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Friederike Marmorek, o. J.
© UKE/IGEW

Friederike Marmorek (née Baruch) * 1858

Breitenfelder Straße 8 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)

HIER WOHNTE
FRIEDERIKE
MARMOREK
GEB. BARUCH
JG. 1858
EINGEWIESEN
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

Friederike Marmorek, née Baruch, born on 10 Jan. 1858 in Hamburg, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel "euthanasia” killing center

Breitenfelder Strasse 8, Hamburg-Hoheluft-Ost

Friederike Marmorek, née Baruch, was born on 10 Jan. 1858 on 2nd Marienstrasse in Hamburg-Neustadt. Friederike’s father, the cigar maker Marcus Baruch, born in Hamburg in 1819, and her mother, Klärchen Friedländer, also born in Hamburg in 1820, had married in Dec. 1844. The parents were of the Jewish faith.

Friederike had seven siblings: Thelesia, married name Meyer, born on 23 Aug. 1846 in Hamburg, on Zeughausmarkt; Auguste, married name Scheier, born on 7 June 1848 in Hamburg, on Zeughausmarkt; Isaac, born on 8 Apr. 1852 in Hamburg, on Mühlenstrasse; Bernhard, born on 15 Apr. 1852 in Hamburg, on Mühlenstrasse; Jacob, born on 4 Sept. 1856 in Hamburg, on Mühlenstrasse; Meier, born on 18 Sept. 1859 in Hamburg, on 1st Marktstrasse; and Raphael, born on 14 Nov. 1861 in Hamburg, on 1st Marktstrasse.

Friederike Baruch married the merchant Berl Marmorek in Hamburg on 12 Apr. 1893. He and his twin sister, whose name and fate we do not know, were born on 8 Sept. 1854 in Tarnopol (Ternopil in Galicia, today part of Ukraine) in what was then Austria-Hungary, so he was an Austrian citizen. After the First World War and the fall of the imperial and royal Habsburg monarchy, he was granted Polish citizenship. Berl Marmorek had arrived in Hamburg on 20 June 1890, working there as a fund and goods commission agent.

The newlyweds – Friederike was 35 years old at the time and Berl 39 years old – first moved into an apartment at Steinwegpassage 5 and then lived at Wexstrasse 29 for about three years, with both addresses located in Hamburg-Neustadt. As did a great many Jews, the Marmorek couple also moved from Hamburg-Neustadt to the more "upscale” neighborhood of Rotherbaum toward the end of the nineteenth century. In May 1897, they found their new home at Rutschbahn 36. On 18 September, son Herbert was born there. One year later, on 28 Oct. 1898, Berl Marmorek received the expulsion order from Hamburg. He deregistered for Galicia. We do not know whether Friederike and her son accompanied him or remained in Germany.

From 1907 onward, Berl Marmorek’s name appeared in the Altona directory. The family was registered as residing at Friedenstrasse 1. Berl Marmorek’s residence status was apparently still uncertain. This is probably why the former merchant signed on as a ship’s cook for about ten years. In this way, he avoided permanent presence in Germany and at the same time evaded identity checks. His wife Friederike and son Herbert had to manage without their husband and father for a long time. There is no record of a change in his residence status, but Berl Marmorek seems to have felt safer in 1917/1918. He no longer worked on a ship but, according to the directory, resumed his original activity as a merchant. In 1919, the family moved into an apartment at Friedenstrasse 18, where Friederike’s brother, the hairdresser Jacob Baruch, resided as well. Before his death in 1919, Isaac Baruch, another brother of Friederike Marmorek, had also lived here.

On 30 Sept. 1926, Berl Marmorek died at the age of 72 in the Jewish Hospital on Hamburg’s Heinestrasse, which was renamed Hamburger Berg during the Nazi regime in 1938. He was buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Langenfelde. His widow was 68 years old at the time of her husband’s death.

Since the beginning of her marriage, Friederike Marmorek had been going through phases of depression, which in later years had been replaced by periods of extremely good mood. As can be seen further from her patient file at the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg), she regularly experienced unrest at night, which led to conflicts with the neighbors and finally to the loss of her apartment, resulting in her son Herbert accepting her into his family at Breitenfelder Strasse 8 around 1929.

In 1922, Herbert Marmorek had married Caroline Lichtenstädter, one of the three daughters of the senior teacher at the Talmud Tora School, Jacob Lichtenstädter. Operating a raw tobacco wholesale business, he was registered in the company register as a full merchant. His company was based at various addresses in the former duty-free port in Hamburg-Altstadt (today Hafen-City), including Kehrwieder 4. Herbert Marmorek lived with his family in the Rotherbaum quarter, in Altona, and finally at Breitenfelder Strasse 8 in Eppendorf. Shortly after their wedding, Herbert and Caroline Marmorek had their sons Kurt Markus Alexander, born on 13 Aug. 1923, and Julius Karl, born on 14 Oct. 1925. Both sons attended the Talmud Tora School until their emigration.

Friederike Marmorek also found no peace in the family of her son. In Aug. 1933, she experienced a constant restlessness combined with an incessant flow of speech. Friederike wanted to be on the road all the time, got up at night and woke up her son’s family. She suffered from depression again in the following period, but it was possible to help her using medication. However, in view of the two still very young grandsons (ten and seven years old), Friederike’s doctor, Siegfried Baruch, did not consider her remaining in the son’s home environment to be justifiable. He transferred her to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg) effective 4 Sept. 1933.

The many years of uncertainty about her husband’s residence status must have been a great strain on Friederike Marmorek. Her life was always overshadowed by fear and uncertainty. She could hardly ever lead a secure family life. The death of her husband and her sister Thelesia, the loss of her home, and the fact that she did not always live together with her son’s family without conflict could have led to the critical escalation.

