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Erna Lieske * 1900

Armgartstraße 20 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
ERNA LIESKE
JG. 1900
‚SCHUTZHAFT’ 1937
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
1938 GEFÄNGNIS COTTBUS
"SICHERUNGSVERWAHRUNG"
DEPORTIERT 1943
1943 AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET 24.4.1943

Erna Minna Lieske, b. 4.22.1900 in Gross Lubs, arrested many times, deported in 1943 from the women’s prison and ”the Women’s Protection Institution” at Aichach, Upper Bavaria to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, murdered there on 4.24.1943

Armgartstraße 20

My grandmother Erna was born on 22 April 1900. Her mother Minna, a housemaid, gave birth in the 424-soul village of Gross Lubs, then in Pomerania (today, Lubcz Wielki, Poland). According to the birth certificate, the father was unknown – perhaps her employer or a penniless servant. Both were possible; but what’s left is speculation. Why so much of Erna’s life remains in the dark is passed on only in court records.

What kind of person was this Erna, my grandmother – the mother of my father who never got to know her? Erna gave birth to him in Halle; he went as a baby to the orphanage in Arnstadt and grew up there. He searched for his mother his whole life and only after the war learned that she was murdered in Auschwitz. Why, he was never able to find out.

Erna was already at 17 years of age convicted of fraud and sentenced to three days in jail in Driesen (today, Drezdenko, Poland), about 12 miles from her birthplace. What did a 17-year old girl do in the First World War – alone and probably without money? How did "home” look to her, where her mother was a maid?

The Prussian Servants Ordinance was characterized by the subjection of domestics to arbitrary control. Servants were exposed to police surveillance. The servant’s labor was fully at the disposal of the master. A Sunday outing every 14 days was prescribed, however, this could be ruled out at any time. Wages were only partially paid; the rest was rendered in kind, especially food and lodging. Chastisement was the right of the master; servants had the right to defend themselves against physical abuse only in cases where their lives were in danger. In this context it is probable that Erna’s mother did not have her own household, so that Erna probably could not remain with her but had to make her way alone, without family support.

From 1918, in the Province of Posen around the city of Bromberg (today, Bydgoszcz, Poland), she was repeatedly arrested for fraud, theft, embezzlement, and falsification of documents. In that period – that is, immediately after the First World War – there took place in the Province of Posen an uprising of the Polish majority against German hegemony. On 28 June 1919, the German government of the County of Bromberg relinquished power to the Poles. Erna was still serving a six-week sentence for embezzlement on 11 June 1919. Upon her release, Bromberg was Polish, and she probably went to Thuringia for this reason. In November 1920, she was sentenced to 20 weeks in jail by the District Court of Gotha on account of theft, fraud, and embezzlement. Her three-month old baby was with her – her daughter Ruth was born on 5 August 1920 in Gotha. Although from 1920 until her majority in 1941, the child had an official guardian and spent a few years in the Gotha youth care facility, Erna repeatedly sought contact with her. Erna gave birth to my father, Hans-Joachim, on New Year’s Eve 1924 in the Halle women’s clinic. At his baptism nine days later, two employees of the clinic served as godparents, after which he was brought to the orphanage in Arnstadt. Erna never saw her son again.

In the following years, further arrests took place in various cities of Thuringia and Saxony. Apparently, Erna never remained in one place for long. Everything she owned, she carried with her in a large suitcase.

In 1932, Erna surfaced in Hamburg – the city where her son, my father, would later live with his family. (In 1964, he was engaged by the Hamburg State Opera.) My grandmother came there via Gross Lubs, Thuringia, and Saxony; my father’s way led from Arnstadt, Thuringia via Hof, Upper Franconia, and Bremerhaven. In Hamburg, Erna was sentenced on 26 May 1932, to two months in prison on grounds of "recurrent” fraud and document falsification. After her release in 1935, she worked at the Gebauer printing house on Katharinenstrasse as a "set-up girl”: she had to fill the printing presses with paper.

Since 1932 she lived in a sublet from Hedwig Knaack, at first at Mundsburger Damm 39. Around 1936, Knaack moved to Bergedorf and in April 1937 to Armgartstrasse 20 – always taking Erna along. Possibly, Hedwig Knaack, who was childless, was the mother Erna had never had.

