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Bruno Rosenbaum * 1875

Mühlendamm 12 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
BRUNO ROSENBAUM
JG. 1875
VERHAFTET 1938
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
SACHSENHAUSEN
TOT 28.11.1940
1940 DACHAU

further stumbling stones in Mühlendamm 12:
Hubert Mayer

Bruno Rosenbaum, born 12 Mar. 1875 in Altona, incarcerated in 1938 at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, from 24 June 1938 to 2 Sept. 1940 at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, from 3 Sept. 1940 at Dachau concentration camp where he was killed on 28 Nov. 1940
Friederike Pauline Rosenbaum, née Jürgensen, born 27 Oct. 1880 in Altona, took her own life 22 Feb. 1940 in Hamburg

Mühlendamm 12

His parents had a hard time deciding on a name for their son. When the Jewish tradesman Moses Abraham Rosenbaum appeared at the civil registry office in Altona three days after the birth of his son on 12 Mar. 1875 to register the birth, the child still did not have a name. It wasn’t until nine days later that Moses Rosenbaum informed the responsible civil registry official that his son’s name was Bruno.

Bruno’s mother was Ernestine Rosenbaum, née Silberstein. She too came from a Jewish family. Ernestine and Moses Abraham Rosenbaum lived with their young son Bruno in Altona at Großen Elbstraße 91a. At that time, Altona was an independent city that had just transferred from Danish possession to Prussian. It was where Moses Abraham Rosenbaum also worked as a manufactured goods trader and a sign maker. The family moved several times during the subsequent years until they found a permanent home in 1892 at Kleine Freiheit 95, where Moses now worked as a seller of "batch goods”, what today we might call remnants.

Bruno Rosenbaum trained in business and around 1901 opened a postcard wholesale business at Großen Bergstraße 240. However he did not have any success with it, and by the following year he had already begun working as an independent agent. His agency was registered at Marktstraße 77, and he lived at the same address.

On 4 Oct. 1902 he married the Evangelical Christian Friederike Pauline Jürgensen, born on 27 Oct. 1880 in Altona. Apparently his parents had separated some time earlier as his mother Ernestine, who was already dead by the time of his wedding, had last lived in Puerto San Martin in Argentina while Bruno’s father lived in Hamburg. Friederike’s parents were the Altona ship builder Johann Anton Hinrich Jürgensen and his wife Johanna Friederike, née Harwig, after whom their daughter was named. At the time of Friederike’s birth, Johann and Johanna Jürgensen lived on the third floor of the building at Blumenstraße 153, today’s Billrothstraße. At his wedding in the civil registry office, Bruno Rosenbaum had the term "mosaic” that the official had entered for him under "religion” officially changed to "Evangelical Lutheran”. One of the two witnesses was Friederike’s brother, the shoemaker Heinrich Jürgensen.

Bruno and Friederike Rosenbaum lived in a small house at Marktstraße 77. Bruno ran his agency out of their home, and Friederike opened a "stationary and cigarette shop” on the ground floor.

As of 1906 the couple already lived in new quarters, at Lessingstraße 18, today’s Julius-Leber-Straße. Friederike had given up her shop, Bruno continued to work as a merchant. In 1917 they were both registered for the first time in Hamburg, at the address Käthnerort 4 in Barmbek. The following year they moved to Wagnerstraße in Eilbek, and at the same time Bruno Rosenbaum became general representative of the glue factory Sächsische Klebstoffwerke, Pirna. He also acted a short time as managing director for the Northern German glue industry Norddeutschen Klebstoff-Industrie. He held the role of general representative until 1937.

As of 1924/25 the couple lived in Hohenfelde at am Mühlendamm 34 which is where they witnessed the transfer of power to the National Socialists in Jan. 1933. Bruno and Friederike Rosenbaum were still registered at that address at the time of the countrywide census conducted in May 1939. By that time he had already been imprisoned for nearly a year.

Mass arrests were carried out throughout the Reich by the criminal inspection police from 13 to 18 June 1938 over the course of the operation "Indolent Reich”. One of those arrested was Bruno Rosenbaum. The Hamburg Criminal Inspection Unit took him and numerous other men to Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison on 20 June 1938 and four days later to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The target of the "June Operation” ordered by Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Reich Criminal Investigations Unit at the time, was indigent "antisocial” people ("beggars, vagrants and alcoholics”), "gypsies and roaming craftsmen”, as well as "pimps and malicious people refusing to pay support”. Moreover, Hitler personally ordered the arrest of previously convicted Jews who had in the past been sentenced to at least one month in prison, for, among other misdemeanors, persecution-related crimes like foreign currency offences, for crimes committed far in the past or petty crimes like traffic violations. One of those will have been the reason for Bruno Rosenbaum’s arrest. Reich-wide the criminal investigations unit detained 10,000 people who did not fit into the "people’s community”, as defined by the National Socialists, including 2,291 Jewish men. 1,256 of them were taken to Buchenwald concentration camp, 211 to Dachau concentration camp, and 824 to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In each of the three camps they were subjected to brutal abuse.

Bruno Rosenbaum was transferred from Sachsenhausen to Dachau concentration camp on 3 Sept. 1940 where he died on 28 Nov. 1940. He was 65 years old.

The emotional distress of her husband’s detention was overpowering for his wife Friederike. On 22 Feb. 1940 she ended her life by hanging herself in their apartment at Blumenau 48.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 4; 5; 8; 9; StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1c; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6184 u. 755/1875; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6213 u. 2990/1880; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 5958 u. 1032/1902; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 7235 u. 478/1940; StaH 552-1 Jüd. Gemeinden Nr. 992 e 2 Band 3, Transport nach Riga am 06. Dezember 1941, Listen 1 u. 2; Hamburger Adressbücher; Gedenkbuch für die Toten des Konzentrationslagers Dachau; Wolfgang Ayaß, "Asoziale" im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 1995; Hans-Dieter Schmid, Die Aktion "Arbeitsscheu Reich" 1938, in: KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme (Hrsg.), Ausgegrenzt. "Asoziale" und "Kriminelle" im nationalsozialistischen Lagersystem, Beitr. z. Geschichte d. nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung in Norddeutschland, Bd. 11, Bremen, 2009, S. 31–42; Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Masseneinweisungen in Konzentrationslager. Aktion "Arbeitsscheu Reich", Novemberpogrom, Aktion "Gewitter", in: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.), Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, München 2005, Bd. 1, S. 157–164, hier S. 159; Michael Wildt, "Volksgemeinschaft”, Version 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 3.6.2014, URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/Volksgemeinschaft?oldid=106491 (letzter Zugriff 10.7.2015).
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