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Lina Wehl (née Bleiweiss) * 1876

Grindelberg 45 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
LINA WEHL
GEB. BLEIWEISS
JG. 1876
EINGEWIESEN 1940
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

further stumbling stones in Grindelberg 45:
Jonas Abraham Wehl, Klara Wolfsohn

Line (called Lina) Wehl, née Bleiweiss, born on 24 Sept. 1876 in Lübeck, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel "euthanasia” killing center
Jonas Abraham Wehl, born on 24 Jan. 1878 in Hamburg, interned in Westerbork on 18 Mar. 1943, deported to Sobibor on 23 Mar. 1943, murdered there on 26 Mar. 1943

Grindelberg 45, Hamburg-Rotherbaum

Lina Bleiweiss was one of four children of Hirsch Hermann and Hannchen Bleiweiss, née Cohn. Although her first name is clearly Line according to the birth register entry, the variation "Lina” is found repeatedly on later documents. Apparently, she was always called Lina, as is the case in the following account.

Her father, Hirsch Hermann Bleiweiss, born on 30 Mar. 1841 in Gehaus in what was then the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach (today Thuringia), settled in Lübeck in 1866 and soon afterward married Hannchen Cohn, born on 1 Oct. 1834 in Moisling. He earned his living in the years up to 1879/1880 as a shoemaker and saddler. He also dealt in rags.

The Jewish couple Hirsch Hermann and Hannchen Bleiweiss had their four children in Lübeck: Siegmund Bleiweiss, born on 11 Feb. 1869; Selig Bleiweiss, born on 27 Dec. 1870; Martin Bleiweiss, born on 24 Mar. 1873; and Lina Bleiweiss, born on 24 Sept. 1876.

The family moved to Hamburg at the beginning of the twentieth century.

We know nothing about Lina Bleiweiss’ childhood and adolescence. She married the lottery collector Jonas Abraham Wehl, born on 24 Jan. 1878 in Hamburg. Before his marriage to Lina Bleiweiss, he had been married to Martha Brager, born on 24 Sept. 1877. On the Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) file card of Jonas Abraham Wehl, the first child listed is his son Siegfried, who possibly came from his marriage to Martha Brager.

The Wehl couple had a son, Siegbert Salomon (called Salo), born on 24 May 1905, and a daughter, Hanna (called Hannchen), born on 15 Jan. 1910.

Jonas Abraham Wehl owned L. Isenberg & Co, lottery collection, at Grindelberg 82, which had been listed in the Hamburg directory since 1910. The company developed successfully. Later, Jonas Abraham Wehl took his son Siegbert Salomon into the company as a partner.

In 1926, one development cast a shadow on the well-off family residing at Grindelberg 45. Lina Wehl showed states of excitement and had to be treated in the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Landeskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg). Another five stays in hospital at Friedrichsberg followed from 1931 to 1936, and on 8 May 1936, she was transferred to the Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital. Her medical records from there no longer exist. Therefore, we do not know how she fared in Langenhorn and whether contact with her family was maintained during this time. On 9 May 1938, Lina Wehl was transferred to the Lübeck-Strecknitz "sanatorium” (Heilanstalt Lübeck-Strecknitz), which repeatedly admitted patients from Hamburg based on a contract concluded between Hamburg and Lübeck. Jonas Abraham Wehl sent greetings to "my dear wife.” He was worried about Lina, who had suffered a "small stroke” but soon recovered, according to the institutional administration.

On 26 May 1939, Jonas Abraham Wehl informed the Strecknitz institution that he was henceforth residing in the Netherlands with his daughter Hanna in Scheveningen, who was married to the art dealer Charles van Lier there. Jonas Abraham Wehl was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp immediately after the November Pogrom and released on 2 Dec. 1938. He would have been ordered to leave Germany immediately.

Lina Wehl sent a letter to her relatives in the Netherlands every week, probably also to those in Hamburg. At the beginning of 1940, however, the regular communications from Lübeck-Strecknitz ceased. Thereupon Hanna, too, inquired "whether my mother has fallen so seriously ill or has been unable to write to us.” Shortly afterward, the director of the institution reported: "In the last few days, your mother has not been very well. She lay in bed and did not express the desire to write. I spoke to her yesterday. She immediately wrote the letter enclosed. Her condition is very variable, but she is better now.”

