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Elisabeth Henriette Pommerantz
© Yad Vashem

Elisabeth Henriette Pommerantz (née Meier) * 1893

Lüneburger Straße 21 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
ELISABETH HENRIETTE
POMMERANTZ
GEB. MEIER
JG 1893
FLUCHT
ERMORDET IN
ZASAVICA
13.10.1941

further stumbling stones in Lüneburger Straße 21:
Leopold Levy Meier, Max Pommerantz, Jost Pommerantz

Elisabeth Henriette Pommerantz, née Meier, b. on 8.26.1893 in Harburg, murdered while fleeing to Palestine
Jost Pommerantz, b. on 2.23.1928 in Harburg, murdered while fleeing to Palestine
Max Pommerantz, b. on 2.23.1888 in Neustrelitz, murdered on 10.13.1941in Zasavica, while fleeing to Palestine

Harburg-Altstadt quarter, Lüneburger Strasse 21

Max Pommerantz fought in World War I in the ranks of the imperial army. He returned home in the fall of 1918 as a non-commissioned officer, wearing the Iron Cross. Two years later – on 19 November 1920 – he married the native Harburger, Elisabeth Meier, who, like him, grew up in a Jewish family. Her father owned a distinguished men’s and boy’s clothing store with a shoe department at Wilstorfer Strasse 14 (today, Lüneburger Strasse 21), in the city’s shopping district.

The residence of the seven-member family was in the same building as the shop, so it is no wonder that his wife Johanna (née Goldschmidt) and the five children –Leo, Blanka, Elisabeth, John und Martha – were often drawn into the business premises as an everyday experience.

After their marriage, Max and Elisabeth Pommerantz had at first rented a modest 2-room apartment with a shared kitchen. Shortly afterwards and in view of changes in the family, they again had to look for an apartment. Because they were in a better financial situation, they were able to move into a large 5-room apartment on the third floor of the store at Wilstorfer 14. Their three children, Erna (b. 10.16.1921), Gerd (b. 8.17.1926), and Jost spent their childhood and first school years in Harburg.

In 1920, Max Pommerantz went into his father-in-law’s business. Professional and social recognition were not long in coming. For several years, he belonged to the executive board of the synagogue congregation. When his father-in-law died at 66 years of age on 8 February 1928 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Harburg, Max Pommerantz together with his mother-in-law became co-owners of the "Clothing Store Joseph Meier.” The business prospered. In 1930, annual sales stood at 106,550 RM. Three or four employees ran operations; at peak times the sales staff needed additional help.

Three years later the page turned. On 30 March 1933, the Harburg Executive Authorities terminated their collaboration with the Jewish "Clothing Store Joseph Meier.” Two days later the Harburg National Socialist Party called upon all citizens to boycott the Wilstorfer Strasse store. Over the long term, the consequences of these and further anti-Jewish measures led to a considerable loss in sales in the following months and years. In 1936, the annual sales were not even half of what they had been before 1933.

The family probably suffered even more from the social ostracism and increasing disenfranchisement. Writing in her memoirs, Johanna Meier, full of bitterness, described how everything gradually became negative. "People no longer spoke to us on the street, they didn’t even say hello. Derision, scorn, smirks, dismissive looks. The movies, theater, cafes, the street car, all of them had to be avoided. Everyone was anxious. Our boys could not swim or go to gymnastics. Everywhere, signs sneered at us: ‘forbidden to Jews!’”

Even the schools offered no sanctuary in which the children could be themselves. Very soon after the so-called Seizure of Power, Erna Pommerantz noticed that her classmates at the Harburg Lyceum turned away from her. Her mother spoke to the class teacher who commented that Erna did not always pay attention and did not want to know anything about disturbing external ideas. She saw off her conversation partner with a revealing comment: "Anyway, it is understandable that you and your co-religionists long for the Holy Land. After all, Palestine is now your homeland.” Erna Pommerantz soon thereafter left the Harburg Lyceum, without, however, being able to find another place to study. She was happy when her aunt invited her to come to Abyssinia where she was welcomed as a nanny. Before the Second World War, she emigrated from there to Palestine, where she got to know a British policeman, whom she later married.

