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Alice Gersztenzang (née Jacoby) * 1905

Krochmannstraße 68 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)

1941 Lodz
ermordet 23.05.1942

further stumbling stones in Krochmannstraße 68:
Helga Anni Gersztenzang, Szlama Chaim Gersztenzang

Alice Gersztenzang, née Jacoby, born July 26, 1905 in Altona, deported on October 25, 1941 to the Łódź ghetto, where she died on May 23, 1942
Chaim Szlama Gersztenzang, born December 1, 1898 in Warsaw, deported on October 25, 1941 to the Łódź ghetto, sent to the Chelmno extermination camp on September 12, 1942
Helga Anni Gersztenzang, born April 12, 1934 in Hamburg, deported on October 25, 1941 to the Łódź ghetto, sent to the Chelmno extermination camp on September 12, 1942

Alice Gersztenzang's mother, Anna Badura, was born on December 22, 1878 in Ustron, in the Teschen district of Upper Silesia (in present-day Poland). She worked as a lady's companion. When her daughter Alice was born on July 26, 1905, she was living at Schumacherstrasse 35 in Altona. On October 21, 1905, the Protestant Anna Badura married the father of her child, Jewish merchant and accountant Alfred Jacoby, who was born in Berlin on February 5, 1880. The family now lived at Herderstrasse 19. The married couple went on to produce three sons: Ernst Jacob, born on December 26, 1906, Gerd, born on October 20, 1908, and Rolf, born on June 26, 1912. In 1918, the family moved to Grindelallee 5.

The father, Alfred Jacoby, lost his eyesight. He died on June 20, 1929.

Ernst Jacoby attended commercial college before embarking on a bank apprenticeship. He later worked as an accountant and sales representative. He was not a member of the Jewish congregation. Gerd Jacoby became a commercial clerk. He and his brother Rolf joined the Jewish congregation on June 20, 1934. Rolf Jacoby worked as a commercial clerk for the Gebr. Robinsohn fashion store on Neuer Wall, and was later employed by other companies as an auditor and an accountant.

Alice Jacoby learned the occupation of stenographer and worked as a commercial clerk. On January 1, 1927 she found employment as a temporary worker at the Hamburg tax authority's offices on Gänsemarkt square, and acquired a position as a stenographer on October 19, 1929. On July 21, 1933 she was given notice that she was to be dismissed from her job on August 31, 1933 based on the Nazi government's Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service. The reason stated was that her father was of Jewish origin.

Alice's daughter Helga Anni was born on April 12, 1934.

On February 15, 1936, Alice Jacoby married Chaim Szlama Gersztenzang, a commodities trader who had been born in Warsaw on December 1, 1898. The newlyweds and their young daughter lived until around 1938 at Anna Jacoby's place of residence on Grindelallee 5 before they moved to Krochmannstrasse 68. Alice Gersztenzang's brothers continued to live with their mother at Grindelallee 5.

Ernst Jacoby worked as a deputy camp director in the Voluntary Labor Service (FAD) and, by his own account, tried to expose the NSDAP by providing the Employment Office and the press with written portrayals of daily life in the camps. In late October 1938, he was arrested on the premises of the Egon Pokorny import company and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was released when his sister Alice managed to secure an entry visa for the UK on March 14, 1939. He arrived at the immigration office in London on March 26, 1939 and lived in refugee camps until he found work as an unskilled agricultural laborer from May 11, 1939 to February 3, 1940. Then he joined a unit of the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps, a non-combative labor force, and married Celia Mary Croft, née Woodhouse, on February 6, 1941. Ernst Jacoby remained in the Pioneer Corps until early 1946. On September 9, 1947 he changed his name to Ernest James Croft. He and his wife had three children and remained in the UK.

His brother Gerd Jacoby officially declared on December 28, 1939 that he was no longer a member of the Jewish congregation. In July 1941 he lost his job as a clerk after the company that employed him was "aryanized." Afterwards, he was assigned to compulsory community labor, such as excavation work in cemeteries. On April 20, 1942 he was forced to move to the Judenhaus at Bornstrasse 22. On July 15, 1942 he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Gerd Jacoby did not survive the war. He was murdered in Auschwitz on September 28, 1944.

Rolf Jacoby rescinded his membership in the Jewish congregation on March 28, 1938. As a "half-Jew" who had been a member of the Jewish congregation, he was legally treated as a Jew. After he left the Jewish congregation, he was apparently recognized as a Mischling (half-breed) of the first degree, and thus conscripted into the Wehrmacht. He served in the German military from February 22 to November 18, 1940, as a private in a horse artillery unit, and was discharged from duty when Hitler ordered that Mischlinge of the first degree were no longer considered worthy of military service. On orders by the Gestapo, Rolf Jacoby was forced to perform heavy labor for up to 11 hours a day, clearing rubble from May 15, 1944 to late April 1945.

Alice's daughter Helga Anni Gersztenzang attended the Jewish girls' school at Karolinenstrasse 35.

On October 25, 1941 Helga Anni, Alice and Chaim Szlama Gersztenzang were deported to the Łódź ghetto. Their property and belongings were confiscated and some items were auctioned off. They lived in the ghetto at Mühlengasse 30, apartment 9. Chaim Gersztenzang had to work in the local metalworking industry.
Alice Gersztenzang died in Łódź on May 23, 1942. On September 12, 1942 her eight-year-old daughter Helga Anni and husband Chaim were sent to the Chelmno extermination camp and murdered.

The Gersztenzang family was officially declared dead as of May 8, 1945.

© Maike Bruchmann

Quellen: 1; 5; 8; AfW 221278; AfW 260705; AfW 261206; AfW 201008; AfW 260612; www.jewishgen.org (eingesehen am 15.08.2007); Standesamt Hamburg-Mitte, Schreiben vom 17.09.2007; www.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035//karolinenstrasse.html (eingesehen am 14.08.2007); Wilhelm Mosel, Wegweiser zu den ehemaligen Staetten jüdischen Lebens oder Leidens in Hamburg, Heft 1, Hamburg 1983, S. 87.
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