In Mar. 1940, Jonas Abraham Wehl thought that deterioration in his wife’s health was possible. As can be seen from a letter to the sanatorium in Strecknitz, he even considered that she might have died. "Now I have another request: If something serious were to occur regarding my wife, I would like you to inform, aside from us, Mr. Carl Norden Hamburg 13, Beneckestrasse 4 immediately. Mr. Norden will take care of everything regarding a transfer to Hamburg. (No further details are known about the relationship to the estate agent Carl Norden, born on 10 Oct. 1875. He was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and died there on 1 Mar. 1944). Martin Bleiweiss, who visited his sister Lina in Mar. 1940, found her very weak. The institutional administration stated that Lina was very emaciated due to poor appetite. Some letters to the daughter in the Netherlands had not been sent because of "morbid issues” addressed in them.

When the Reich Ministry of the Interior ordered Jews from public and private sanatoriums and nursing homes in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg to be moved together in the Hamburg-Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” (Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn) by 18 Sept. 1940, Lina Wehl arrived in Langenhorn on 16 Sept. 1940, as part of an operation planned by the "euthanasia” headquarters in Berlin, located at Tiergartenstrasse 4, in the spring/summer of 1940. On 23 Sept. 1940, the persons affected were transported to the so-called "Brandenburg State Asylum” ("Landespflegeanstalt Brandenburg”) on the Havel River and on the same day, they were killed by means of carbon monoxide in the part of the former penitentiary that had been converted into a gas-killing facility. In order to cover up this killing operation, death notices claimed that the person concerned had died in an institution in Chełm (Polish) or Cholm (German). On the birth register entry of Lina Bleiweiss, married name Wehl, it was noted that the "Records Office Chelm II” registered her death under number 571/1940. However, those murdered in Brandenburg were never in Chełm (Polish) or Cholm (German), a town east of Lublin.

Lina Wehl’s husband and other family members also died in the Holocaust.
For Jonas Abraham Wehl, who followed his daughter Hanna to the Netherlands in Dec. 1938, two addresses have been documented in Amsterdam, at Deltastraat 11 and at Kromme Mijdrechtsstraat 56. He was taken to the Westerbork internment camp (barrack 63) on 18 Mar. 1943, deported to Sobibor a few days later, on 23 Mar. 1943, and murdered there on 26 Mar. 1943.

Hanna (Hannchen) van Lier, née Wehl, lived with her husband Salomon Samuel van Lier in The Hague, at Bosschestraat 138, and both were deported to Auschwitz on 28 Aug. 1942, apparently not from Westerbork but from Mechelen (Malines) in Belgium. Hannchen was murdered there, while Salomon is said to have died somewhere in Central Europe on 30 Apr. 1943. Further details are not known.

Lina Wehl’s son, the photographer Siegbert Salomon Wehl, had married Margot Meyer in 1932. With her, he had the sons Heinz (Günther), born on 29 July 1933, and Hans-Ulrich, born on 17 Feb. 1938. Siegbert Salomon Wehl was reportedly imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Nov. 1938. There is evidence that he managed to escape to Shanghai. His wife Margot was able to leave Germany in Feb. 1939 with their two sons and traveled to Uruguay.

Lina’s oldest brother, Siegmund Bleiweiss, had married Selma Löwenthal, born on 24 Sept. 1873 in Wöllmarshausen near Göttingen. The couple settled in Neumünster and had seven children there: Blessed, called Semmy, born on 19 June 1898; Frieda, born on 9 July 1899; Lina Carolina, born on 16 Feb. 1902; Martin, born on 21 Feb. 1903; Sella, born 29 May 1904; Rudolf, born on 31 Oct. 1905; and Hermann, born on 5 Aug. 1908.

In 1919, Siegmund Bleiweiss moved his furniture business, which had been founded in Neumünster in 1897, to Elbstrasse 60 (today Neanderstrasse) in Hamburg. He died on 7 Dec. 1937 in his apartment at 115 Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse in Hamburg. His wife Selma continued the business until May 1938. She was deported to Auschwitz on 11 July 1942.

Siegmund and Selma Bleiweiss’ oldest son, the merchant Selig (called Semmy), born on 19 June 1898 in Neumünster, died in Auschwitz, as did his wife Käthe Bleiweiss, née Peine, born on 8 May 1900 in Hamburg. Their son Uri, born on 29 Jan. 1941, was deported with his parents to Auschwitz at the age of one and a half years and murdered there.

