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Bertha Heyn * 1896

Wrangelstraße 14 (Eimsbüttel, Hoheluft-West)

1941 Riga

further stumbling stones in Wrangelstraße 14:
Gutchen Wolff

Bertha Heyn, born November 24, 1896 in Hamburg, deported to Riga on December 6, 1941

Wrangelstraße 14

Bertha Heyn's parents were Eduard and Toni Heyn, née Burgheim. Their marriage in 1891 resulted in three children. The oldest child, son Ernst, died only a few days after his birth in 1892. In 1894 and 1896, the daughters Charlotte and Bertha were born. At that time the family lived in the Hamburg Neustadt. In Bertha's birth certificate the address Wexstraße 6 is mentioned as the address. The father Eduard, born on August 18, 1858 in Neuhaus at river Oste, died already in March 1907, when the daughters were only 13 and 11 years old. The mother (born January 5, 1861) came from Bromberg in the province of Posen.

Bertha lived together with her mother, her two years older sister Charlotte and then, from 1927, also with Charlotte's illegitimate daughter Elisabeth (born on January 13, 1927) at Gneisenaustraße 43. She was a tailor and worked for private customers. She probably fell ill with tuberculosis as early as 1928. At the beginning of 1929, she spent a month in Mölln to recover. She took a room there until May and then returned to Hamburg.

However, she was unable to overcome her lung disease and spent several weeks each in 1936, 1937 and 1939 in the M.A. Rothschild'sche Lungenheilstätte in Nordrach in the Black Forest, after she had already had to spend several weeks in the Allgemeines Krankenhaus (AK) Barmbek in 1936. (The lung sanatorium in the Black Forest had been founded in 1903 for Jewish patients, was run orthodox on the instructions of its founder, Baroness Adelheid de Rothschild (1853-1935), and adhered to the Jewish dietary rules, which was important to Bertha). Although the treatment was quite successful, her condition deteriorated repeatedly at home and new treatment became necessary.

In the Hamburg apartment, the relationship with her sister had become increasingly tense. This was probably also due to the illness, because Charlotte had to fear an infection for herself, her daughter Elisabeth and her mother. Bertha, as her welfare file noted, seemed to be very lonely, unhappy and psychologically burdened.

In July 1936, she returned from her first stay in Nordrach and then in Hamburg she cared for her mother, whose health deteriorated more and more. After her mother's death on May 14, 1937, the sisters had to give up the three-and-a-half room apartment. The three women had long lived in precarious financial circumstances; The mother received some pension, Charlotte received 50 RM alimony from the married father of her child, and Bertha sewed for private customers. After she became ill and unable to work, she received a small amount of welfare support. However, according to the authorities, she was still restricted in her ability to work and was ordered to seek work. Her admission sheet from the Welfare Office is dated July 9, 1929, and her support was temporarily suspended.

After Bertha had spent the time from September 1937 to March 1938 again in the lung sanatorium, she moved for a few days into an apartment at Brockmannsweg 3, where a friend lived who was also ill and destitute. From there she moved for three months to Gneisenaustraße 6 I and then in the summer of 1938 to Wrangelstraße 14 at Curjel. From May 1939 to March 1940, a cure was necessary for the third time at the M.A. von Rothschild's Lung Sanatorium.

Of course, the assumption of costs for a Jewish patient was by now a problem. The regulation was such that the welfare office for lung sufferers could pass on half of the costs to the Jewish community. In March 1939, Bertha had informed the social administration that she had made an inheritance of 990 Reichsmark. In an internal welfare file, there is a letter recommending that the inheritance be used to reimburse earlier expenses, "since the amount would otherwise be used for the costs of the sanatorium and only the Jewish community would benefit from it.”

After the death of their mother, sister Charlotte and her daughter moved first to friends at Hegestraße 89 and then in 1939 to the second floor of Wrangelstraße 37, where they still had a subtenant, Mr. Mannheim. In contrast to Bertha, Charlotte, who had worked in Hamburg as a saleswoman for as long as possible, managed to emigrate. Two cousins in the USA had supported her. When she and her daughter were granted a visa for the USA, they failed to book a ship passage, but in the fall of 1941, during the Second World War, they were both able to leave Germany as two of the last Jews. At short notice they were asked to take the train from Berlin to Barcelona. There, however, they were stranded. There was no possibility for the crossing to America. They lived in Spain for two years before they were able to travel on a freighter from Lisbon to Philadelphia on June 8, 1943.

Although both sisters lived in Wrangelstraße from 1939 on - Charlotte at No. 37 and Bertha at No. 14 - they had no contact anymore. Bertha had also wanted to flee to the United States, but since she was ill with tuberculosis, it was impossible for her to pass the health examination. So she had to stay.

Her name already appeared on the substitute list for the deportation to Lodz on October 25, 1941, but was crossed out there. Barely two months later, she was deported to Riga-Jungfernhof. She was 45 years old at the time. There are no other traces of her.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt/Changes: Beate Meyer
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: August 2020
© Susanne Lohmeyer

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; StaH 332-5_2777/350; StaH 332-5_851/50; StaH 332-5_7988/165; StaH 332-5_329/4848; StaH 332-5_2291/4829; StaH 332-5_2406/3971; StaH 332-5_2340/216; StaH 351-14_1288; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992e 2 Bd 3, Deportationsliste; Hamburger Adressbücher; Elizabeth Heyn, The Teller in the Tale, https://www.alemannia-judaica.de/nordrach_synagoge.htm.
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