Search for Names, Places and Biographies


Already layed Stumbling Stones


back to select list

Bertha Bettelheim 1926 in Hamburg
© Privatbesitz

Bertha Bettelheim (née Falk) * 1895

Borgesch 18 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

1943 Auschwitz
deportiert aus Drancy Frankreich

further stumbling stones in Borgesch 18:
Wilhelm Rudolf Ochs, Klara Hedwig Ochs

Bertha Bettelheim, former married name (divorced) Behrend, née Falk, born 1 Feb. 1895 in Hamburg, deported on 28 Oct. 1943 to Auschwitz

last residential address: Borgesch 18

Bertha Bettelheim grew up in Hamburg, attending the Jewish Girls’ School on Karolinenstraße and subsequently business school. As a young woman, she worked at the Warburg banking house and at the Zoeller wine-trading agency. According to her surviving children, since 1926 she was apparently the owner/operator of a typing service and translation and copying office located in her private apartment. In 1920, she married Julius Behrend, with whom she had two children – Siegbert (born in 1917) and Ruth (born in 1922) – whom she divorced, however, in 1927. In 1928, she married the merchant Martin Max Bettelheim, with whom she had a son, Werner (born in 1929).

Initially, the couple lived at Kirchweg 18, moving, however, at the end of 1934 or early 1935 to Borgesch 18. The husband emigrated to France in Nov. 1935 already, subsequently emigrating from there to Australia without his wife Bertha. She left Hamburg in 1936 with her son Werner to move in with her husband’s brother, Paul Bettelheim, who had been living in Paris since 1933. When the Germans occupied Paris in the early summer of 1940, Bertha Bettelheim fled together with her brother-in-law and her son via Marseille to Nice, which was occupied by Italian troops at the time. Here she and her brother-in-law were arrested on 19 Oct. 1943, after the Germans invaded this area as well, and deported on 28 Oct. of that same year via the Drancy transit camp near Paris to Auschwitz, where both lost their lives.

Her son Werner managed to hide from the German occupiers until the liberation of France, and he emigrated, like the children from the first marriage, Siegbert and Ruth, to Israel. The Stolperstein for Bertha Bettelheim is located in Borgesch street near the entrance to the Malersaal of the Deutsche Schauspielhaus.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.


© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 4; AfW, Entschädigungsakten.

Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Recherche und Quellen

print preview  / top of page