Siegmund Bleiweiss’ daughter Frieda Bleiweiss married in her first marriage Aron (called Arno) Bezen, born on 5 Apr. 1899 in Targoviste, the former capital of Wallachia. This marriage produced Hannelore, born on 22 July 1931. After the divorce, Frieda entered a second marital union, with Julius Prag, born on 9 Feb. 1886 in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad in Russia). Frieda Prag was deported to Minsk together with her husband Julius Prag and her daughter from her first marriage, Hannelore Bezen, on 8 Nov. 1941. All three perished there. Hannelore’s biological father, Aron (Arno) Bezen, was deported with his new family to Lodz on 25 Oct. 1941. He died there on 10 Sept. 1942.

The other children of Siegmund and Selma Bleiweiss, Lina Wehl’s nieces and nephews, Lina Caroline, Sella Kanter, née Bleiweiss, and Hermann Bleiweiss emigrated overseas with their relatives. Siegmund and Selma Bleiweiss’ son Rudolf Bleiweiss had been doing "compulsory labor” as a civil engineering worker for the Karl Vogt & Söhne Company in Bergedorf-Lohbrügge since the end of 1938. On 4 July 1940, during heavy rains, his work crew sought shelter in a construction trailer sitting on the sidewalk. On leaving the trailer, Rudolf Bleiweiss was hit by a truck; he died on the way to the hospital from severe head injuries. The funeral took place on 10 July at the Jewish Cemetery on the Ilandkoppel.

Lina Wehl’s second brother, Selig Bleiweiss, married Helene (called Hermine) Winterberg, born on 9 Feb. 1872 in Wolfhagen near Kassel. This couple had three children, Sitta, born on 9 Mar. 1903; Martha, born on 1 Oct. 1903; and Hermann Max, born on 18 June 1910, Selig Bleiweiss had been running an antique shop at ABC-Strasse 2, which also served as the family’s residential address, since May 1910. After his death in his apartment at Gänsemarkt 31 on 7 Dec. 1933, his wife Helene (called Hermine) continued the business until 1935. She emigrated to the USA in 1939. The three children Sitta, Martha, and Hermann Max also fled to the USA.

Martin Bleiweiss, Lina Wehl’s third brother, remained unmarried. He died on 11 Apr. 1941 in the Israelite Hospital at 68 Johnsallee, which was used as a replacement for the forcibly evacuated Israelite Hospital on what is today Simon-von-Utrechtstrasse.

For Selma Bleiweiss, Selig (called Semmy), Käthe, Uri, and Rudolf Bleiweiss, Stolpersteine are located at Enckeplatz 4 in Hamburg-Neustadt. For Frieda and Julius Prag as well as Hannelore Bezen, there are Stolpersteine at Wexstrasse 42. For Arno Bezen and his family, Stolpersteine are located at Winterhuder Weg 86. Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Rotherbaum, at Grindelberg 45, commemorate Line (Lina) and Jonas Abraham Wehl.

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

Stand: July 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 3; 4; 5; 7; 9; AB; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer Patientinnen und Patienten der psychiatrischen Anstalt Langenhorn, die aufgrund nationalsozialistischer "Euthanasie"-Maßnahmen ermordet wurden, zusammengestellt von Peter von Rönn, Hamburg (Projektgruppe zur Erforschung des Schicksals psychisch Kranker in Langenhorn); 241-1 I Justizverwaltung I 2109 Jonas Wehl; 332-5 Standesämter 1070 Sterberegister Nr. 457/1937 Siegmund Bleiweiss, 1008 Sterberegister Nr. 325/1933 Selig Bleiweiss, 1927 Geburtsregister Nr. 460/1878 Jonas Abraham Wehl, 13274 Geburtsregister Nr. 1038/1900 Käthe Peine, 13802 Heiratsregister Nr. 16/1932 Siegbert Salomon Wehl/Margot Meyer, 14437 Geburtsregister Nr. 1050/1905 Siegbert Salomon Wehl; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 1658 Selig Bleiweiss, 1756 Helene Bleiweiss, 2234 Selma Bleiweiss, 2761 Carl Norden, 3533 Jonas Wehl, 21148 Selig Bleiweiss, 21972 Frieda Prag geb. Bleiweiss, 25226 Hermann Kanter, 26015 Carolina Händler, 29231 Sella Kanter geb. Bleiweiss, 30258 Siegbert Salomon Wehl; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.1939 bis 27.1.1941; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Nr. 20829 Lina Wehl; IMGWF Lübeck, Archiv, Patientenakte Lina Wehl der Heilanstalt Lübeck-Strecknitz; Stadtarchiv Lübeck, Geburtsregister Nr. 1199/1876 Line Wehl; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig; Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen, Archiv, D 1 A 1020, D 1 A 1022; Joods Monument, email vom 21.12.2016; https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/515191/about-charles-van-lier (Zugriff 29.10.2016).
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