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Sophie Goldstein * 1875

Lange Reihe 84 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

Freitod 4.12.1941
KZ Fuhlsbüttel+Sachsenhausen

Sophie Goldstein, born on 21 July 1875 in Hamburg, suicide on 4 Dec. 1941

last residential address: Lange Reihe 84

Before her death, the unmarried Sophie Goldstein lived in the apartment of her evidently non-Jewish brother-in-law Heinrich Meyer (born in 1887), whose wife had died. She was the daughter of the hat maker Michael Goldstein and his wife Rosalie, née Levy, both of whom were no longer alive. On 4 Dec., only two days before the deportation of 753 Hamburg Jews to the Riga Ghetto scheduled by the Nazi authorities, Heinrich Meyer reported his sister-in-law to the police as missing since the previous evening.

Sophie Goldstein’s corpse, cut into pieces by the sluice gate or by ship’s propellers, was found that same day in a basin of the Alster sluice gate on the Resendamm side (near Jungfernstieg). The suspected reason for her suicide entered in the police file is limited to the note "because of evacuation to Poland.” Provided one ignores the false destination of the deportation, one can assume this reason to be a plausible one as Sophie Goldstein is named on the deportation list for Riga in the annex of persons that committed suicide after receiving their "evacuation order.”

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 4; StaH, 522-1, Jüd. Gemeinden, 992 e 2 (Deportationslisten); StaH, 331-5, Polizeibehörde, unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 3 Akte 1942/62.

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