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Gustav Oppenheim * 1897

Isestraße 91 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1941 Lodz

further stumbling stones in Isestraße 91:
Ernst Hofmann, Karen Hofmann, Dora Rosa Lewina, Dora Oppenheim, Ilse Oppenheim

Gustav Oppenheim, born 22 Nov. 1897 in Hamburg, deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz
Dora Oppenheim, née Oppenheim, born 23 May 1895 in Hamburg, deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz
Ilse Oppenheim, born 12 Jan. 1924 in Hamburg, deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz

Gustav Oppenheim attended the Talmud Torah Secondary School and afterwards completed commercial training. He was working as an employee when he was called up for military service in 1916. One year later he fell into the hands of the French and became a prisoner of war. He did not return to Hamburg until Mar. 1920 where he found work as an independent salesman for promotional articles. Gustav Oppenheim’s 1922 entry in the commercial register read: "Merchant – Smoking Paraphenalia – Wholesale". On 25 Dec. 1922 he married Dora Oppenheim. Two years later their daughter Ilse was born and in 1925 their second daughter Eva Chaja. The family lived in a comfortable four-room apartment with a diningroom, study, bedroom and girls’ room on Klosterallee.

As a result of the economic crisis and repression of Jewish business people, Gustav Oppenheim was forced to give up his business in 1935, as his daughter Eva remembered: "After years of a good middle-class life, my father could no longer continue his work due to the persecution that came after 1933. In 1936 he got a job as a registrar with the Relief Association of German Jews.” The Oppenheim Family moved to Isestraße 91, probably to save on rent. Both girls attended the girls’ school on Carolinenstraße. According to testimony by her sister and an aunt, Ilse wanted to become a teacher or kindergarden teacher, as was the family tradition, but that kind of training was denied to a young Jewish woman in 1938. So Ilse took a job at the plant nursery of the Jewish cemetery in Ohlsdorf. At the end of 1938, Gustav Oppenheim was arrested and transported to Sachsenhausen. He did not return from there until Feb. 1939.

Their younger daughter Eva Chaja had already been prepared for a life outside of Germany at the Jewish Girls’ School on Carolinenstraße: "The changed situation of the Jews in Germany required changes in the curriculum: Jewish children have to be prepared for emmigration, especially immigration to Palestine, to take on the difficult struggle for survival that awaits them,” as was written in a letter from the school. From 1937 at the latest, students were taught handicrafts, sports, gardening and farming. In late 1939, Eva Chaja Oppenheim fled to Palestine by ship via Triest. She survived the Shoah.

Her parents and her older sister Ilse received orders for their deportation on 25 Oct. At the Lodz Ghetto, they initially found shelter at Sulzfeldener Straße 5. Later they had to move to Rembrandt Straße 12. They all probably worked at one of the ghetto workshops. From Ilse we know that she had a job at the ghetto’s plant nursery as of Apr. 1942. Her application has survived in which she requested the "Resettlement Commission” to give her leave from the deportations in May 1942 because she had work. As a consequence she was placed in the "follow-up contingent”.

Any hope the Oppenheim Family had of being saved was over on 26 Aug. 1944. The ghetto was to be liquidated because the Red Army was approaching.

During the month of August, approximately 70,000 ghetto residents were transported to Auschwitz where they were killed. The Oppenheims were probably among them.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: January 2018
© Maike Grünwaldt

Quellen: 1; 4; 8; AfW 120124; AfW 070625; ITS/ARCH/1.1.2.2.1, Ordner 0008, S. 410; USHMM, RG 15.083, M 302/402-406; Ursula Randt, Carolinenstraße 35, Hamburg, 1984, S. 67; Sascha Feuchert, Hrsg., Die Chronik des Gettos Lodz/Litzmannstadt 1944, Göttingen 2007; S. 7f.
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