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Bertha Töpfer * 1878

Schorchtstraße 32 (Harburg, Harburg)

Auschwitz
ermordet 1944 Auschwitz

Bertha Töpfer, née Klein, widowed Pempe, born 3/10/1878 in Skungirren, deported to Auschwitz 1943, died there in June 1944

Schorchtstrasse 32 Hamburg-Harburg

Bertha Klein, a Romani (member of the Roma people), was born in Insterburg county in Eastern Prussia; her parents were Eduard and Florentine Klein, née Anton. Bertha Klein came to Harburg around 1900. On June 27th, 1902, she married Wilhelm Pempe, a factory worker (born 1/28/1875 in Ballgarden, Tilsit county, Eastern Prussia). The couple lived at Hohe Strasse 33 from 1898, later at various addresses in the neighborhood of the Phoenix rubber works, from 1913 at Müllerstrasse 5, from 1917 at Am Wall 11a. The Pempes had six children: Otto (born 1/24/1903), Walter (born 6/29/1907), Georg (born 10/20/1907) Bertha (born 7/21/1910), Alfred (born 6/11/1913) and Wilma (born 6/1/1916). During World War I, Wilhelm Pempe was drafted into the army and killed on November 21st, 1917 in France. In 1922, his widow lived at Bokelmannstrasse 6b (now Grupenstrasse).

On December 19th, 1925, she married Hermann Töpfer, a factory worker, born 12/7/1884 in Alfeld near Hannover. Bertha’s second husband died on May 27th, 1927. In the following years, Bertha Töpfer was listed as "widow” in the address books, e.g. in 1938 at Dritte Twiete 3; her last address was Schorchtstrasse 50 in Harburg – the house stood across the street from today’s number 32.

Pursuant to the Nazi race laws, Bertha Töpfer was classified as a "Gypsy”, her children as "mongrel Gypsies.” Having discarded plans to resettle the Sinti and Roma, the Nazi government decided to deport them to extermination camps. In 1943, two transports of Sinti and Roma left Lohseplatz in Hamburg for Auschwitz. Bertha Töpfer, her son Georg Pempe, his wife Hulda and their daughter Suleika Klein were among the 328 persons on the transport of March 11th. Bertha Töpfer died of typhoid fever in June 1944.

Walter Pempe, Bertha Töpfer’s second eldest son, was deported to Auschwitz with 25 other people on April 18th, 1944. After the evacuation of the death camp before the advancing Red Army in January 1945, he was among the survivors whom the SS guards drove toward the Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany. He died in a hospital in Bavaria.

A further son, the cabinetmaker Alfred Pempe, was drafted in 1939. He married in 1943; shortly after, he was discharged from the Wehrmacht as a "mongrel gypsy" and ordered to report to the Hamburg Gestapo at the Stadthaus. The secret police threatened to have him castrated, he was forbidden to leave Hamburg without permission and had to perform forced labor under Gestapo supervision. Afraid of being deported to Auschwitz like his mother and two of his brothers, he did survive Nazi rule. Bombed out in 1943, Alfred Pempe was evacuated to Twistringen near Bremen.

After the war, he lived at Hoppenstedtstrasse 30 with his brother Otto; his sister Bertha Kleinfeld, née Pempe, lived nearby at number 38.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2019
© Hans-Joachim Meyer

Quellen: VVN-BdA Harburg (Hrsg.), Die anderen, S. 210f.; StaH, 332-8 Meldewesen, A44, A46; StaH, 351-11, AfW, Bertha Töpfer; StaH, Adressbücher Harburg-Wilhelmsburg und Hamburg; VVN, Komitee-Akten; Mitteilungen des StaH.