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Friedrich Haas * 1907

Roonstraße 13 (Eimsbüttel, Hoheluft-West)

1941 Riga
ermordet

Friedrich Haas, born 26 Feb. 1907 in St. Goar, deported from Hanover to Riga on 15 Dec. 1941

Roonstraße 13

Hamburg was never the center point of Friedrich Haas’ life. He only lived in the city for a short time. There are a few traces of him in the Jewish community tax records. His name is entered in the years 1932/33 and 1933/34. He was a social worker and lived first at Roonstraße 13, then Roonstraße 5, and finally at Kleine Rosenstraße 5. In 1932/33 he paid the minimum religious community tax, and in 1933/34 he paid no taxes at all. In August 1933 Friedrich Haas moved from Hamburg to Mainz and then to Hanover.

Many years later, in 1941, when he was deported from Hanover to Riga, he was working as a teacher at the Jewish Horticulture School in Ahlem on the outskirts of Hanover. The school, a philanthropic project, was founded in the 19th century by the Hanover banker Maritz Simon. Before 1933 the school’s aim was not to prepare Jews for a life in Palestine. In the 1930s the school consisted of a classroom building and several training workshops. It is not known when Friedrich Haas began teaching there. Of the 1001 Jews from Hanover who were deported on 15 December 1941, 32 had given their last address as the Horticulture School in Ahlem. Among them were nine school-age children. With the exception of one teacher, Meta Schloss, and the Director Herr Rosenblatt, all of the teachers were deported to Riga. The Ahlem Horticulture School also served as the collection point for the transport to Riga. The first of those who were be deported arrived on 10 December. Survivors remember the dreadful conditions, the bad weather and the lack of organization. It was impossible to accommodate 1000 people. They crowded into all of the rooms, even into the greenhouses. The deportations began on the morning of 15 December 1941, a Monday. Trucks took the people to the Fischerhof train station in Linden. The train arrived at the ghetto in Riga three days later. SS execution squads had "cleared” the ghetto of its former residents shortly before.

Friedrich Haas’ family can be traced back to 1800 in St. Goar and the neighboring towns of Hirzenach and Boppard on the Middle Rhine. At the end of the 19th century, the children took up different trades – millinery, bookbinding, cooperage (barrel-making). The parents, Samuel and Henriette Haas, were poor. They owned a house in St. Goar, but it was heavily mortgaged and they had difficulties keeping its ownership in the family. Nevertheless, they were able to provide their eight children with an adequate means of existence.

Friedrich Haas’ brother Otto lived in Triberg in the Black Forest, and was deported on 22 October 1940, along with his wife Frieda and their son Siegfried, to Gurs via Villingen. 6,500 Jews in Baden and the Saarpfalz were victims of this early deportation, when the Gauleiter ordered their deportation to France. The family can be traced through the Camp de Rivesaltes (also known as Camp Joffre), the Drancy Internment Camp, to Auschwitz. Records in Triburg mention the teacher Friedrich Israel Haas, residing in Hanover, who left personal effects with his brother on 11 November 1940.

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Susanne Lohmeyer

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; Ahlem. Die Geschichte einer jüdischen Gartenbauschule. Hrsg. von Hans-Dieter Schmid, Bremen 2008; Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv – Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover, Ham. 210 Acc 160/98 Nr. 10 + 11; Recherchen von Doris Spormann, St. Goar (Brief vom Mai 2007).