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Juliane Appel * 1889

Woldsenweg 13 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)

HIER WOHNTE
JULIANE APPEL
JG. 1889
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ / LITZMANNSTADT
CHELMNO / KULMHOF
ERMORDET 20.4.1942

further stumbling stones in Woldsenweg 13:
Henriette Cohen, Siegmund Goldschmidt, Mathilde Laski

Juliane "Jula" Appel, born 5.3.1889 in Koblenz, deported 25.10.1941 to Lodz ghetto, murdered 20.4.1942 in Chelmno extermination camp

Woldsenweg 13

Juliane Appel was born in Koblenz on 5.3.1889 as the daughter of the Jewish couple Isaak Appel (born 12.1.1848 in Großbüllesheim) and Henriette, née Heymann (born 16.10.1852 in Bendorf, died 24.3.1927). The parents had married on June 6, 1874 in Kuchenheim (today a district of Euskirchen) and had five other children besides Juliane.

Isaak Appel was a butcher, but as later noted in the Koblenz address books, he and his wife Henriette ran a used goods business in their own house at Kastorstraße 23. Henriette Appel continued to run the business after her husband's death, and in 1912 she is recorded as a widow.

It is not known when Juliane Appel, who called herself Jula, left her home. She remained unmarried and was a trained nurse during World War I, working in a military hospital, presumably near the front.

From 1928 to 1933 she worked in the children's home of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Workers' Welfare Association, AW today AWO) at Bürgerstraße 39 in Altona. She had a close friendship with the director of the home, the welfare nurse Thea Dening (1891-1973). When the Arbeiterwohlfahrt, an organization close to the SPD and founded in 1919, was banned by the National Socialists in 1933, both women lost their jobs and thus also their official residence. (The assets and facilities of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt were taken over by the NS-Volkswohlfahrt e.V. Gau Hamburg. The "Kinderheim Friede" of the Großstadt-Mission moved into the house at Bürgerstraße 39. The director at the time, Bernhard Harder, managed to escape the grasp of the National Socialists by joining the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Province of Hanover).

Thea Dening and Juliane Appel moved to Behnstraße 39, House 2 in the old town of Altona. There Thea Dening opened a boarding house, which, however, only barely secured her livelihood. Perhaps Juliane Appel was hoping for a professional perspective when she joined the Jewish Community in Altona on October 1, 1933. On her 1935 cult tax card (Kultussteuerkarte), it was noted "without income" and an addendum stated "non-denominational." A second tax card created in 1936 shows that Juliane Appel, now with the occupational title "nurse," had returned to Hamburg in July 1936 after a stopover from Wyk/Föhr. (There the Jewish Women's Association ran a children's recreation home from 1927 to 1938).

She then lived in well-off residential areas such as Woldsenweg 14 near Mansfeld, Woldsenweg 4 with Engelhardt and Woldsenweg 13 with Cohen, then in Hochallee 70 with Schaps and again in Woldsenweg 13 with Cohen. Most likely, Juliane Appel worked as a nurse during this time and lived with her respective employers.

Juliane Appel received her deportation order at Woldsenweg 13. Thea Dening's daughter, born in 1928, who had developed a close bond with Juliane Appel, reported in retrospect that she knew at the time, as a 13-year-old, when she said goodbye to "Aunt Jula" that it was goodbye forever.

Together with Henriette Cohen (born 17.2.1885) and fellow residents Mathilde Laski (born 16.11.1888) and Siegmund Goldschmidt (born 19.4.1887) (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de), Juliane Appel received her "evacuation orders" telling her to report to the lodge house at Moorweide on October 24, 1941. They were deported to the Lodz ghetto, which had been renamed "Litzmannstadt" by the National Socialists, with the first large transport that left Hamburg on October 25 from the Hanover train station at Lohseplatz.

In the ghetto, Juliane Appel was housed in room 31 of Alexanderhofstraße 37. She survived the first winter despite the inhumane living conditions. In May 1942, the first "resettlements" of German Jews who had arrived in the fall of 1941 took place. It was said that they would go to another labor camp. Apparently Juliane Appel did not believe these rumors when she received her deportation request No. III/335. Hoping to be deferred from the transport, she wrote to the "Amt für Eingesiedelte". She probably did not write the letter herself, since the handwriting differs greatly from the signature: "I hereby politely request that you refrain from resettling me. Since the beginning, I have been working as a volunteer nurse and nurse of the Hamburg transport. I have provided my medicines free of charge. During the War I did war service as a nurse and received the Order of St. John for it.
Sincerely, Sister Jula Appel".

