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Emil Nachum * 1893

Grindelhof 30 (TTS) (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

1941 Minsk
ermordet

• TTR Stolpersteine am Grindelhof 30 Dokumentation.pdf (PDF, 7 Seiten, 505 KB)

further stumbling stones in Grindelhof 30 (TTS):
Dr. Walter Bacher, Emil Emanuel Badrian, Asriel Brager, Ilse Brager, Sally Brager, Dr. Joseph Carlebach, Dr. Hermann Freudenberger, Josua Falk Friedlaender, Julius Hamburger, Walter Nathan Herz, Bertha Hirsch, Leopold Hirsch, Dr. Alberto Jonas, Benno Kesstecher, Heinz Leidersdorf, Richard Levi, Mathias Stein, Artur Toczek

Emil Eleasar Nachum, born on 22 Aug. 1893 in Hamburg, deported to Minsk on 8 Nov. 1941, murdered
Sophie Else Nachum, née Wendriner, born on 19 July 1894 in Adamowitz/Gross Strehlitz/Silesia (today Adamowice/ Strzelce Opolskie in Poland), deported to Minsk on 8 Nov. 1941, murdered
Rosa Ruth Nachum, born on 17 Nov. 1922 in Hamburg, deported to Minsk on 8 Nov. 1941, murdered
Günther Nachum, born on 31 July 1925 in Hamburg, deported to Minsk on 8 Nov. 1941, murdered

Grindelhof 29

Emil Eleasar Nachum was a student at the Talmud Tora School in Hamburg as a child and he became a teacher there as an adult. He was the oldest child of Nathan Nachum, born on 9 Dec. 1854 in Hamburg, and his wife Clara, née Gumpel-Fürst, born on 26 July 1860 in Lübeck. Both had married on 3 Nov. 1891 in Hamburg and at the time of Emil’s birth lived in the St. Georg quarter, at Steindamm 61. Nathan was a merchant and back then traded in enameled cookware. Emil had four younger siblings: Martin (born in 1894), Johanna (born in 1896), Alexander (born in 1897), and Sarah (born in 1899). On 8 Mar. 1902, Emil’s father Nathan died at the age of 48 and left his wife and children’s mother with five children aged between eleven and three. With piano lessons and Hebrew lessons, she managed to eke out a living for the family during the next few years – with these professional activities suggesting that she came from an educated middle-class background. Clara Nachum received support from charitable Jewish foundations, including above all the Theresienstiftung. They made it possible for her and her five children to move into a two-bedroom ground floor apartment in the Nanny-Jonas-Stift, a residential home at Agathenstrasse 3 in Eimsbüttel, where the rent was only 20 marks a month.

Emil Nachum attended the Talmud Tora School – as did presumably his brothers. Founded in 1805, it was the first Jewish school in Germany to combine traditional Judaism with modern education. Jewish male students and, only starting in 1933, female pupils from all walks of life learned there together; however, the school always felt particularly committed to children and young people from poorer families. Emil though did not experience the relocation of the Talmud Tora School from Kohlhöfen on Grossneumarkt to Grindelhof in the Rotherbaum quarter anymore during his school days. The students usually passed the school-leaving examination at an average age of 15 and thus Emil graduated from the Talmud Tora School in 1908 or 1909. The new building was not ready for occupancy until 1911.

Following his general education, Emil Nachum attended the Bildungsanstalt für jüdische Lehrer, a teacher training college in Hannover, until Mar. 1913. After his first teaching examination, he worked as a deputy teacher at the Jewish eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) in Beuthen, Upper Silesia (today Bytom in Poland). From Apr. 1914 to Oct. 1914, he then headed the one-grade Jewish private school in Hersten/Westphalia – doing so only for such a short time because two months after the beginning of the First World War, in Oct. 1914, he was drafted into the army. One year later, his brother Martin was also drafted and so was the third son of the Nachum family, Alexander. Martin Nachum died on 16 Aug. 1918; he was only 24 years old. Emil and Alexander survived the war, but Alexander was in captivity until 1919. Emil passed the second teaching examination in Dec. 1918 after his return from military service – he rose to the rank of a "staff sergeant” ("Vicefeldwebel”). In Apr. 1920, he got a job at "his” old school, which by then was located at Grindelhof 30. As an elementary school teacher with a seminar education, he taught both elementary school classes and senior grades.

Emil Nachum and Sophie Else Wendriner, who was about one year younger, had already been engaged around 1917. After the end of the war, they probably married at Else’s birthplace, though the exact date is not known. In 1922, the couple had a daughter they named Ruth. From about 1924 onward, the three-person family lived in the Eilbek quarter, at Tiecksweg 2, where the second child of the family was born, a boy his parents named Günther. At the end of 1927, the Nachum family moved to Grindelhof 29. As a result, Emil Nachum had a very short way to school, with his house located almost directly opposite the school.

