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Margarete Mandelik (née Berg) * 1876

Rappstraße 6 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

1941 Lodz

further stumbling stones in Rappstraße 6:
Therese Goldschmidt, Arnold Hagenow, Amalie Hagenow, Adolf Mandelik

Adolf Mandelik, born on 7 Jan. 1877, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz
Margarethe Mandelik, born on 9 Apr. 1876, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz

Adolf M. was born in Prague and had Czechoslovakian citizenship or, respectively, – as was noted on the deportation list – he belonged to the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” He joined the Hamburg Jewish Community in 1918. With his wife Margarethe, he had three children: the twins Elsa and Erich, born in 1903, and the late arrival Ruth, born in 1916.

The family lived in a four-bedroom apartment at Rappstrasse 6. In Sept. 1919, Adolf Mandelik had registered an independent trade, which he was unable to hold on to, however, during the economic crisis of the early 1920s. Afterward, he worked as a sales representative, though barely earning a living for the family by the end of the 1920s. Since the beginning of the 1930s, the family was considered destitute, receiving support payments from the Jewish Community. Nevertheless, the children succeeded in emigrating from Germany: Daughter Ruth lived in Paris after the war, son Eric in New York, and daughter Elsa married a non-Jewish national of Luxembourg in the 1930s, receiving that country’s citizenship. The parents remained behind in Hamburg.

Daughter Elsa witnessed the day prior to their deportation: "On the previous day, I had just arrived for a visit, and right away I had to clear out the apartment. Only my Luxembourg passport spared me the same fate since I was considered a foreigner. My parents had to abandon everything, and the keys to the apartment were confiscated,” she testified later. Nearly six months after the parents had been deported from Rappstrasse 6, the Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) ordered his department in charge to check whether the "assets” of this non-German citizen had indeed been seized according to the rules. Adolf and Margarethe Mandelik were both declared dead as of 9 May 1945.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Beate Meyer

Quellen: StaH, 522-1, Jüdische Gemeinden, 992b, Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde Hamburgs; ebd., 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 992e; 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident, Ordner 23; Amt f. Wiedergutmachung 0701 77; Hamburger jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Gedenkbuch, Hamburg 1995.