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Josepha Ambor
© Privatbesitz

Josepha Ambor (née Nathan) * 1875

Isestraße 61 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1941 Minsk

further stumbling stones in Isestraße 61:
Else Baer, Hedi Baer, Ingrid Baer, Joseph Baer, Minna Benjamin, Rosalie Benjamin, Emma Dugowski, Henriette Dugowski, Hermann Dugowski, Ida Dugowski, Moritz Dugowski, Wanda Dugowski, Selly Gottlieb, Heinrich Ilse, Ella Meyer, Max Meyer, Otto Meyer, Gregor Niessengart, Sophie Philip, Michael Pielen, Gertrud Rosenbaum, Edmund Sonn

Josepha Ambor, née Nathan, born 3 Feb. 1875 in Altona, deported 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk

Cäcilie Müller’s mother, Josepha Ambor, lived two houses down from the Müller family, as a boarder with the Meyer family. After her son-in-law received his deportation papers and her daughter "volunteered” for the transport to Minsk with their young daughter Denny, Josepha Ambor also joined the transport, even though her name was only on the reserve list. The family tradition, as her great-granddaughter reports it, says that she didn’t want to remain behind alone, and thought that 65 was not too old to still work. As was the case with so many of her fellow sufferers, she couldn’t begin to imagine the extent of the horror into which she was travelling.

Josepha Ambor was born in Altona. Her husband Jakob, who was six years older, came from the region around Bielitz, which at that time belonged to Poland. He became a German citizen in 1926, but not without considerable anti-Semitic resistance (see Hillel Chassel, Isestraße 69). He died in 1935. Josepha Ambor bore five sons and one daughter. The eldest son, Fritz Raphael, died shortly after birth in 1902. His brothers Richard Ruben (born 1903) and Otto (born 1904) survived the Shoah. Otto had immigrated to South Africa in 1927.

Jakob Ambor owned a metal-working company located on Spaldingstraße, in which sprinkler systems were manufactured from prefabricated components. He held patents for some of his products. The company had up to nine employees. His son Hans Joseph Salomon took over the company after Jakob’s death and managed it until it was "Aryanized” in November 1938.

For Josepha Ambor, the descent from dignified affluence to destitution and uncertainty began shortly after her husband’s death. She had to give up the beautiful ground-floor apartment at Loogestieg 15. This apartment, the parents’ last common residence, was the center of the family’s life, even after the children had moved out.

For a time the Ambors had lived in Blankenese, which at that time belonged to Prussia. In 1920 they returned to Hamburg, first to Parkallee and then to Lehnartzstraße, before they moved into the apartment on Loogestieg. After her husband died, Josepha Ambor made her home with her son Adolf on Haynstraße, until Adolf left Hamburg in 1939 to join his brother Hans in Belgium. Hans had not returned from a business trip there in 1938, and was attempting to support his non-Jewish wife Gertrud and his son Hans-Günther (born 1927) from abroad.

At this time the elder brother Richard was in France with his son and wife, a non-Jewish woman from Alsace. The family was able to hide in a small village in Périgord, the modern-day département of Dordogne, and survived the Shoah. The brothers Hans and Adolf were deported from Belgium via France to Auschwitz and Majdanek, where they were murdered.

Josepha Ambor moved from Haynstraße to Isestraße, where she first boarded, together with her daughter Cäcilie, in a house at Number 96, and then, in the summer of 1939, with the Meyers, a married couple, at Isestraße 61.

It was from this address that she was deported, at the same time as the Meyers and their son. Her daughter Cäcilie, Cäcilie’s husband, and their infant daughter Denny were ordered to leave their apartment at Isestraße 90 and report to the collection point (see Isestraße 57 and Isestraße 90).

There is a Stumbling Stone for Hans Ambor at Hammer Berg 34. His name is also on the memorial wall in Paris at the Mémorial de la Shoah to the victims deported from France. Adolf Ambor has a Stumbling Stone at Haynstraße 21.

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

© Christa Fladhammer

Quellen: 1; StaH, 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden, 992 e 2, Bd. 2; AfW 030275; AfW 260227; Biographie Hans Ambor in: Hildegard Thevs, Stolperstei­ne in Hamburg- Hamm, Biographische Spurensuche, Hamburg 2007, S. 114ff; mündliche Auskunft: Stéphanie Ambor, Hamburg.
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