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Werner Otto Stern * 1899

Elbchaussee 158 (Altona, Othmarschen)

HIER WOHNTE
WERNER OTTO STERN
JG. 1899
EINGEWIESEN 1940
HEILANSTALT BENDORF-SAYN
DEPORTIERT 1942
TRANSIT-GHETTO IZBICA
ERMORDET

Werner Otto Stern, born 5.9.1899 in Berlin, lived in Hamburg for many years, admitted to the Israelite Sanatorium and Nursing Home for the Mentally and Nervously in Bendorf-Sayn on 30.10.1940, deported to eastern Poland on 15.6.1942, murdered

Elbchaussee 158 (Othmarschen)

Werner Otto Stern was born in Berlin on 5 September 1899. His parents, both born in Hamburg, came from Jewish families. His father, bank director Julius Stern, was born on 26 July 1858, his mother Malgonia, née Karpeles, was born on 13 September 1869. The couple married in Hamburg on 6 June 1889 and immediately settled in Berlin, where Julius Stern had already lived.

We know nothing about Werner Otto Stern's childhood and youth.

The Karpeles family was closely related to the Blumenfeld family, who were important to Hamburg's economy. Malgonia Stern's sister Helena Karpeles had married the Jewish Hamburg merchant Bernhard (Baruch) Blumenfeld in 1877. The Blumenfeld family gained prestige and social influence not least through the business successes of both the wholesale merchant and shipowner and his descendants (for the Blumenfeld family, see Martha Blumenfeld in www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de).

Werner Otto Stern's father Julius died on 23 March 1914 at the age of just 55. The life story of his mother, who probably survived her husband, is not known.
Nothing further is known about the life story of his mother, who probably survived her husband.

Werner Otto Stern moved from Berlin to Hamburg in the 1920s, possibly due to family connections and the professional opportunities that arose from them. From April 1926, he was assessed for religious taxes by the Jewish community. Letters from the Jewish Community to him were to be sent to the company address of Ernst Bernhard Blumenfeld, a son of the company founder Bernhard (Baruch) Blumenfeld, at Fischertwiete 1 (Chilehaus).

Until 1937/1938, Werner Otto Stern lived in a house at Ohnhorststraße 39, then Klein Flottbek, now Osdorf, which belonged to Ebba Blumenfeld. She was the Danish-born non-Jewish widow of Ernst Bernhard Blumenfeld, who had died in 1927. Ebba Blumenfeld herself lived in her house at Elbchaussee 158 in Othmarschen.

In the 1930s, Werner Otto Stern was incapacitated due to a ‘mental illness’, details of which are not known. Ebba Blumenfeld took over the guardianship. From then on, Werner Otto Stern lived with her at Elbchaussee 158.

We do not know how his illness developed. Unlike many other psychiatric patients in Hamburg, he does not appear to have been in either the Friedrichsberg Psychiatric University Hospital or the Hamburg-Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home. In any case, there is no evidence of his presence in the registers of these institutions.

He probably moved directly from Elbchaussee 158 to Jacoby'sche Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bendorf-Sayn near Koblenz in 1940. The Bendorf/Sayn police office registered his registration on 30 October 1940.

Werner Otto Stern's ‘transfer’ to Bendorf-Sayn anticipated a general instruction issued by the Nazi state shortly afterwards, according to which Jewish mental patients ‘may only be admitted to the sanatorium and nursing home in Bendorf-Sayn, district of Koblenz, which is run by the Reich Association of Jews’.

The Jacoby'schen Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bendorf-Sayn, which was established in 1869/70, admitted wealthy Jewish private patients as well as Jewish patients maintained by the welfare organisation. For many people of Jewish origin with intellectual disabilities or mental illness, it was a place of refuge after 1933, especially when their emigrated or deported families could no longer look after them.