Friederike Marmorek resisted her in-patient stay in the Friedrichsberg State Hospital and tried to obtain her discharge. This did not succeed at first; at the end of Oct. 1933, she was still in Friedrichsberg. In response to a corresponding question from Friederike’s physician, the State Hospital explained that a prognosis for the course of the disease was not possible. Although an improvement could not be ruled out, medical staff advised against removal from the institution. Nevertheless, Friederike Baruch must have pushed through her discharge. Her Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) file card of the Jewish Community reveals that she joined the Community on 7 June 1934. She did not live in her son’s home again, but resided as a subtenant at Rutschbahn 10 and at Rappstrasse 15 with the ship’s cook S. Kramer, who might have been an acquaintance from Berl Marmorek’s seafaring days. Afterward, Friederike Marmorek found accommodation in the Marcus-Nordheim-Stift, a residential home, at Schlachterstrasse 40 in Hamburg-Neustadt and finally in 1939 in the retirement and nursing home (Isaac Hartwig’s bequest) of the Jewish Religious Organization (Jüdischer Religionsverband) in Altona, at Grüne Strasse 5.

Friederike Marmorek, who by this time had already reached the advanced age of 81, was largely left to her own devices. Her sister Auguste, married name Scheier, had died in 1894, her brothers Jacob in 1900, Raphael in 1916, Isaac in 1919, and Bernhard in 1924. We have no information about the fate of Meier Baruch.

Friederike Marmorek was finally left without any family ties after her son Herbert and his family had fled Hamburg on 8 Dec. 1936. On 9 Dec. 1936, they embarked on the S. S. Queen Mary in Cherbourg on their way to New York.

We do not know how Friederike Baruch’s mental illness developed and when she was admitted to the Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” (Heil-und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn). She might have been in Langenhorn already when the Reich Ministry of the Interior had all Jewish persons from institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg moved together in the Hamburg-Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” on 18 Sept. 1940 as part of a special operation planned by the "euthanasia” headquarters in Berlin, located at Tiergartenstrasse 4.

After all the Jewish men and women from the North German institutions had arrived in Langenhorn, they were transported together with the Jewish patients who had already been living there for some time to the so-called "Brandenburg State Asylum” ("Landespflegeanstalt Brandenburg”) in Brandenburg on the Havel River on 23 Sept. 1940. On the same day, the persons were killed with carbon monoxide in the part of the former penitentiary converted into a gas-killing facility. Among them was Friederike Marmorek, at 82 years and eight months the oldest of the group. Only one woman, Ilse Herta Zachmann, escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

In order to cover up this killing operation, death notices claimed that the victims had died in an institution in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German) east of Lublin. Friederike Marmorek’s birth register entry also contains the following note: "Deceased 7.12.40 Records Office Cholm II No. 600/1940.”

However, those murdered in Brandenburg were never in Cholm/Chelm. The Polish sanatorium that used to exist there no longer existed, after SS units had murdered almost all patients on 12 Jan. 1940. Also, there was no German records office in Chelm. Its fabrication and the use of postdated dates of death served to disguise the killing operation and at the same time enabled the authorities to claim higher care expenses for periods extended accordingly.

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

Stand: July 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 5; 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); 332-5 Standesämter 361 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 493/1894 Auguste Scheier, 807 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 439/1919 Isaac Baruch, 913 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 325/1926 Berl Marmorek, 2812 Heiratsregisterauszug Nr. 352/1893 Berl Marmorek/Friederike Baruch, 7933 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 627/1900 Jacob Baruch, 8032 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 445/1916 Raphael Baruch, 8078 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 587/1924 Bernhard Baruch, 8085 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 352/1926 Thelesia Meyer geb. Baruch, 8766 Heiratsregisterauszug Nr. 291/1920 Herbert Marmorek/Caroline Lichtenstaedter, 9133 Geburtsregisterauszug Nr. 1889/1897 Herbert Marmorek; 332-8 Meldewesen K 6563 Meldekarte Marmorek; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 45793 Marmorek, 47360 Julius Marmorek; 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 696 d Geburtsregisterauszug Nr. 149/1846 Thelesia Baruch, 696 d Geburtsregisterauszug Nr. 247/1848 Auguste Baruch, 696 e Geburtsregisterauszug Nr. 65/1852 Isaac Baruch, Nr. 58/1854 Bernhard Baruch, Nr. 163/1856 Jacob Baruch, Nr. 9/1858 Friederike Baruch, Nr. 202/1859 Meier Baruch, 696 f Geburtsregisterauszug Nr. 265/1861 Raphael Baruch, 702 b Heiratsregisterauszug Nr. 71/1844 Baruch Marcus/Friedländer Klärchen; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Friederike Marmorek der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patientenakte Friederike Marmorek der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig. Hinz-Wessels, Annette, Antisemitismus und Krankenmord. Zum Umgang mit jüdischen Anstaltspatienten im Nationalsozialismus, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (VfZ) (2013) 1, S. 65–92, S. 81. Randt, Ursula, Die Talmud Tora Schule in Hamburg 1805 bis 1942, Hamburg 2005, S. 251. Vielliez von, Anna, Mit aller Kraft verdrängt. Entrechtung und Verfolgung "nicht arischer" Ärzte in Hamburg 1933 bis 1945, Hamburg 2009, S. 220 (Siegfried Baruch). www.ancestry.de, Passagierliste der S. S. Queen Mary vom 9.12.1936, Auszug (Zugriff 29.6.2016).
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