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Elsa Pollack * 1885

Bäckerbreitergang / Ecke Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
ELSA POLLACK
JG. 1885
DEPORTIERT 1941
RIGA
ERMORDET

Elsa Pollack, born on 2 Apr. 1885 in Zabrze/Hindenburg O.S. [Oberschlesien, i.e., Upper Silesia], deported to Riga-Jungfernhof on 6 Dec.1941

Bäckerbreitergang 28

When Elsa Pollack was born on 2 Apr. 1885 in Upper Silesia, her birthplace was still called Zabrze. She was the third of eleven children of the couple Berthold Pollack (born on 17 Nov. 1854 in Alt Zabrze) and Fanny, née Scheyer (born on 12 Sept. 1856 in Kempen). In 1915, the village was renamed "Hindenburg O.S.” in honor of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. Today the Polish city is called Zabrze again.

The father Berthold Pollack tried to feed his large family by operating various companies. As a leather merchant, he bought and sold rabbit skins. He became a court-sworn auctioneer, opened a "purchase and repurchase shop” on Stollenstrasse dealing in "all items of clothing as well as furniture,” and held the exclusive sales license of the Kunzendorf brewery for stout. He advertised, "recommended” other beers as well, and delivered them free of charge. In the summer of 1897, the "merchant” Berthold Pollack was also appointed dogcatcher by the Zabrze District Court (Amtsgericht). He also took part in social life and became involved as a member of the local voluntary fire brigade. Berthold Pollack passed away on 23 Mar. 1916 and his wife Fanny Pollack, who had also been licensed as an auctioneer, had already died on 21 Mar. 1914.

Elsa Pollack married the non-Jewish dog dealer Otto Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Jürgens (born on 5 Mar. 1883 in Friedland) on 2 Aug. 1907. She probably met him through her father’s work as a dogcatcher. On 11 Dec. 1909, their daughter Elfriede, called Frieda, was born in Berlin. The Jürgens couple settled in Hamburg in 1911. There, the marriage failed and was divorced in 1922.

Elsa Jürgens reassumed her birth name of Pollack and reportedly rented out rooms in the St. Pauli quarter. In 1926, daughter Frieda was committed to a supervised home in Ohlsdorf on the orders of the welfare authorities, presumably to the girls’ home on Feuerbergstrasse. According to a report by the Hamburg Youth Welfare Office, the parents were deprived of custody because "due to their not entirely impeccable lifestyle, they were unable to give the child the necessary support and the divorced couple’s home was in a neighborhood considered dangerous in every respect for the child, considering the child’s predisposition.”

Frieda’s parents had been convicted several times "for joint procuration,” her mother also "for prostitution.”

Elsa Pollack made several applications for unemployment and welfare benefits in the following years. Her divorced husband was obliged to pay alimony, but he did not meet his payment obligations. Elsa’s brother Georg Pollack (born on 11 Nov. 1889) owned a women’s fashion store in his hometown and supported his sister in paying the rent. Due to the bad economic situation, however, this was no longer possible from 1931 onward. Elsa Pollack met the sailor Leo Malmberg (born on 24 Mar. 1893) and the couple was engaged. Malmberg was a Finnish citizen and went to sea on English ships. When he signed off in Freetown in West African Sierra Leone due to a bout of malaria, he found no new employment after his return to Hamburg. In 1933, he was expelled from Germany as an unemployed foreign national. Elsa wanted to follow him as soon as he had gained a foothold in his native Helsingfors (today Helsinki), but she was denied an entry permit. A welfare recipient, she worked in the sewing shop at Rosenallee 11, did laundry for the Finnish Seamen’s Home, located at Grosse Bleichen 70, and worked as a cleaning lady in the reading room at Adolphsbrücke 10. After a short stay in Flensburg, hoping to find work there, she worked in a fish factory in Hamburg. In her welfare file, Elsa Pollack was described as "willing to work and extraordinarily tidy.” After a house call in Sept. 1933, a welfare worker noted, "The quarters now occupied are almost tastefully furnished with the simplest things. She is deeply affected by the deportation of her fiancé.”

Elsa Pollack had moved from Rothesoodstrasse 7 to Jacobstrasse 28, where she temporarily took in her daughter Frieda in 1935. Frieda had lived with her father at Neustädter Strasse 92 after her discharge from the supervised home. Otto Jürgens had remarried and died in 1930. Frieda had been married to the locksmith’s apprentice Klaus Heinrich Friedrich Vagt (born on 21 Mar. 1905) since 19 Jan. 1929. The marriage was divorced on 16 Apr. 1934. Frieda Vagt found work as a daily domestic help ("Tagesmädchen”) with the physician Gabriel Lanzkron (see Hermann Lanzkron) and moved to Zeughausstrasse 34. The "worker” Frieda Vagt died on 12 Dec. 1939 in the Eppendorf University Hospital from a laryngeal abscess and pneumonia. She had been living again with her mother at Bäckerbreitergang 28.

In the very end, her mother Elsa did cleaning work for Frieda Bunzendahl, née Nooitrust (born on 11 Apr. 1894 in Gelsenkirchen), who ran a "Jewish brothel” at Winkelstrasse 25 (from 1941, Ulricusstrasse; today the street no longer exists). Elsa Pollack received her deportation order for 6 Dec. 1941 at Bäckerbreitergang 28, from where she was deported to Riga-Jungfernhof, where all traces of her disappear.

Elsa’s brother Georg Pollack died in the Ravensbrück concentration camp on 28 Nov. 1941. The older brother, Eugen (born on 25 Oct. 1882), lived in Berlin. He lost his life in the Buchenwald concentration camp on 29 Aug. 1940.

Frieda Bunzendahl was sent in 1942 from the Ravensbrück concentration camp to the "euthanasia” killing center in Bernburg/Saale, where she was murdered.

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

Stand: July 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 5; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13201 u 17/1929; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9846 u 406/1930; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9906 u 1898/1939; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge 1701 (Pollack, Elsa); StaH 213-11_6474/40; http://www.muzeum-miejskie-zabrze.pl/pollack-berthold.php (Zugriff 9.10.2016); http://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/OT411206-25.jpg (Zugriff 9.10.2016).
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