Her brothers Gerd and Jost also soon felt themselves no longer welcome in their Harburg schools and, like many other of their Jewish peers, transferred to the Talmud Torah high school in Hamburg. Shortly after the beginning of the Second World War, Gerd Pommerantz, aged 13, succeeded in getting to Palestine with the Mizrachi [religious Zionist] Aliyah, where he was adopted by a family, took the name Gershon Netzer, and completed agricultural training in a Kibbutz.

His parents and brother had less good luck with their emigration plans. After the compulsory sale of the business and the real estate on Wilstorfer Strasse, Max Pommerantz applied in September 1938 to emigrate to Palestine for himself and his family. His mother-in-law left Harburg in June 1939 and saved herself in Switzerland where she found refuge with her daughter Martha. On 18 November 1939, the Harburg Reporting authorities informed the Chief Financial Governor that Max, Elisabeth, and Jost Pommerantz had given notice of their departure and had transferred their residence abroad. Thereupon, their accounts were blocked.

In November 1939, the three "emigrants" joined an illegal refugee convoy, organized by the Zionist youth organization "Hechaluz" and the "Mossad l’Aliya Bet" (Organization for Illegal Immigration); it was supposed to sail down the Danube, into the Black Sea, then the Aegean, follow the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the British Palestine Mandate. After a two-week journey down the Danube, the three ships with approximately a thousand refugees got stuck in the ice at Kladovo, a small Serbian port at the border triangle of Yugoslavia-Romania-Bulgaria.

There followed weeks and months of trepidation and of great hopes, which did not even end when the ice melted. The convoy, or the "Kladovo-Transport" as it became known to history, remained at anchor in the little Serbian port town. Romanian officials refused to let the refugees travel on; the directors of the transport company’s itinerary met with less and less understanding from the British government because of the expanding theater of military operations in Europe. Meanwhile, time was running out for the passengers as the German military advanced. Their despair heightened when, in September 1940, they were taken back to Šabac on the Save River and placed into emergency quarters there. Living conditions for the refugee community got modestly better in the following weeks and months, yet the uncertainty remained.

After occupation of Yugoslavia by German troops in April 1941, the refugees lost all hope for a successful conclusion to their odyssey. In her last letter, Elli Pommerantz reported that her son Jost was in a camp at Sajmiste and that she had not heard anything from her husband who was being held at a different camp. After this, connection broke off.

In the summer of 1941, all the men of the Kladovo Transport were transferred to an internment camp, which had been established in an old castle outside the town. At the beginning of October 1941, in a fight with partisans, 21 German soldiers had been killed. General Böhme, the German military commandant, for Serbia ordered the shooting of hostages, "predominantly Jews and Communists,” as "atonement," 100 for every German soldier killed, that is, 2100 in all. Among the men of the Kladovo Transport, who, together with numerous Serbian Jews and Roma, were liquidated by a unit of the Wehrmacht was Max Pommerantz.

Starting in November 1941, the women and children of the Kladovo Transport – among them probably Elisabeth and Jost Pommerantz – were loaded onto trucks and on the trip to Avale agonizingly killed by exhaust fumes piped into the truck interiors. A special commando disposed of the corpses by cremation in 1943.

Also to be counted among the victims of the Shoah were Elli Pommerantz’ brother Leo Meier, his wife Wilhelmina, and daughter Alice.

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: February 2018
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 5; 8; Heyl (Hrsg.), Harburger Opfer; Heyl, Synagoge, S. 47, 84, 123, 153, 186, 187; StaH, 351-11 AfW, Abl. 2008/1, 280288 Pommerantz, Max, 260893 Pommerantz, Elisabeth, 161021 Willis, Erna, 170826 Nezer, Gershon, 230228 Pommerantz, Jost; StaH 430-5 Bestand Magistrat Harburg-Wilhelmsburg, 181-08 Angelegenheiten der städtischen Polizei, Ausschaltung jüdischer Geschäfte und Konsumvereine 1933–1938; Kändler/Hüttenmeister, Friedhof, S. 216; Douer, Kladovo, S. 6ff.; Manoschek, "Serbien judenfrei", S. 62, 91ff., 169ff.; Ofer/Weiner, Dead-End Journey, S. 151ff.; Brief Noga Netzers an den Verfasser vom Juni 2010.
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