This might have been a turning point in Erna’s life: she had work, a fiancé, and a home. Then (probably at the end of April 1937) Hedwig Knaack went for a long period of time to her brother in Weinböhla, Saxony. In her absence, an acquaintance, the 58-year old former postal official Ulla Krohn, moved in at Armgartstrasse as another sub-lessee on 4 August 1937. At the end of August, Erna lost her job and was again unemployed. She also separated from her fiancé.

Ulla Krohn later told the police that Hedwig Knaack "gave her apartment with its furnishings and keys to Lieske. Lieske had a relationship to a senior police officer and wanted to marry him, since the police officer already lived with her. When I then enlightened the police officer as to Lieske, he immediately broke off the relationship.” Erna had been together with the policeman since May 1937; he ended the connection to her after Mrs. Krohn’s "enlightenment” on 1 October 1937. Until then he had believed "she was a proper young woman and knew nothing of her past life.”

Now, without work and without a friend, Erna secretly moved out and took, according to Ulla Krohn, a fur coat belonging to Hedwig Knaack and the apartment key. When Hedwig Knaack was later informed of the "renter theft,” she did not want to press charges. She described Erna during the police investigation as "a very diligent and scrupulously clean young woman” and expressed understanding: "She is in my view not altogether normal and she has delusions of grandeur. In the present instance, Lieske was probably without means, had come under economic pressure, and certainly, in her need, did not know how to help herself. I therefore lodge no criminal complaint against Lieske for the alledged misappropriation of the fur coat.”

On 21 October 1937, Erna sublet a room at Grindelallee 148 for RM 45 per month. After a brief six weeks she disappeared, having stolen silverware (6 dessert forks, 6 forks, 6 knives), linens (4–6 kitchen hand towels, 2–3 tablecloths, 6 napkins, 2 bedsheets, 1 doily) and clothing (1 poncho, 1 coat, 1 jacket dress with blouse), which she hocked in the pawnshop at Grindelallee/Rutschbahn. "I wanted to leave Hamburg to visit my child and needed money,” Erna later declared in the Hamburg District Court.

On 4 November 1937, Erna was in Berlin, on the way to Küstrin (east of Berlin; today, Kostrzyn nad Odra), where her daughter Ruth lived at the time. Why she then traveled further north to Stettin remains unclear.

In Stettin she got to know a retired railway guard, who offered to put her up with his wife and himself for the night. In return, he could stay with her in Hamburg where is brother-in-law lived; moreover he would still be eligible for a free train ticket. Thus, he traveled to Hamburg with Erna on 23 November 1937. In Berlin, in the Stettin Railroad Station, Erna suddenly disappeared. The retired guard traveled on to Hamburg in order to meet up with her on Armgartstrasse. The tenant Ulla Krohn presented herself as the apartment’s owner and told him that Erna no longer lived there and had taken the key with her. Furthermore, she had stolen a fur coat and money from a lady. Ulla Krohn later told the police: "I was away traveling when Trieloff (the railway guard) was here …. I know nothing about a theft of money.”

In mid-December 1937, the wife of the guard filed charges with the police through her brother, claiming that Erna had "swindled” them out of the following things: "RM 1 for the book of salary deductions for Winter Help, a pullover, a cardigan, a pair of shoes, a wool dress, RM 5 for hair-dressing, RM 2 for drinks, RM 3.65 for underclothing, a carrying case for going out, worth RM 3.” Furthermore, Erna had made off with a morning coat and a watch. Later, she told the police that she had sold Erna the pullover, cardigan, and shoes for RM 20, but that she had not received the money. "I bought the things at the Stettin fair, but they were too small for me.”

Instead of traveling on with the retired railroad man to Hamburg, Erna had taken the train from Berlin to Küstrin. She, however, could not see her daughter again because she [Erna] was, on 13 December 1937, picked up in a raid at the Küstriner Café and was taken into "protective custody because of violations of the police-issued restrictions relating to her as a professional criminal.” On 29 December 1937, she was transferred to the Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp and remained there in "protective custody.”

