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© State Archives in Belgium – Individual file established by the Belgian Foreigners Police
Benjamin Goldberger * 1895
Agathenstraße 3 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)
HIER WOHNTE
BENJAMIN
GOLDBERGER
JG. 1895
FLUCHT 1939 BELGIEN
INTERNIERT MECHELEN
DEPORTIERT 1944
AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET
further stumbling stones in Agathenstraße 3:
Margarethe Conu, Herbert Frank, Frieda Laura Frank, Kraine Goldberger, Lea Goldmann, Bela Meier, Henry Meier, Alexander Nachum, Clara Nachum
Benjamin Goldberger, born on 26.12.1895 in Kolomea (Galicia), fled to Antwerp (Belgium) in the fall of 1939, interned in Mechelen on 29.4.1944, deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 19.5.1944
Kreine Goldberger, née Brun, called Geller, born on 2.3.1898 in Zalocze (Galicia), fled to Antwerp (Belgium) in the fall of 1939, interned in Mechelen on 29.4.1944, deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 19.5.1944
Agathenstraße 3 (Eimsbüttel)
Both Benjamin Goldberger and his wife Kreine were born in Galicia, Benjamin in Kolomea, today Kolomyja in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast on the left bank of the Pruth River, Kreine in Zalocze in the eastern most tip of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today Saliszi Monarchy, today Saliszi in the Ternopil oblast. Both birthplaces are now in western Ukraine. Like so many Eastern Jews, both families immigrated to Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.
Benjamin's father Ephraim (born 20.12.1860 in Horodenka) and his son Motie or Mordko or Max (born 6.7.1885 in Tluste) registered in Hanover on January 3, 1901. (Motie and Mordko are a short form and a diminutive of the Jewish name Mordechai). Ephraim was registered as a wine merchant, Motie as an egg packer. In November, his wife Hinde Broder (born 28.11.1861 in Tluste) and the two children Malka (born 8.9.1891 in Tluste) and Benjamin followed. Another son, Iziu, was born on 23.6.1904 in Hanover, but died on 15.8.1905. Hinde's mother, Dwora Broder, came to Hanover in May 19 to support her with the baby. In 1907 she returned to Kolomea.
Ephraim Goldberger died in Hanover in 1934 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Strangriede. His widow Hinde was deported to Zbaszyn in 1938 as part of the "Polenaktion”. She fled to Belgium in 1939, was imprisoned in Mechelen and deported from there to Auschwitz on October 24, 1942.
Benjamin's brother Motie had moved to Bielefeld in 1911, where he remained listed in the address books until 1919. After that, his trace is lost.
In 1920, his sister Malka married the merchant Nathan Bieder, born 1.4.1890 in Donbrowa. The couple had a son, Isaak Nathan. Malka died in 1921 after the birth of her daughter Amalie and was buried next to her father. The widower and children left Hanover in 1923 and moved to Leipzig. Nathan Bieder remarried and had two more sons with his second wife Sala, née Grünberg, Rubin (born 1926) and Jaki (born 1929). This family was also deported to Zbaszyn and fledfrom there to Belgium. With the exception of Amalie, they were all listed in the "Jewish register” in Belgium in 1939. Nathan, Sala and Jaki Bieder were deported from Mechelen to Auschwitz on October 10, 1942 and murdered. The fate of Rubin and Amalie is unknown.
Kreine Goldberger's parents were the Torah scriber and bookbinder Meschullom (also Meschalon) Geller (born 20.9.1867 in Przemysl) and Schura (Schure) Brun (born 2.2.1868 in Zalozce). Kreine had a younger sister Hinde (Hynde) (born 6.10.1904). Both girls had the double name Geller-Brun or were officially called "Brun, called Geller”. The parents were probably married according to the Jewish rite, but not married in a registry office. Kreine had come to Hamburg from Vienna in November 1919, her mother followed in February 1920. Both had a Ukrainian passport, as their birthplaces were in the Ukrainian People's Republic, which only existed for a short time after the First World War. They lived in Hamburg at Kielortallee 22, where Schura's brother Nachum (Nuchim) also lived. Schura Brun died in Hamburg on November 16, 1938.
Benjamin and Kreine were married in Hamburg on April 24, 1922. Benjamin Goldberger was still living in Hanover at the time, his bride with her parents at Rutschbahn 25 a, house 2. Four houses at Rutschbahn 25 a offered 24 free apartments for "sober, righteous, peaceful Israelites”, which were maintained by the Minkel-Salomon-David-Kalker Foundation founded in 1878.
According to the marriage certificate, Benjamin Goldberger was a "merchant” by profession. According to the Jewish community's tax card, he worked as a ship's cook. In fact, he was probably employed as a ship's cook by the Hamburg-Süd shipping company for a time in the 1920s. He is said to have worked on the ship "Monte Olivia”, which sailed to South America from April 1925.
Five children were born to the marriage: Deborah (1923), Abraham (1925), Esther Malie (1926), Marcus (1927) and the offspring Isaac (1934). It is still said in the family that the eldest child, Deborah, was born on a ship in 1923. The younger children were born in Hamburg. It is no longer possible to reconstruct how Benjamin Goldberger earned his money after starting the large family. Presumably the family lived in poverty. From the end of the 1920s, no tax payments are entered on the religious tax file card (the religious tax was based on salary or income).
