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© Renate Nottrott
Melanie Johannsen (née Susmann) * 1883
Baron-Voght-Straße 96 (Altona, Othmarschen)
1944 Auschwitz
Melanie Johannsen, née Susmann, born 13 Mar. 1883, sent to the Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp March 1944, deported to Auschwitz, murdered there 4 Oct. 1944
Baron-Voght-Straße 96
Melanie Johannsen was from a Hamburg Jewish family. She was the eldest daughter of Leopold Achilles Susmann and his wife Fanny, née Polack, and had three younger sisters, Gertrud, Clara, and Gretchen. The family lived on Bundesstraße in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel. All four girls received vocational training. Melanie may have trained as a milliner, but it may have been Clara – the family is no longer sure. She married Marius Johannes Heinrich (Max) Johannsen, a customs inspector. They lived at Baron-Voght-Straße 96 in Altona. The couple had no children.
Nothing more is known about Melanie Johannsen’s life. Because of the family’s traumatic experiences, they did not speak of the era of persecution. There are also no records of Melanie Johannsen with the Jewish Community. For a time she was protected from deportation by her "privileged mixed marriage” with a non-Jew. But she had to watch as her unmarried sister Gretchen was deported to Riga on 6 December 1941. After a time, her marriage to an "Aryan” no longer provided her any protection. In 1944 Melanie Johannsen, aged 61, found herself in the claws of the Gestapo.
In the 1950s, her sister Gertrud Sander, formerly Courmont, wrote a statement about Melanie’s arrest and deportation: "On 22 March, Melanie was ordered to appear at Herr Wohlers’ [Walter Wohlers, an official in the Gestapo’s Judenreferat (Jew Department)] office on Rothenbaumchaussee. Wohlers told her she had been denounced – she had been seen at the movie cinema, at a restaurant, and she had spoken against the Führer [beginning in the summer of 1935, Jews were prohibited from attending cinemas, theaters, etc.]. Wohlers was well-known for provoking those ordered to his office into losing their tempers. That’s what happened [with Melanie], and she was detained. The Jewish Community called Max and told him that the Gestapo had arrested his wife, and that he should pick up her handbag at the Community offices. It was the beginning of a horrible time. Max often visited us [Gertrud Sander and Gretchen Susmann] in Neumühlen. Melanie was allowed to receive packages and send her laundry home to be washed. When she did, she included little notes with messages. They were badly written, and sometimes didn’t make sense. I generally wrote out copies of them for Max.
Max was completely helpless. He was also ordered to the Gestapo offices, where Wohler told him what had happened. We submitted a plea for pardon. He was once again ordered to the Gestapo, where he learned that the plea had been denied. He tried to get permission to speak with Melanie at Fuhlsbüttel, where she had been taken. It was impossible. One of her last letters read: ‘My dearest Max, now they’re trying to separate us forever, because I didn’t even get your letter at Whitsun. Can’t Herr Sievers from Blankenese help? Only my speedy death can save me. Remember me lovingly, and give my regards to the others. I won’t be able to send any more messages, since they are sending me to a concentration camp, where I won’t be allowed to write letters. When you get my suitcase, I’ll be gone. They want to separate us because you’re a civil servant. Your office, and Nelli [Manx Johannsen’s sister]? Your Melanie.’”
Max Johannsen corresponded with his wife until June. On 10 October 1944 he was informed of her death and ordered to pick up her death certificate at the registry office. She allegedly died on 4 October 1944 in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp of heart failure and gastroenteritis. But the majority of those deported to Auschwitz were murdered in the Birkenau gas chambers immediately upon arrival.
Nelly Johannsen, who lived with her brother Max, testified after the war to the Reparations Board that her brother never got over his wife’s murder. "My brother’s wife was Jewish. As such she was taken by the Gestapo in March 1944 and her life was ended in the gas chambers in Auschwitz. This fact unsettled my otherwise healthy brother so much that he died 18 months later of a broken heart. I also suffered terribly over my sister-in-law’s death, as we were very close and had spent many happy years together.”
Melanie Johannsen’s sister Gretchen Susmann was shot in March 1942 in Dunamünde near Riga. Her sister Gertrud Sander was to be deported to Theresienstadt on 14 February 1945, but her non-Jewish husband was able to prevent the deportation.
Translator: Amy Lee
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.
Stand: April 2018
© Birgit Gewehr
Quellen: 8; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 54590 (Johannsen, Nelly); Informationen von Melanie Johannsens Großnichte Renate Nottrott, geborene Courmont, und ihrem Großneffen Peter Courmont; Aufzeichnungen von Gertrud Sander, geborene Susmann, im Besitz von Peter Courmont und Renate Nottrott.
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