Two police measures were based on acts adopted by the National Socialists on 24 November 1933, "the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals and the Measures for Their Protection and Improvement.” The law, according to Jurist Karl-Ulrich Scheip (2012), was tpical of the National Socialist punitive laws, "by which ‘asocials, parasites, and the jobless,’ who did not correspond to the image of National Socialist ideology, were to be permanently removed from the Community of the Nation [Volksgemeinschaft], by means of long term imprisonment or preventive detention.”

On 4 April 1938, the Fuhlsbüttel police prison informed the Hamburg State Court that "L. tore up her bill of indictment.” On 25 April 1938, Erna’s trial took place before the Hamburg State Court. The judgment: As "a dangerous habitual criminal” she was condemned to three years in prison with subsequent "preventive detention,” as well as revocation of her civil rights for five years.

Her defense attorney, Max Blunck, had requested that "the accused be treated more leniently because of her desperate situation. For the record, "the accused has conceded her transgressions in all essential points. She has asked pardon for these and earlier transgressions on the basis that she grew up without parents and had had no support.” The court allowed that: "it may be possible that occasionally she acted from need.” However, she had "… acquired the necessities for her life almost exclusively by fraudulent acts, by swindling, be it for pieces of clothing, room and board, or hard cash.” Therefore, the court concluded: "The career of the accused can only be explained by the fact that her continual commission of criminal acts is rooted in an unconquerable inclination. She therefore constitutes an extraordinary danger to the Community of the Nation, for she will never respect the peace and tranquility of the Community of the Nation. Therefore, her removal from this Community, through preventive detention, is a necessity.”

Worthy of mention is that at the trial "the witness Knaack was excused” – Erna’s earlier landlady on Armgartstrasse in Hamburg and the only person who spoke positively about her to the police. Also remarkable is the fact that previous convictions were raised for deeds which Erna quite possibly did not commit: thus, for example, the records of the "worker Liselotte Lieske,” convicted of fraud, were found in Erna’s court documents in Hamburg. Furthermore: according to the Hamburg court records she was sentenced to ten weeks in jail, and on 19 March 1918 to two weeks in jail in Landsberg (today, Gorzow Wielkopolski, Poland) – that is to say, when she was already serving time in Bromberg. And: according to the records, she served a sentence from 17 June 1926 to 13 May 1929 in Arnstadt, Thuringia, while – also according to the records – she simultaneously sat in prison in the year 1928 in Sagan (today, Zagan, Poland). The two places lie close to 250 miles apart.

On 2 June 1938, Erna went to the Lübeck-Lauerof women’s prison to serve the sentence exacted by the Hamburg State Court. In mid-February 1939, the prison chaplain there addressed her defense attorney with the request to consult with the responsible Hamburg state’s attorney, as to "whether or not there could be a way to clemency that would lift the preventive detention sentence from her. She indicated that she acted only out of economic necessity (weekly support came to RM 6) …. She could get work at the firm P. A. H. Gebauer, Printing House, at Katharinenstrasse 6 in Hamburg, where she had worked previously. Given a parole, she would be glad to show the officials that she is a useful person.” Attorney Blunck complied with the request, yet many months passed before a decision was made.

At the end of March 1939, Erna was taken to the women’s prison at Cottbus. There she apparently took seriously ill, for in March 1940, she was transferred to the infirmary of the Berlin-Moabit remand prison, where she stayed for half a year. From there, on 1 September 1940, she addressed a plea for clemency to the chief state’s attorney in Hamburg, testifying that her deeds "were committed out of need and not criminal inclination.” She had had at that time received RM 6 per week and had to care for her child from that. She had recently had two operations, another stood in the offing. She had "suffered greatly physically” and "her body was severely weakened.”

On 20 September 1940, she was taken back to the women’s prison at Cottbus. In reference to her appeal for clemency, the executive board of the prison wrote to the chief state’s attorney of Hamburg: "At this institution, she is occupied with the sewing of military coats. She performs her work diligently and to the satisfaction of her superiors. However, it has also been shown that in this institution she has also attempted to "sweet talk” the female staff in order to draw advantages for herself from a position of confidence, which is also indicated in the following opinion. Because of this character trait, the repeal of preventive detention cannot be endorsed.” Apparently, Erna had no chance: were she nice, she remained a danger to the Community of the Nation and in preventive detention. Were she not, it was seen as also detrimental.