The Jewish residents of the Jacoby'sche Anstalt were deported to the East in at least four transports in 1942. Werner Otto Stern was assigned to the DA 22 railway transport, which consisted of fifteen passenger coaches and nine goods wagons. The goods wagons were loaded with around 250 patients and 80 nurses and doctors from the Bendorf-Sayn sanatorium and nursing home on 14 June 1942. The transport departed from Koblenz-Luetzel early in the morning on 15 June 1942. During stopovers in Cologne, Aachen and Düsseldorf, among other places, a further 600 Jews were added to the transport. A total of 1003 train passengers are reported. The transport destination was Izbica in the Lublin region of eastern Poland. However, the journey is said to have ended in Lublin on a side track. After a ‘selection’, 100 men were taken to the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp on the outskirts of Lublin. The train was then probably taken directly to the Sobibor extermination camp.

Izbica, 65 kilometres from Lublin, was a typical ‘shtetl’ in which around 3,600 Jewish and around 200 Christian Poles lived before the start of the war. The Germans deported Polish Jews from western Polish territories that were to be annexed by Germany to Izbica and other small towns and villages in the Lublin area. As more German and European Jews were deported to eastern Poland in the run-up to the ‘Final Solution’, these places increasingly took on the function of transit camps. Izbica was one of the ‘main transshipment centres’ for the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps.

Werner Otto Stern's fate after his deportation from Koblenz remains a mystery. In the Federal Archives' memorial book "Victims of the Persecution of Jews under National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 - 1945”, the deportation from Koblenz on 15 June 1942 is listed with the destination "Sobibor, extermination camp”. Probably due to the initially planned but unrealised destination of transport DA 22, the probably incorrect destination of Izbica has become firmly established, especially as a transport from Izbica to Sobibor is also known. In any case, it is not known exactly when and where Werner Otto Stern died. But it can be safely assumed that he was murdered.

He was declared dead on 8 May 1945.

Stand: October 2025
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg und Altona (diverse Jahrgänge); StaH 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident (Devisenstelle und Vermögensverwertungsstelle) Nr. R1939_2558 (Werner Otto Stern), 332-5 Standesämter 8484 Heiratsregister Nr. 162/1877 (Bernhard Blumenfeld/Helena Karpeles), 351-11 Wiedergutmachung Nr. 28808, (Werner Otto Stern) darin Verweis auf Todeserklärung des Amtsgerichts Hamburg-Blankenese vom 24.11.1949, Az.: 6 VI 90/50), 522-01 Jüdische Gemeinden b_55113 (Kultussteuerkarteikarte Werner Otto Stern); Standesamt Berlin Geburtsregister Nr. 2159/1899 (Werner Otto Stern), Berlin I, II Sterberegister Nr. 184/1914 (Julius Stern); Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz Best. Nr. 512,01 Aufnahmebuch Nr. 17900 Gesundheitsamt Koblenz; Online-Gedenkbuch des Bundesarchivs "Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933 – 1945" (Stern, Werner O.) (Zugriff am 23.3.2025); RdErl. d. RMdI. V. 12.12.1940 – IVg 7123/40-1506 "Aufnahme jüdischer Geisteskranker in Heil- und Pflegeanstalten" (Auszug). Alfred Gottwaldt/Diana Schulle, Die ‚Judendeportationen‘ aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941-1945, Wiesbaden 2005, S. 217 ff. Steffen Hänschen, Das Transitghetto Izbica im System des Holocaust, Berlin 2018, S. 237 ff. Franz-Josef Heyen zus. mit Editha Bucher, Dokumente des Gedenkens – Dokumentation zur Geschichte der jüdischen Bevölkerung in Rheinland-Pfalz und im Saarland von 1800 bis 1945, Koblenz 1974, S. 274 ff. Robert Kuwalek, Das Vernichtungslager Bełżec, Berlin 2013. Dietrich Schabow, Die Heil und Pflegeanstalten für Nerven- und Gemütskranke in Bendorf, Bendorf-Sayn 2008, S. 79 ff. Elmar Schwinger, Von Kitzingen nach Izbica, Aufstieg und Katastrophe der mainfränkischen Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Kitzingen, Kitzingen 2009, S. 475 ff. Ingo Wille, Transport in den Tod – Von Hamburg-Langenhorn in die Tötungsanstalt Brandenburg, Berlin 2017, S. 41 ff.