Emil’s mother Clara and his sister Johanna had already been living in poverty since the First World War, so that Clara Nachum applied for welfare support for the first time in 1917. The only one of her children that could support her over the years was Emil. In 1902, at the age of 16, Johanna began training as an office clerk, but a few years later, her mother told the welfare office that she had overworked herself at her job, so that she was no longer fit for employment. The main cause, however, was that she suffered from severe asthma. Repeatedly, she left Hamburg to restore her health. In 1923, owing to the support of family acquaintances, she was even able to travel to Davos, the well-known lung health resort in Switzerland. Johanna Nachum died on 12 Apr. 1935, only 39 years old.

Emil’s youngest sister Sarah had trained as a sales assistant, but she saw no future for herself in Germany. She was an adherent of Zionism – a movement whose goal was the establishment and preservation of a Jewish nation state in Palestine. In 1925, hachshara sites were set up for the first time in Germany, systematically preparing young men and women for emigration to Palestine. In early 1925, Sarah Nachum worked at the Jewish Lubinski bookshop at Rutschbahn 11, but by the end of that year, she emigrated to Palestine.

In Alexander Nachum’s case, on the other hand, periods of employment alternated with phases of unemployment since his release from captivity in 1919, so that he could not help his mother either. He also sought work outside of Hamburg, in Göttingen, Frankfurt/Main, and on a ship of the Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft, a steamship company serving routes between Hamburg and South America; in 1924, he even emigrated temporarily to Buenos Aires, Argentina. However, nowhere did he find "his advancement,” as his mother once put it. From 1934, he lived again with his mother and sister in the residential home apartment on Agathenstrasse.

At that time, the Nazis had already been in power in Germany for a year. A few weeks after the transfer of political power, they had cancelled the previously substantial public subsidies for the Talmud Tora School in Hamburg. The consequence was that the salaries of teaching staff, too, had to be cut sharply. Also since 1933, a steadily growing number of students left the school to flee Germany. At the same time, many Jewish students switched from public schools, where they were increasingly exposed to anti-Semitic harassment, to the Talmud Tora School.

After ten years during which the Nachum family had lived on Grindelhof, in 1937 they moved to Grindelberg 5, close to the junction with Hallerstrasse. By this time, Ruth, the older one, was already 15, her brother Günther ten years old. Like his father had, Günther Nachum attended the Talmud Tora School, and he went to a class with Schlomo Schwarzschild (see corresponding entry). Both witnessed the November Pogrom of 1938 and were shocked to see the devastated Bornplatz synagogue, located right next to their school, and how shards and torn Torah scrolls were strewn on the ground everywhere.

Emil Nachum’s teaching workload grew from year to year. In 1940, he headed a grade-seven class with 23 boys and 25 girls and gave 33 lessons per week. In 1939, the Jewish girls’ school on Karolinenstrasse had been merged with the Talmud Tora School – for a short time still in the rooms on Grindelhof, then again on Karolinenstrasse.

Emil and Else’s daughter Ruth Nachum, by then 18 years old, attended the tailoring school of the Jewish Community starting in 1940, and since that time, she was on file as a member of the Community, although she did not pay any Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer).

Starting in Sept. 1941 Emil, Else, Ruth, and Günther Nachum had to sew the "yellow star” on to their clothes and they were no longer allowed to move on the street without it. Thus, they were even more clearly recognizable as targets for anti-Semitic abuse and acts of violence.

On 8 Nov. 1941 Emil, Else, Ruth, and Günther Nachum were deported to Minsk and murdered.

Emil’s brother Alexander Nachum, who did not survive the Shoah either, was also on the same transport.

Clara Nachum, the mother of the two, was deported to Theresienstadt on 19 July 1942. Three months later, on 21 Sept. 1942, she was taken from there to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered.

For Emil Eleasar Nachum, another Stolperstein lies at Grindelhof 30, in front of the Talmud Tora School, where he worked as a teacher.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 7; 8; 9; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2774 u. 1057/1891; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge – Sonderakten 1623; Hamburger Adressbücher; General-Anzeiger für Hamburg-Altona, Nr. 286, 14.11.1891, Beilage, S. 5; Neue Hamburger Zeitung, 16.3.1902, S. 3; Randt: Die Talmud-Tora-Schule, S.145–184, 256; http://www.holocaust.cz/de/opferdatenbank/opfer/25939-clara-nachum (letzter Aufruf: 1.7.2016).
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