Applicants who had been decorated in the First World War, such as those who had received the Iron Cross, or who could prove that they had an important job in the various companies, had a chance of success. Apparently, this did not apply to the 53-year-old nurse who had been decorated in the war; perhaps she was also weakened and thus no longer able to work.

Juliane Appel's application was stamped "ODMOWA" = rejected.

On April 20, 1942, she was transported to the Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp 60 km away and murdered in the gas trucks waiting there.

Two of her brothers also did not survive the Holocaust:
Adolf Appel (born 6.5.1890) was interrogated and severely maltreated several times by the Gestapo in Koblenz; he died of the consequences in the Kemperhof Hospital in Koblenz on July 31, 1936.

Max Appel (born 27.5.1891) was arrested on August 7, 1943, for alleged "statements hostile to the state." In October 1943, he was transferred from "protective custody" in Koblenz to the Auschwitz concentration camp as a "political Jew". When the camp was evacuated in the face of the advancing Red Army, Max Appel was among the prisoners taken to Buchenwald concentration camp on January 26, 1945. There he died on March 23, 1945, shortly before liberation by American troops, allegedly of "sepsis (blood poisoning) with phlegmon (inflammation) of the right forearm" in the prisoners' infirmary.

The three siblings Juliane, Adolf and Max Appel have been commemorated by stumbling stones at Kastorstraße 23 in Koblenz since 2007.

Translation Beate Meyer

Stand: February 2023
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 5; USHMM, RG 15.083, 299/80 (Appel, Juliane) Auskunft von Steven Vitto am 17.2.2021; Email von Daniel von Usslar vom 6.2.2021 und 7.2.2021; Mahnmal Koblenz https://www.mahnmal-koblenz.de/index.php/2013-12-12-02-07-02/die-lesemappen/613-068-geschwister-appelMahnmal (Zugriff 17.4.2021); http://www.awo-hamburg.de/wer-wir-sind/historie/ (Zugriff 17.4.2021); http://totenbuch.buchenwald.de/names/details/person/32325/ref/recherche (Zugriff 17.4.2021); http://docplayer.org/68979346-Juedische-bevoelkerung-grossbuellesheim-stand.html (Zugriff 17.4.2021);
Jüdisches Leben: Kreisstadt Euskirchen https://www.euskirchen.de/stadtinfo/historie/gegen-das-vergessen/juedisches-leben/?uid=1756 (Zugriff 17.4.2021); https://www.euskirchen.de/service/stadtarchiv/bestaendeuebersicht/personenstandsregister-online/ (Zugriff 17.4.2021); Dieter Peters, Der jüdische Friedhof in Koblenz, S. 10, https://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%20234/Koblenz_2001.pdf (Zugriff 17.4.2021);
StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 1; StaH 424-24_112 "Unterstützung der Tätigkeit des Ausschuss für Arbeiterwohlfahrt Altona e.V. 1920-1933 Enth. u.a. Jahresberichte, Beihilfe für die Kindererholungsfürsorge, insbesondere Kinderheim Bürgerstraße 39, 1925-1933. Einrichtung "Sozialdemokratische Wohlfahrtspflege Ortsgruppe Altona"; StaH 351-11_45738; StaH 351-11_7922; Buchenwald, Ausgrenzung und Gewalt 1937 bis 1945, Begleitband zur Dauerausstellung in der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald, Göttingen 2016; www.ancestry.de: Sterberegister Max Appel am 23. März 1945 in Weimar-Buchenwald (Zugriff 17.4.2021); www.ancestry.de: Sterberegister Jeanette Busse, geb. Appel am 1. Juli 1939 in Berlin-Spandau (Zugriff 17.4.2021) www.ancestry.de Kriegsranglisten und -stammrollen des Königreichs Bayern, 1. Weltkrieg 1914-1918 für Josef Appel (Zugriff 17.4.2021); https://www.grosstadt-mission.de/ueber_uns_geschichte/articles/geschichte.html (Zugriff 11.5.2021); Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939-1945, Reinbek, S. 992; Diverse Adressbücher von Koblenz, Hamburg und Altona.
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