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Paula Laser (née Schleimer) * 1881

Billstedter Hauptstraße 8 (Hamburg-Mitte, Billstedt)

HIER WOHNTE
PAULA LASER
GEB. SCHLEIMER
JG. 1881
DEPORTIERT 1941
RIGA
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Billstedter Hauptstraße 8:
Simon Laser

Simon Laser, born 18 Oct. 1882 in Wongrowitz, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga
Paula Laser, née Schleimer, born 8 Jan. 1881 in Kahlbude, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga

Billstedter Hauptstraße 8 (Hamburger Straße 4)

Simon Laser, born on 18 October 1882, moved with four of his brothers, who were also born in Wongrowitz in the Posen Province, and his sisters Rosa and Clara to the area around Hamburg in 1910. Their parents, Michael and Dorothea, née Lipinski, Laser, were assimilated Jews, but upheld many Jewish traditions. When Simon Laser, the second-youngest son, left his hometown he was already married and the father of a son. His wife Paula, née Schleimer, was from Kahlbude in Western Prussia, where she was born on 8 January 1881. Her eldest son Max was also born there, on 18 April 1908. In Hamburg, the family settled in Schiffbek, where their second son Rudi was born on 19 November 1915, and their daughter Lieselotte on 31 March 1919.

Most of the population of Schiffbek were workers at the Norddeutsche Jute-Spinnerei and Weberei (Northern German Jute Spinning and Weaving Mill) in Billbrook, just to the south. In 1928, Schiffbek, Kirchsteinbek, and Öjendorf were merged to form Billstedt, which became a part of Hamburg in 1937. Simon Laser and his family were members of the Wandsbek Jewish Community until 1937, when Wandsbek was incorportated into Hamburg. They then moved to the Hamburg Jewish Community.

Simon Laser, like his brothers, was a tailor. Before the First World War, he opened a retail store for men’s clothing and work uniforms, called Vulkan, on the corner of Hamburger Straße and Legienstraße. As was usual in working class areas, he allowed his customers to pay in installments.

When Rudi reached school age in 1921, he was sent to the Talmud Tora School on Grindelhof, despite the long distance he had to travel on the tram. At that time, the Talmud Tora School was a boys’ school. His elder brother Max developed encephalitis, which prevented him from working for the rest of his life. This did not burden the family financially, but limited Max’s ability to work in the store, and excluded him from becoming his father’s successor in the business.

Simon Laser expanded his business in 1925, buying the ground floor of the building across the street from his store at Hamburger Straße 4, present-day Billstedter Hauptstraße. The new property included a 5-room apartment and enough space for a showroom and storage. He expanded and renovated the space, and put in three large shop-windows. He employed one or two clerks in the store, besides the family members who worked there, and a housekeeper and cook in the home. The store provided the family with a well-to-do life for many years. They often took summer vacations to North Sea and Baltic Sea resorts, and they acquired works of art. When Paula Laser became ill, she was able to spend her recovery time in a spa resort in Wiesbaden.

It is unclear as to where Lieselotte attended school, but it is likely that, when she reached school age in 1925, she was sent to the Jewish girls’ school on Carolinenstraße, where her cousins Erna, Frieda, and Felicia Laser were also enrolled. Rudi Laser finished his primary schooling in 1929 and entered a commercial apprenticeship at the Rudolf Karstadt department store in Wandsbek. He quit the apprenticeship a year later to attend the State Trade School for Retailing. He and his father thought that this would better prepare him for working in the family store and possibly later taking it over. His graduation in 1933 coincided with the Nazi call to boycott Jewish businesses.
After finishing her primary schooling in 1934, Lieselotte also entered a commercial apprenticeship. She began working as an office clerk with the Gans Brothers company at Neue Wall 10 in 1938, but the job only lasted for one month because of the November Pogrom.

Beginning in 1933 the business worsened progressively, especially with regard to the installment payments. Many customers no longer made their payments, and the debts could not be collected or compensated for. Rudi Laser opened his own business as a sales representative for clothing and fabrics, and set up his office in his father’s store. The store’s reputation assured him a sufficient number of customers for a time. But his business venture failed quickly, and he emigrated to Argentina in July 1938. The store was closed, probably in May 1939, and the building was demolished when the street was widened.

As a Jew, Simon Laser received no indemnification, and had neither the financial nor legal means to begin anew. The family moved to Heinrich-Barth-Straße 17, and Simon found work as an excavator with the Blöcker company in Altona. His income was not enough to support the family, and Max Laser applied for ongoing benefits from the Hamburg Welfare Agency, and for a one-time payment to settle a dentist’s bill. He was granted the benefits after he declared that he was receiving no benefits from the Jewish Religious Association’s welfare program. The entire family received welfare benefits beginning in 1939, probably because of illness. Relatives were unable to help, as they were also in financial difficulties or had emigrated.

Lieselotte Laser died in her parents’ home on the evening of 17 February 1940 of pulmonary tuberculosis. Max Laser died on 25 June 1941 in the Israelitic Hospital of Parkinson’s and pneumonia. Both were buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Ohlsdorf. The "re-settlement” of the East began a short time later. Simon Laser’s sister Clara and her husband Bruno Cohn were the first members of the family to be deported. They were sent to Minsk on 8 November 1941. Simon and Paula Laser received their "orders to evacuate” to Riga on 6 December 1941. With them on the transport were Simon’s niece Felicia Laser, aged 23, and their six-year-old grandnephew Manfred Laser (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Hamm) – the daughter and grandson of Max Laser, the eldest of the five brothers. All traces of them are lost.


Translator: Amy Lee
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2017
© Initiative Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Billstedt

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 6; StaH, 351-11 AfW, 191115; 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 e 2, Bde 2 u. 3; Ziegenbalg, Schiffbek.
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