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Herbert Pincus * 1920

Im Allhorn 45 Hof Walddörfer Gymnasium. (Wandsbek, Volksdorf)


HIER LERNTE
HERBERT PINCUS
JG.1920
DEPORTIERT 1941
VERSCHOLLEN IN
MINSK

see:

Herbert Artur Pincus, b. 11.6.1920, deported to Minsk on 11.8.1941

Herbert Pincus lived at Isestrasse 55 with his parents, Ignatz Pincus, b. 1871 in Posen, and Maria Therese Pincus, née Hirsch, b. 1884 in Berlin.

In 1931, the couple decided to enroll the eleven-year old Herbert in the Volksdorf communal school. In order to avoid the daily trip from Eppendorf to Volksdorf, he boarded with the teacher Grimmelshäuser at Allhorn 64. He attended the Walddörfer Preparatory School starting in 1932.

His classmate Klaus Eggers recalls: "My impression is that Herbert was fully integrated with us, even respected, because he could do a good imitation of Charlie Chaplin." Also, on class field trips, when it came to the telling of original fairytales, Herbert Pincus’s were the best.

Herbert’s landlord joined the National Socialist Party in March 1933 and swiftly tossed out the Jewish boy. After this Herbert came to school every morning from Isestrasse by subway. Gradually, the class atmosphere began to change. Many boys now wore black pants with wide belts, on the buckles of which the "runic victory emblem” was to be seen. They called themselves the "Germanic Youth”; many of the girls were organized in the "Young Maidens.” Both children’s organizations were part of the Hitter Youth. Altogether, three quarters of the children belonged to the Hitler Youth. A few were not invited, for example, those who "shifted" to their gymnastics club. From 1934 on, that meant extracurricular activities on Saturday for them. The un-organized had to appear for "State Youth Day,” where they received extra political coaching. Herbert Pincus was among them.

On 18 August 1934, the first "State Youth Day,” the program for the seventh grader Herbert Pincus featured, for example, "Hitler and the political situation,” and then (in 1934!) a lecture by teacher S. concerning "the dangers of aerial warfare.” Two weeks later Herbert had to endure lectures about the "Jewish Question” and "dynamite and gunpowder.” It is likely that he already suspected that his life would not run "normally.”

Before the summer vacation of 1935, he confided to his classmate Gerda that he and his parents were going to travel to England. Following the summer break, he did not return to his class at the Walddörfer school. His classmates lost sight of him.

Herbert and his parents did not leave the country. He began a commercial apprenticeship in Hamburg and made preparations for emigration to Shanghai. In August 1939, he had surmounted all the bureaucratic hurdles that piled up for a Jewish emigrant. Ticked off the list were: index cards and emigration questionnaires, declaration of debt settlements, a listing of relocation addresses. The delaration of assets went quickly. The long list of questions about ready cash, credit balances, securities, real estate holdings, etc. he answered with "not any” or "none.” After an exact accounting of all the personal effects to be relocated, the senior executor of the court scrutinized the list once more and approved it. Included was RM 1500 for new purchases, for example, a green tropical outfit. The ship passage for the unemployed Herbert had been paid by an uncle. Everything was in order for the departure date 16 August 1939. Nevertheless, the trip collapsed. In Herbert Pincus’s records at the responsible currency office there is to be read, in another person’s handwriting, the following: "The uncle should cough up another RM 300, then it will fly! Gr. 8.22.1939.”

Thus was Herbert’s fate sealed. With the best of wills he could not come up with this sum. His trip was delayed. On 1 September 1939, the war began – this amounted to a de facto travel ban for Jews, even though emigration was finally prohibited de jure only when the deportations began.

After the failed emigration, the Pincus family lived two more years in Hamburg. With the beginning of the war, measures against Jews grew ever harsher. Between 1939 and 1943, more than fifty decrees made life ultimately unbearable for them. In November 1941, the mail brought the "evacuation order." On 7-8 November 1941, Herbert Pincus spent his last night in Hamburg with his parents in the building of the [Masonic] Provincial Lodge Lower Saxony on Moorweidenstrasse.

On the next morning, they were brought to the Hanover Railroad Station. Together with nearly a thousand other companions in suffering, they were loaded into unheated passenger cars of the German National Railroad for the three-day trip to Minsk. Eventually, Herbert, Ignatz, and Maria Therese Pincus met their deaths there, no later than the liquidation of the ghetto by the SS in September 1943.

Fifty years later, his former classmates asked the historian Ursula Randt to research his fate. During a ceremony in November 1993, they remembered their comrade. Since then, his name stands on a wall in the school commemorating the "victims of war and violence" during the era of National Socialism.

Ten years later – in November 2003 – five fourteen-year olds at the Walddörfer-Preparatory School showed renewed interest in the destiny of the former student at their school. In a ceremony they traced impressively the footsteps of his brief life following which they dedicated a "Stolperstein" [commemorative stone] in the schoolyard in remembrance of Herbert Pincus.

Commemorative stones at Isestrasse 55 also remember Herbert, Ignatz, and Maria Therese Pincus.

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

Stand: February 2018
© Ursula Pietsch

Quellen: StaHH, FVg 7395, Herbert Artur Pincus 1939; Randt, Herbert Pincus, Vortrag vom 21.11.1993, ungedruckt; Eggers, Damals in den dreißiger Jahren , Vortrag vom 21,11.1993 ungedruckt; Stobbe, Verschollen in Minsk, in: FORUM, Nr.90, 4/2001; Klassenbücher der Walddörfer Schule 18.8. und 1.9.1934; Pietsch, Volksdorfer Schicksale , in: Unsere Heimat die Walddörfer, Nr.5/2004.S.63.

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