On 20 November 1940, the Hamburg State Court rejected Erna’s plea for clemency. On 23 December 1940, she had completed her sentence at the Cottbus women’s prison. Following this, however, she was not set free but rather sent for preventive detention at the security prison in Lübeck-Lauerhof. In mid-October 1942, she was transferred to the women’s detention center at Aichach, Upper Bavaria. She was then handed over to the Gestapo on 26 March 1943: "Parole has been mandated by the Reich Justice Ministry.”

What this referred to was the decision taken on 18 September 1942 by Reich Justice Minister Otto Therack, in consultation with the Reich Minister for National Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, and Reich Leader of the SS Heinrich Himmler: "Transfer of asocial elements before the completion of their sentences to the Reich Leader of the SS for annihilation through labor. Without exception, those in preventive detention, Jews, Gypsies, Russians, and Ukrainians shall be dispatched.” In the National Socialist state, those in preventive detention were regarded as "unworthy of life to the utmost.” On 4 May 1943, the criminal police office in Augsburg informed the Hamburg State Court that Erna Lieseke has "passed away” on 24 April 1943 in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The death certificate in Auschwitz was signed by SS-Commander and infirmary doctor, Werner Rohde. He was condemned to death by a British military court and hung in 1946. On the ramp at Auschwitz he had selected incoming prisoners and was "responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands,” according to Ella Lingens-Reiner, a prisoner-physician who testified at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial in March 1964.

Given as the cause of death on Erna’s death certificate is "diarrhea and coronary weakness.” Wieslaw Kielar, prisoner no. 290 in Auschwitz, employed as infirmary attendant, corpse bearer, and scribe, later reported: "Shot, injected, gassed: everyone had to have a medical history – self-evidently, a fictional one. The camp officials demanded this, and I was commanded to do this. At first, if I knew the prisoners had been shot, I wrote ‘heart attack’; later I came to the realization that there were too many heart attacks, which could have been bad for me, if it were noticed by the Political Department. Therefore, I wrote the death reports as desired: in the case of a shooting victim, I wrote ‘diarrhea,’; in a case of death from diarrhea, I wrote ‘heart attack; when it was a death by lethal injection, ‘nephritis.’ It was a treacherous falsification of death certificates, obliteration of the traces of mass murder committed on defenseless prisoners.”


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

Stand: December 2019
© Liane Lieske, mit Unterstützung von Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 6002/38; Wolfgang Ayass, "Asoziale" im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart, 1995, S. 175f.; Karl Ulrich Scheib, Justiz unterm Hakenkreuz, Strafjustiz im Nationalsozialismus bei der Staatsanwaltschaft Ulm und den Gerichten im Landgerichtsbezirk Ulm, Ulm, 2012; Angelika Ebbinghaus, Heidrun Kaupen-Haas, Karl Heinz Roth, Heilen und Vernichten im Mustergau Hamburg, Hamburg 1984; Wieslaw Kielar, Niemand kommt hier raus. Vernichtungslager Auschwitz, Häftling Nr. 290, Wieslaw Kielar, berichtet, in: Der Spiegel, Nr. 6/1979 v. 5.2.1979, S. 36–49, online unter: www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-40350720.html (letzter Zugriff 13.9.2015); Gesetz gegen gefährliche Gewohnheitsverbrecher und über Maßregeln der Sicherung und Besserung vom 24. November 1933, RGBl I, Nr. 133 vom 27. November 1933; Auslieferung an den Reichsführer SS zur Vernichtung durch Arbeit, Nürnberger Dokument, PS-654, online unter: NS-Archiv, Dokumente zum Nationalsozialismus, www.ns-archiv.de/imt/ps0501-ps1000/654-ps.php (letzter Zugriff 13.6.2015); E-Mail-Auskunft Standesamt Gotha vom 19.11.2013; "Gesindeordnung", in: Wikipedia, Die freie Enzyklopädie. Bearbeitungsstand: 26. Januar 2015, 21:18 UTC, URL: http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gesindeordnung&oldid=138199084 (letzter Zugriff 13. Juni 2015).