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Harry Krebs * 1895

Klaus-Groth-Straße 29 (Hamburg-Mitte, Borgfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
HARRY KREBS
JG. 1895
VERHAFTET 1943
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
DEPORTIERT 1943
AUSCHWITZ
SACHSENHAUSEN
ERMORDET 6.12.1944

Harry Krebs, born 17 July 1895 in Hindenburg, Upper Silesia, deported 27 Feb. 1943 to Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, 29 Apr. 1943 Auschwitz concentration camp, died 6 Dec. 1944 in Lieberose sub-camp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Klaus-Groth-Straße 29

"Dear Elfe! "Auschwitz, 3 Sept. 43"
Received your letter from 31 July, am happy and glad that you have been so splendidly saved. … Please send me regular packages in the post, 1-2 each week, so that I can recover, mainly bread, zwieback, garlic, lemons, sugar, tobacco … only to the address on the reverse, no longer to Beneckestraße … Please write and tell me what Kaufmann replied to you. … I won’t be able to write you on the 13th, spend these days in happiness and think of me with a package of cake so I can celebrate heartily with you."
The "address on the reverse" was that of "protective detainee" Harry Krebs, born on 17 July 1895, prisoner no. 120356, at "Concentration Camp Work Camp Eintrachthütte – Schwientochlowitz O/S, Post Office 2".

On 29 Apr. 1943, Harry Krebs was handed over from the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp to Auschwitz concentration camp and deployed in the sub-camp Eintrachthütte. He fell ill. The censor erased the name of the illness from the letter written in pencil, then sent it on to Ms. Elfriede Krebs in Reinbek-Wentorf near Hamburg without any further objections.

Elfriede Krebs had found shelter for herself and her children with her parents in Reinbek-Wentorf after being bombed out in Hamburg-Borgfelde at Klaus-Groth-Straße 29 on 27/28 July 1943. Her material situation was desperate, so she turned to Hamburg’s District Head (Gauleiter) and Reich Governor Karl Kaufmann. She also hoped to learn from him the reason for her husband’s arrest. Her husband had been assured several times that he would soon be released. She had to celebrate the double occasion on 13 Sept. without her husband. It was her birthday – she was born on 13 Sept. 1897 as Elfriede Wiese –, and she and Harry Krebs had married in Stettin on 13 Sept. 1932.

Even in this situation of hunger with her family in Reinbek-Wentorf, Elfriede somehow managed to send her husband a small package now and then. In his final letter from 24 Sept. 1944 from Auschwitz, he thanked her for one and asked her to send two packages a week, and, among other things, urgently to send asthma cigarettes. He did not die in 1943, like other victims of the "Schallert action" carried out on 27 Feb. 1943, but instead was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Nov. 1944 where he died on 6 Dec. 1944.

Harry Krebs was born on 17 July 1895 in Hindenburg, Upper Silesia into a Jewish family and became a salesman for factory goods. When and why he moved to Stettin is not known. He met Elfriede Wiese there in 1929, the daughter of a teacher from Warnkenhagen in Mecklenburg, who ran a lending library and a magazine subscription service as a business woman. Previously she had lived in Hamburg where she had worked for a magazine subscription service for seven years. Based on this experience and equipped with savings, she launched her own business in Stettin in 1927. Harry Krebs joined her business as a marketer and became managing director of the subscription service. As previously mentioned, Elfriede and Harry Krebs wed on 13 Sept. 1932. Their first son was a year old at the time. He was born on 31 July 1931 in Pasewalk. On 26 Mar. 1933, she gave birth to their second son in Stettin.

In 1931 Harry Krebs introduced an unrivaled portfolio of magazines, primarily from the publishing house Ullstein-Verlag that published every fortnight and initially proved a success. In 1933 the business suffered considerable setbacks when Ullstein was no longer able to deliver regularly and word got around that Harry Krebs was a Jew. Even though Elfriede Krebs was "Aryan" and Protestant, competitors denounced her business as "Jewish". The boycott of her business, like Jewish books and magazines in general, made the number of customers drop so dramatically that Elfriede Krebs had to sell the remainder of her portfolio to a Berlin subscription service for a few hundred Marks at the end of 1933.

In 1934 Harry and Elfriede Krebs moved to Hamburg with their two sons. On 16 Dec. 1934 their daughter was born there. In 1935 Harry Krebs joined Hamburg’s German-Israelite Community. He worked on commission as a salesman for various companies that manufactured and sold canning jars and sealing mechanisms. His work often required him to be away from home for days on end. Due to his wife’s poor state of health, on several occasions he stayed with their children for several weeks. The family repeatedly drew on support to make ends meet and one-off assistance for shoe repairs, clothing, heating fuel, bedding and received health and dental coverage from the welfare office. From his teacher’s pension Elfriede Krebs’ father also contributed money to their rent and food for their household. The Jewish Community provided winter relief, as an exception. Nevertheless, repairs to the house and in the household could not be made, as a welfare worker reported.