Kreine Goldberger is said to have worked as a seamstress in Hamburg, while Benjamin probably monitored compliance with Jewish dietary laws as a "supervisor” in a bakery. The family lived in a three-room apartment in the house of the Nanny Jonas Foundation at Agathenstraße 3. By 1938 at the latest, the Goldberger couple had probably made efforts to emigrate with their children. A "clearance certificate for emigrants” dated December 23 still exists. The destination stated was the United States of America. In June 1939, the family drew up a relocation list, but the whole family wasn’t successful to emigrate to the USA.
The children were taken to safety in England on a Kindertransport at the beginning of August 1939. According to later statements by the surviving children, the whole family had been living in hiding in the apartment of two sisters in Altona since Christmas 1938. However, the family was registered at Kielortallee 24 with Kaufmann, Kreine Goldberger's sister.
Benjamin and Kreine fled illegally to Antwerp in Belgium in November 1939, after the start of the war. There they found shelter in Zurenborgstraat. The "Decree on police measures in certain areas of Belgium and northern France of November 12, 1940” meant the deportation of many Jews from Antwerp to the province of Limburg on the border with the Netherlands. In the course of 1941, however, the Jews were able to return to Antwerp or to certain communities in the greater Brussels area. They were only housed provisionally and poorly and were not allowed to leave their community. Benjamin and Kreine Goldberger lived in Anderlecht at Rue de Megissiers 4 I.
In the spring of 1944, they were interned in the "Caserne Dossin” in Mechelen and transported from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau on May 19, 1944. We have not found any further traces. Neither survived.
Today, the Dossin barracks is a museum and a place of remembrance. It is inextricably linked to the history of the Holocaust in Belgium. Between 1942 and 1944, the barracks served the German occupiers as a transit camp for Jews, Sinti and Roma who were to be deported on trains to Auschwitz-Birkenau. For 25,484 Jews and 352 Sinti and Roma, the journey to death began in the "SS Sammellager Mechelen”. The history of the persecution of Jews, Sinti and Roma in Belgium is told at this very site today.
As Kreine and Benjamin Goldberger had managed to send all their children to England on a Kindertransport, they saved their lives. The children in turn started families and had children, and so today there are many descendants of the Goldbergers. Their daughter Deborah, who had attended the Israelite Girls' School in Karolinenstraße, returned to Germany after the war, probably only for a short time, remained unmarried and died in Wales in 1999.
Abraham, a pupil at the Talmud Tora School in Hamburg, became a soldier in a Polish brigade in the British Army before going to Palestine and fighting in the War of Independence there in 1948. In Israel, he worked as a lawyer and also taught as a lecturer at universities in Australia and Scotland. He died in Scotland in 1974.
Esther and Isaac were placed with a London family after their arrival in England, but because of the German bombing raids, all the Goldberg children were evacuated to the countryside and Esther and Isaac went to live with two sisters in Cambridgeshire. One of the two sisters, May Gibson, adopted both children at the end of the war. Esther lived in England until her marriage and then emigrated to Australia with her husband Arthur Crapper, where she had two children. She died in January 2017. Marcus became a potter in England. He died in 2013, leaving behind nine children and numerous grandchildren. Isaac, the Goldbergers' youngest son, became a lecturer in biology, remained in England and died in February 2019.
Schure Goldberger's brother, the bookbinder and merchant Nachum Brun (born 15.1.1864 in Zalosce), died in October 1936. (The spelling "Brunn” also appears in the records.) Nachum and his first wife Rahel Brun, née Brun, are buried in the Jewish cemetery in Langenfeld. Nachum Brun's second marriage was to Riwka, née Goldberg. He had six children who were born between 1891 and 1906. Their names were Israel, Netti, Samuel, Moritz, Ida and Harry. The eldest son Israel was Benjamin and Kreine Goldberger's best man. He was deported to Zbaszyn with his wife Chaje Ester, née Fischler, and his mother Riwka in October 1938. Their fate is unknown.
Kreine Goldberger's sister Hinde (Hynde) was married to Simche Strul Kaufmann (born 23.11.1903), a merchant from Hungary. Their children were Josef Chaim (born 26.4.1933), Ruth (born 7.11.1934), Fanni (born 27.2.1936) and Elieser (born 9.1.1938). The family first lived at Rutschbahn 25a and later in Oppenheimer's Stift at Kielortallee 22 and 24. The family was deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto together with Kreine and Hinde's father Meschullom Geller on October 25, 1941. Hinde was murdered in Kulmhof (Chelmno) on September 8, 1942. Meschulom Geller died in Lodz on June 1, 1942.
Translator: Erwin Fink/ changes Beate Meyer
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.
Stand: July 2024
© Susanne Lohmeyer/Sabine Brunotte
Quellen: 1; 5; StaH 213-13, 510; StaH 332-5, 1053 + 382/1936; StaH 332-5, 1089 + 384/1938; StaH 351-11 AfW, 17897; StaH 351-11, 20417; StaH 351-11, 47873; StaH 314-15 OFP, FVg 5663; StaH 332-5, 8785 + 173/1922; schriftliche Auskunft von Laurence Schram, Kazerne dossin vzw, Mechelen E-Mail v. 12.7.2013; Adressbücher Hannover; Im jüdischen Hamburg. Ein Stadtführer von A bis Z; Informationen der Enkel; schriftliche Auskunft von Dr. Peter Schulze, Hannover, E-Mails vom 10.4., 18.6., 20.6. und 23.6.2018; Auskunft des Stadtarchivs Wien vom 15.2.2021; Auskunft von Mark Hart vom 5.3.2021.
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