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Adele Weintraub vor ihrer Ehe
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Adele Rühl (née Weintraub) * 1878

Wattkorn 15 (Hamburg-Nord, Langenhorn)

HIER WOHNTE
ADELE RÜHL
GEB. WEINTRAUB
JG. 1878
VERHAFTET 1942
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
DEPORTIERT 1943
AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET 4.3.1943

Adele Rühl, née Weintraub, born on 4.3.1878 in Sokolow, Poland, on 10.12.1942 imprisoned in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel Prison, on 4.2.1943 deported to Auschwitz, murdered on 4.3.1943 in Auschwitz extermination camp

Wattkorn 15

Adele Rühl came from a Jewish family in Galicia. Her mother Mincze was a née Dornfest. Her father's name was Falik Weintraub, a merchant by trade. One brother emigrated from Poland to the USA in about 1910. She spoke Yiddish from home. She was illiterate.

About 1902 she emigrated to the Rhine, lived in Kehl, worked there as a cook, and married Karl-Wilhelm Rühl (born 18.9.1873) in Strasbourg on 18 October 1906. He was a professional soldier for twelve years, later joined the customs and became head customs secretary. A son Karl was born in 1905; a daughter Elsa (married Pusch) in 1907. Since 1907 the family lived in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel. In the 1920s they built a house in Langenhorn, Wattkorn 15.

Adele Rühl is first mentioned as a member of the Baptist church "Zoar" in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel in the annual report of 1914. Presumably she was baptized by preacher Carl August Flügge. She had already converted to the Lutheran church before her marriage in Strassburg, about 1903. Her husband Karl-Wilhelm became a member of the Eimsbüttel Baptist church a year after her, in 1915.

Adele Rühl had been a widow since December 28, 1936. In the membership directory of the Baptist church, she is recorded until 1940: "Rühl, Adele, widow." She no longer appears in the 1945 directory.

Granddaughter Renate Voss relates: During the Nazi era, the Pusch family also largely stood by Adele Rühl. She was denounced as a Jew by a church member who had married into the Rühl family but later divorced her Jewish husband (Sidonie Rühl, née Behrend) in early 1942 [so the unconfirmed suspicion]. Other Baptists (Mr. and Mrs. Rickborn and Mimi Detlefsen) continued to maintain contact with the family.
When the situation came to a head, the family advised her to emigrate to her brother in the USA. Adele Rühl responded, "I am baptized, my husband was a soldier, what can happen to me." She received a request from the Gestapo to report in mid-1942. The son presented the baptismal certificate or a document attesting to her conversion, but this did not help her. In November 1942, she received a second summons to report to the Gestapo at Johannisbollwerk 7.
She was to be taken to work, she was told. A good friend advised her to "call it a day," saying she knew what was in store for her. Adele Rühl's answer: "I did not give myself my life, I must not take it from myself. What God has given me, I must bear!" She was arrested and taken into "protective custody" in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp from December 1942 to February 1943. During this time, her family was able to bring a bag to concentration camp detention every 14 days, containing laundry, knitting, and a thermos of coffee. The last sign of life was a cassiber: "We are going to Auschwitz next week."

The family did not receive any official notification of the deportation. Reinhold Pusch, in his 1982 account of "Grandma Rühl's ordeal," wrote: "The fellow prisoners also received much comfort from Grandma's faith-filled attitude." Elsa Pusch wrote in 1949: "My mother was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1942 for racial reasons and sent to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. After about 2 months she was taken to Auschwitz. There she died on March 4, 1943." She was deported to Auschwitz on February 4, 1943. A death certificate was issued for her in Auschwitz with the date of death March 4, 1943; it also says "Protestant, formerly Mosaic."

According to the memoirs of Liesel Dorra, née Rühl, there was probably a tension between the families Karl and Sidonie Rühl on the one side and Elsa and Reinhold Pusch on the other. However, when it became known in the community that grandma (Adele Rühl) had been in "protective custody" in Fuhlsbüttel, the exclamation escaped Sidonia Behrend, née Zinke: "We didn't want that" (Reinhold Pusch, 1982). This led to the assumption that Sidonie Rühl, née Behrend, had betrayed her mother-in-law Adele Rühl to the authorities. However, her Jewish identity had long been known there. Following this statement, the matter was brought before the parish council (the preacher at the time was Herbert Wieske). There the matter was cleared up and the two families (Elsa and Reinhold Pusch as well as Sidonie Rühl and her mother Sidonia Behrend) were reconciled. The question remains as to when this reconciliatory conversation was held in the boardroom, still during the war or shortly thereafter. Liesel Dorra suspects that it was only after the war, possibly when Elsa Pusch was reinstated in 1948.

In August 1982, at the family's request, Reinhold Pusch puts to paper, "What I remember of Grandma Rühl's ordeal and of the circumstances leading up to it." A three-page typewritten document. All the memories of the relatives are mainly based on it. The family also possesses copies of two lists of the "protective custody" in Fuhlsbüttel, in which their grandmother Adele Rühl is listed under "arrivals" on December 10, 1942, and under "departures" on February 4, 1943 - with the note "K.L. Auschwitz".

The daughter Bärbel Hintze, née Rühl, and the grandson Matthias Pusch add: "At the time of her death she was a mother of two and already a grandmother of seven. Later, she was joined by three more grandchildren. By now she would be a great-grandmother of 18 and also a great-great-grandmother of several. So it was not possible to erase the family and prevent the memory of Adele Rühl!"

Translation Beate Meyer

Stand: March 2023
© Roland Fleischer

Quellen: 4; StaH, 351-11Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 3735 Adele Rühl (Schriftstücke von 1943–1967); Sterbeurkunde, ausgestellt vom Standesamt II Auschwitz am 13.4.1943; Gedenkblatt Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, eingereicht von Enkelin Renate Voss im Jahr 1975; Jahresberichte (Mitgliederverzeichnisse) der Baptistengemeinde "Zoar" (Eimsbüttel) von 1914–1940; Beate Meyer (Hg.): Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der Hamburger Juden 1933–1945. Geschichte. Zeugnis. Erinnerung, Göttingen 2006; 100 Jahre Evangelisch Freikirchliche Gemeinde Hamburg-Eimsbüttel. Festschrift, Hamburg 1990, S. 36, 55 f., 67 f.; Enkel Carsten Pusch, Neumünster (Telefonate im Oktober 2009 und am 23.11.2010) und Enkelin Renate Voss, geb. Pusch, Hamburg (Gespräch am 6.10.2009, Brief vom 11.10.2009); Enkelin Liesel Dorra, geb. Rühl, Welzheim (Telefonate vom 8.11.2010 und 24.11.2010, Brief vom 9.12.2010, Besuch und Gespräch am 30.8.2011).
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