An action for eviction from the apartment at Pulverteich 20 in St. Georg forced the Krebs Family to move to a two-room apartment with kitchen in Borgfelde at Klaus-Groth-Straße 29. There too the family was threatened with eviction, which the welfare office managed to avert. The social worker tried to impose a rent reduction, but the landlady, who herself depended on the rental income for her living, was able to defer the rent at best. Harry Krebs’ parents and siblings were to be pressured into contributing to their upkeep, but that failed since they themselves were living in extremely modest circumstances in Katowice, Poland.

Prior to starting at the Bürgerweide Elementary School in April 1938, their oldest son was baptized on 11 July 1937 at the church Erlöserkirche in Borgfelde. In 1939 he was followed by his younger brother. Their mother did her best to make the boys look "clean and respectable", as the social worker noted.

Harry Krebs was supposed to perform compulsory labor, but instead he searched over and over again for new employers, until he finally agreed to be deployed to work on construction of the Horner Racetrack in 1937. An accident put an end to this work. Afterwards his situation unexpectedly took a turn for the better. Harry Krebs had invented a glass lid with a clamp to seal preserve jars which was entered in the patent office journal on 27 Apr. 1938 as utility patent no. 1.438.474.

He sold his patent on the "glass control lid‚ Gustal" for 1,500 RM, but he never received the full amount since the purchaser had production problems due to economic shortages, with resulting payment difficulties.

Willibald Schallert worked for Hamburg’s labor office at Sägerplatz and from the end of 1938 was responsible for finding work for Jewish workers. His work essentially entailed assigning workers according to employers’ requirements. In 1939, Harry Krebs was assigned a job with the road and underground construction company Hans Frank, Wandsbek, as "free labor" for an hourly wage of 73 Pfennig and a 48-hour work week and set to work at the Kämmererufer waterfront. The work was free in as much as Harry Krebs did not have to live quartered in barracks. The welfare office outfitted him with the necessary equipment, which took the form of work pants, boots, shovel and spade, totaling 17.65 RM, which he had to pay back in weekly installments of 1 RM. When the weather was bad, work was cancelled along with his wage.

His family lived from hand to mouth. Since Harry Krebs was not up to this heavy physical labor in the long run, the labor administration transferred him in spring of 1941 to work as a packer at the shoe wholesaler Rasch & Jung, Gr. Bleichen 31, where he and other Jews had to do forced labor.

Six months later, on 29 Sept. 1941, the youngest child of the Krebs Family was born. He was baptized together with his now seven-year-old sister by Pastor Junge at the church Erlöserkirche Borgfelde on 12 July 1942.

Utterly unexpectedly, Harry Krebs was arrested along with Fritz Heinsen on 27 Feb. 1943 at his workplace. Fritz Heinsen’s earlier address was also on Klaus-Groth-Straße; the families had something further in common, the couples were "privileged mixed-marriages".

They belonged to a group of 17 men living in "mixed-marriages", on a list previously drawn up, who were all arrested by Gestapo officials on the same day with no reason given and delivered to the Gestapo’s Jewish Section at Rothenbaumchaussee 38.

Harry Krebs and his wife never discovered how his name got on that list. Five or six of those arrested worked on a voluntary basis for the Jewish Community. The Community staff member Fanny David had given Willibald Schallert their names a few days before when he demanded them. They included Max Moses, a member of the Jerusalem Community, who had noticed Willibald Schallert flipping through the Community files a few days before, taking notes. Some of the men, like the survivor Rudolf Hamburger, knew that they had been denounced for "work sabotage". Others, like Fritz Scharlach, probably fell victim to their knowledge of the corruption and caprice of Willibald Schallert and the Gestapo.

Harry Krebs, like most of the other victims of this action, was taken to the Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison where his wife was able to visit him before he was transferred to Auschwitz at the end of April 1943 and forced to work in the sub-camp Eintrachtshütte. While Harry Krebs served his sentence in Fuhlsbüttel, the welfare office regularly supported his family. Wolfgang Heinsen, the then fourteen-year-old son of Fritz Heinsen, brought the Krebs Family money that had been donated by the "non-Aryans" who still worked at company Rasch & Jung. Since Elfriede Krebs and her children were Christian, the Jewish Community refused them further aid. It is not confirmed whether Elfriede Krebs sought help from her local congregation in Borgfelde. After they were bombed out, she found shelter for herself and her children at her parents’ house in Wentorf. Her father and she addressed desperate letters to the Reich Governor Karl Kaufmann in Hamburg. Once they were referred to the administration in Wentorf, their petitions were considered resolved. Some letters and packages connected Harry Krebs with his family until Sept. 1944.

After his transfer to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, all contact broke off. Harry Krebs was given the prisoner number 111777 and was forced to work at the sub-camp Lieberose near Lübben. He died there on 6 Dec. 1944. For a long time his family learned nothing about his transfer to Sachsenhausen concentration camp or his death. They still suffer from what happened to Harry and Elfriede Krebs and how they were treated.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 4; 5; BA 1939; StaH, 351-11 AfW, 170797; Auskunft Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten/Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen vom 3.9.2009, J 1/99, Bl. 283 und J 1/100, Bl. 283; Patentamt München, E-Mail vom 4.11.2008; Meyer, "Jüdische Mischlinge".
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