Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Bernhard Elias * 1875

Kurze Straße 10 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
BERNHARD ELIAS
JG. 1875
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
MINSK

further stumbling stones in Kurze Straße 10:
Hirsch Isaac Polack, Frieda Polack

Bernhard Elias, born 8/21/1875 in Hamburg, deported to Minsk on 11/8/1941
Kurze Strasse 10

David Elias, born 11/20/1872 in Hamburg, deported to Theresienstadt on 7/19/1942, deported on to the Treblinka extermination camp on 9/21/1942
Markusstrasse before the passage to Neanderstrasse (Peterstrasse 10)

The brothers Bernhard and David Elias were sons of the Jewish couple Elias Elias (born 2/12/1847, died 1/25/1927) and Helena Elias, who made their living as merchants. Their maternal grandparents Samson Oppenheim (born 11/9/1828, died 6/10/1896) and Eva, née Tokkie (born 9/10/1830, died 4/17/1909) had lived in the same house at 2. Elbstrasse 30 (now Neanderstrasse), were they ran a furniture and household goods store. Grandmother Eva Oppenheim came from Holland. She was a singer and was still quite young when her daughter Helena, who was to become Bernard and David’s mother, was born in ‘s-Gravenhage (The Hague) on April 10, 1848. On March 28, 1866 in Amsterdam, she married Samson Oppenheim from Hamburg, and followed him to his hometown.

Bernhard and David Elias were nine and twelve years old, their sisters Bertha and Frieda were ten and eight years old when their mother Helena Elias died at the Israelitic Hospital in Hamburg on August 12, 1885.

On January 24, 1887, the Elias children’s father Elias Elias married Bertha Salomonski (born 1/22/1857, died 3/14/1933). Elias’ second marriage produced four children from 1887 to 1892.

Bernhard Elias absolved an apprenticeship as a decorator and upholsterer; on November 28, 1901, he married Caroline Hausmann (born 4/20/1875). She came from the East Prussian province of Gumbinnen (now Gussew, Poland). She was not Jewish, and, like Bernhard’s grandmother, a singer.

At the time of their marriage, the couple lived at Marcusstrasse 42 (now Markusstrasse). Brother David, 29 years old at the time, was Bernhard’s best man. However, Bernhard and Caroline Elias were divorced not quite twelve years later, on September 2, 1913. On May 19, 1916, Bernhard Elias married Franziska Caroline Giegeler (born 3/8/1881), a native of Hamburg. Like Bernhard’s first wife, Caroline was not Jewish. At the time of their marriage, Bernhard Elias lived at Sophienstrasse 44 in the St. Pauli district.

From 1918 to 1922, the couple lived at Marthastrasse 5 in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel. On August 28, 1923, their marriage, too, was divorced, they had no children. In 1933, Franziska Elias reverted to her maiden name Giegeler.

From 1923 to 1925, Bernhard Elias a wholesale textile store at Eckernförderstrasse 25 in St. Pauli. In 1928, he was again living in the Neustadt district, at Kurze Strasse 10 as a subtenant of Hirsch Polack (s. there), a widower. The entry on Bernhard Elias’ culture tax card at the Jewish Community in January 1938 read "unemployed since five years.”

Bernhard Elias lived from welfare payments and, as a beneficiary, was assigned to hard excavation work at a worksite set up for Jews in the port at Waltershof. He had to move several times: to the Marcus-Nordheim-Stift, Schlachterstrasse 40/42, and to the building at Grossneumarkt 26, where he was quartered with Martin Salomon, called Saldorf (born 7/6/1866, died 6/26/1941 in Hamburg), a pensioner. His last known address was the "Jews’ house” Grossneumarkt 56, where the tenants were tightly crowded. On November 8, 1941, Bernhard Elias was deported from the Hannover station (at the site of today’s Lohseplatz) to the ghetto of Minsk, white Russia, where his trace is lost.

Bernhard’s brother David Elias first worked as a commercial clerk. On December 16, 1898, he had married Frieda Toni Klara Boos (born 2/8/1872), a "linen seamstress.” The daughter of the policeman Heinrich Boos and his wife Maria, née Subbert, a Lutheran Christian, came from Schwerin. The couple first lived at Venusberg 15. And, from 1901, at Peterstrasse 10, where David Elias first opened a fashion accessories store, which later became a lot bargains store. In December 1914, he was drafted and served in World War I until 1918. His wife Frieda died on October 23, 1922, their marriage had remained childless.

In 1935, David Elias was recorded as a subtenant at Peterstrasse 47 c/o Hartmann. He made his living as a street peddler. On weekends, he made an additional 15 reichsmarks as a dance orderly ("Tanzordner”) – a ballroom employee whose job was to supervise decency and to make sure that every lady guest had bought a dance card to write down the names of her dancing partners for the evening, at various St. Pauli localities, e.g. "Ballhaus” and "Sternensaal” at Grosse Freiheit 39.

In October 1938, David Elias had to apply for welfare payments. Like his brother Bernhard, he was quartered at the "Jews’ house” Grossneumarkt 56. The brothers, however, were not deported together. David Elias, who was distinctly over the age limit of 65, was sent to the "old folks’ ghetto” Theresienstadt on July 19, 1942. Already on September 21, two months before his seventieth birthday, he was deported on to Treblinka together with 2002 mostly elderly persons. Treblinka was an extermination camp. Nobody returned from there.

The Stumbling Stone for David Elias lies at the end of Markusstrasse. This part of the street formerly belonged to Peterstrasse – the prewar houses no longer exist.

His sister Frieda Elias, née Elias (born 1/6/1877) emigrated on June 2, 1939 to the Netherlands with her husband Moritz Elias (born 10/16/1875); the lived at Sparrenweg 7 in Amsterdam. Following the German occupation of the Netherlands, they were interned at the Westerbork transit camp on March 30, 1943 and deported to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland on April 2, 1943, where they were probably murdered immediately after their arrival.

Bernhard and David Elias’ half-sister Mathilde (born 2/23/1892), her husband Herbert Zuckermann (Chaim David Cukierman, born 5/10/1886 in Lukow) and their daughter Rosel Ruth (born 1/3/1922) lived at Poolstrasse 12–13, where they ran a laundry business. They managed to flee to Brazil via Argentina in March 1938.

Half-brother Dagobert Elias (born 9/28/1887) and his wife Minna, née Simson (born 12/14/1890) reached the USA in 1941.

Sister Bertha, married to the merchant Moritz Wolf, had died at the age of 35 on May 20, 1909.

Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 3; 4; 9; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2968 u 1341/1901; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 622 u 348/1909; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 622 u 261/1909; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3288 u 178/1916; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3910 u 1367/1898; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 184 u 2547/1885; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge 1127 (Elias, David); StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge Abl. 1999/2 Elias, Bernhard; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 374 Verzeichniss der im Jahre 1902 angemeldeten Israelitischen Gewerbetreibenden; StaH 351-11 AfW 45302 (Berger, Rosel Ruth); StaH 351-11 AfW 8818 (Zuckermann, Herbert); www.genealogieonline.nl/de/stamboom-riny-doyle-geboren-marinus-van-waard/I11002.php (Zugriff 5.10.2014); http://www.joodsmonument.nl/person/491729?lang=en (Zugriff 10.11.2015); https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzkarte (Zugriff 18.5.2017).
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".