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Gerhard Stoppelmann * 1904

Blumenstraße 46 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)

HIER WOHNTE
GERHARD
STOPPELMANN
JG. 1904
FLUCHT 1935 BELGIEN
DEPORTIERT 1942
DRANCY - AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Blumenstraße 46:
Edith Stoppelmann

Edith Stoppelmann, née. Koppel, b. 4.28.1904 in Hamburg, fled to Belgium ca. 1935, deported on 8.26.1942 from Drancy/France to Auschwitz where she was murdered
Gerhard Stoppelmann, b. 11.21.1904 in Hamburg, fled to Belgium ca. 1935, deported on 8.26.1942 from Drancy/France to Auschwitz where he was murdered

Blumenstraße 46

Gerhard Stoppelmann was the son of Wolfgang Stoppelmann and his wife Hertha, née Wigderowitsch. Through his parents, he had Dutch citizenship. He married Edith Koppel; the Jewish couple remained childless. The Stoppelmanns lived at Blumenstrasse 46. At the same address until 1926 lived Margot Stavenhagen, who married Paul Bauer (see biographical entry for Bauer, Cäcilie).

On his communal religion tax record, Gerhard Stoppelmann is described as an employee of the firm G. Stoppelmann & Co, at Hopfensack 19 in which he was at the same time a partner. The firm imported and exported animal hair. As a Dutch citizen, Gerhard Stoppelman and his wife could move unmolested to Antwerp in Belgium in 1935. There, too, he conducted an export business. The Hamburg firm was at first carried on by a manager. A second partner, Gustav Leers, was also already out of the country. In September 1937, the foreign currency exchange department of the Reichsbank determined that the owners no longer lived in Germany, and the business was then liquidated.

At first, the Stoppelmanns lived in Antwerp undisturbed. They helped friends and relatives to get out of Germany and took in additional family members from Hamburg, among them the children of Edith’s sister, Ilse and Gert Koppel. In 1939, their mother Magda Koppel got to Antwerp. Soon afterwards, they emigrated to England. Their father John Koppel also came to Antwerp in the spring of 1940. After the German Army’s invasion of Belgium, he and his children were interned for a time.

With the help of paid escape agents, the Stoppelmanns attempted in the early summer of 1942 to get to southern France and from there to Portugal. However, the French police seized them and they were interned at Drancy. From there, on 26 August 1942, they were, in a transport with 948 others, deported to Auschwitz. Only 23 people from this transport survived. The Stoppelmanns were not among them.

Soon afterwards, John Koppel and his children had to go underground in Belgium. Again and again, they found courageous people who offered them temporary shelter and in this way they survived the persecution. In 1946, they emigrated to Ecuador where Magda Koppel awaited them.


Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: January 2019
© Ulrike Sparr

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; StaHH 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident R 1937/1136; Amtliche Fernsprechbücher Hamburg 1932–1939; Serge Klarsfeld: Le mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France, Paris, 1978; Gert Koppel, Untergetaucht – eine Flucht aus Deutschland, Braunschweig 1999.
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