jan. 1921, and managed to depart for Germany, where they took up residence in Hamburg at Weissenburger Strasse 14 in the Dulsberg quarter.

In 1922, daughter Anna Marie and in 1924 son Hermann were born. The occupation Hermann Schwarz practiced is not known, while Anna, who was illiterate, worked as a cleaning lady in Hamburg schools from 1930 onward. Politically, Salomon’s stepfather was initially organized in the "Steel Helmet” ("Stahlhelm”), and due to the incorporation of this right-wing nationalist paramilitary league into the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), he became a member of the Nazi Party. Despite the loyalty of her husband to the Nazi state expressed in this way, Anna Schwarz attracted the attention of the powers implementing the regime’s racist persecution. Perhaps prompted by the "suspicious” first name of her firstborn son, the "Reich Genealogical Office” ("Reichssippenamt”) made inquiries into her descent. The result of these investigations was her being classified as "Jewish” and promptly dismissed from the school board; later, she was forced to work at the bag plant owned by Edmund Gross in Rothenburgsort, where Russian forced laborers were put to work as well. The Nazi authorities did not believe her assurances that she was not Jewish. There was at least a certain likelihood that Anna Schwarz was indeed of Jewish descent and that her denial was rather understandable behavior aimed at protecting herself from persecution. In the death lists of the Israeli memorial site at Yad Vashem, the last name of Lehrer also appears among the victims from her native town of Suceava.

For Salomon Schwarz, the "racial” categorization of his mother meant that he too was considered a "full Jew” ("Volljude”) according to the Nuremberg laws (on race), since his biological father was unknown and he therefore did not enjoy the relative protection of children born in a "privileged mixed marriage” ("privilegierte Mischehe”). Until 1933, he had done an apprenticeship as a pharmacist, though he became unemployed in the economic crisis. He took until 1938 to find a job in the occupation for which he was trained. The openly racist persecution measures against him started in the fall of 1941, when wearing the "Jews’ star” ("Judenstern”) was imposed on him and he lost his job in November. Since he did not wear the mark, the Gestapo arrested him on 17 June 1942 and committed him to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp ("Kola-Fu”) as a "protective custody prisoner” ("Schutzhäftling”). Shortly afterward, he was place in pretrial detention, from which he was already released again on 7 July to stay with his parents. The next step of his persecution by the Nazi regime was compulsory quartering in the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Beneckestrasse 2 and his enlistment to perform forced labor.

Salomon Schwarz must have found his committal to the "Jews’ house” a particularly absurd disregard of his religious identity because he was a member of the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints” (Mormons), as was confirmed after the war by the leading Eldest of this church, Walter Schmidt, who unsuccessfully attempted "by means of applications to the responsible authorities to achieve his freedom.” The names appearing below Schmidt’s "declaration in lieu of an oath” include that of Rudolf Wobbe, who at the time (1955) lived in the Mormon town of Salt Lake City in the USA. Wobbe, a member of the resistance group headed by Helmuth Hübener, was sentenced by the Nazi regime to several years in prison. It is not known whether Salomon Schwarz had had contact to the resistance group.

Salomon Schwarz stayed in the "Jews’ house” on Beneckestrasse until 12 Feb. 1943, and afterward he was taken on a transport comprised of 24 Jews to Berlin, where they were detained in the Berlin deportation assembly camp on Grosse Hamburger Strasse, until at least 21 of them were assigned to a transport of 997 male and female Jews to Auschwitz, the 29th transport eastward (Osttransport) departing Berlin on 19 Feb. 1942. A smaller group of the new arrivals made it into the camp as inmates, whereas 772 of them, probably including Salomon Schwarz, were killed in the gas chambers immediately.

The parents of Salomon Schwarz were also not spared the bullying by the Nazi regime. His father was asked by a party tribunal to file for divorce or resign from the Nazi party. Preferring the latter, he was punished with loss of his job in the late 1930s after 18 years of employment and with enlistment to perform forced labor. His half brother Hermann was drafted into the German Wehrmacht and killed in 1944. According to her own information, Anna Schwarz was scheduled for deportation to Theresienstadt at the end of 1943, even though she lived in a "privileged mixed marriage” with an "Aryan.” After receiving the deportation order, she made a suicide attempt by slashing her wrists but it was possible to save her life. Due to her daughter paying a visit to the authorities, she was deferred from being deported and apparently, she was not put on a deportation list anymore at a later date.


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

Stand: January 2019
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 8; StaH 522-1 (Jüdische Gemeinden), 992 e (Deportationslisten); StaH 351-11 (AfW), 17430; StaH 331 – 1 II (Polizeibehörde II), StaH 242-1 II (Gefängnisverwaltung II), Abl. 1998/1; Alfred Gott­waldt/Diana Schulle, Die "Judendeportationen" aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1945, Wiesbaden 2005, S. 405; Auskunft Dr. Diana Schulle v. 15.9.2011.
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