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Maria Laski (née Albrecht) * 1863

Hirtenstraße 13 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

HIER WOHNTE
MARIA LASKI
GEB. ALBRECHT
JG. 1863
FLUCHT 1936 HOLLAND
INTERNIERT WESTERBORK
DEPORTIERT 1944
ERMORDET IN
AUSCHWITZ

further stumbling stones in Hirtenstraße 13:
Maximilian Nagel

Maria Laski, née Albrecht, born on 25 Mar. 1863 Fraudenhorst/Luckow/Pomerania, fled to the Netherlands in 1936, deported on 5 Apr. 1944 from Westerbork camp to Auschwitz

Hirtenstrasse 13

Maria Albrecht, a Lutheran non-Jewish woman from a simple background and "without a profession,” as the marriage register states, married into an established Jewish brokerage family that had moved from Poland at the beginning of the nineteenth century (see Stolperstein for Elsa Philipp, née Laski, on Wandsbeker Chaussee). Her husband Theophil Laski, born on 15 Aug. 1859 in Hamburg, was a merchant and worked as an authorized signatory when they married in Ottensen on 26 Oct. 1889. At that time, their daughter Gerda, born on 23 June 1889, was four months old.

Maria Auguste Wilhelmine Albrecht, who called herself Mary, was born on 25 Mar. 1863 in Fraudenhorst/Luckow in Western Pomerania. Her father was a "rural man” ("Landmann”), probably a farmer, her parents lived in the Western Pomeranian town of Heinrichswalde. It is unknown when and why Maria went to Hamburg without her.

Nor is it known why the fathers did not take on the traditional role of best man or had himself represented by family members.

Three years after Gerda, Maria Laski gave birth to a second daughter, Asta, on 19 Oct. 1892 and finally Hilda on 11 May 1894. No further traces of Asta were found.

Theophil Laski and his family joined the German-Israelitic Community in Hamburg.

Initially, the Laski family lived at Neustädter Fuhlentwiete 69 in Hamburg-Neustadt and moved to Lappenbergsallee 10 in Eimsbüttel around 1900, where they stayed for ten years. The Laski family only lived for a short time at Schröderstiftstrasse 3 and then settled at Schäferkampsallee 11. As director of the Hamburg Warenhandelsgesellschaft, a trading company, Theophil Laski earned a good income and was then able to afford an apartment on the Geest slope in Hamburg-Hamm at Hirtenstrasse 14, where the family moved in 1921.

Maria/Mary Laski probably led the life of a bourgeois wife and homemaker. The daughters enjoyed the then usual education for "höhere Töchter” [girls of "good families”] and married during the First World War.

Gerda became a singer and singing teacher. On 1 May 1915, she married the Lutheran factory owner Richard Ohlekopf from Hannover, with the church ceremony taking place on 26 Oct. 1915. On 16 Aug. 1921, daughter Dagny Jutta was born. The parents separated in 1925; in 1928, the marriage was divorced. Gerda Ohlekopf moved with her daughter to her parents and accepted engagements as a singer. Protestant, but according to National Socialist racial ideology a "half-Jew” ("Halbjüdin”), she was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Music (Reichsmusikkammer) in 1933. After that, she still put in several concert performances at churches in Eilbek and Borgfelde.

Hilda married the Jewish actor Friedrich/Fritz Hirsch from Mannheim on 11 Nov. 1916. According to tradition, the fathers were witnesses at her marriage and that of her sister Gerda. Hilda and Fritz Hirsch had two sons, Gerd Carl, born on 29 Nov. 1918, and Frank Gunther, born on 10 Feb. 1926, seven years younger. Having moved to Berlin in 1921, they fled as "full Jews” ("Volljuden”) from there to the Netherlands in June 1933.

Theophil and Maria Laski no longer felt safe in Germany after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws [on race] in Sept. 1935 and followed their daughter Hilda to the Netherlands on 5 Oct. 1936. After their emigration, Gerda and Dagny Ohlekop moved to Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel.

Little is known about Maria and Theophil Laski’s life in the Netherlands. One of their addresses was Baalistraat in The Hague. After the occupation of the country in May 1940, they were able to stay there for the time being. Theophil Laski died in 1941, but the place and date of his death could not be established.

Fritz Hirsch, Maria Laski’s son-in-law, was arrested in 1941 and deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he died in the Gusen subcamp on 11 May 1942. Hilda Hirsch-Laski and her sons Gerd and Frank, like her mother and grandmother Maria Laski, were spared from deportation until the spring of 1944.

At the beginning of Apr. 1944, Maria Laski was interned in the Westerbork transit camp and transported to Auschwitz on 5 April. The date of her death is 8 Apr. 1944.

Her daughter Hilda Hirsch and the grandchildren Gerd Carl and Frank Gunther were also deported to Auschwitz, on 4 May 1944, after a short period of imprisonment in the Westerbork camp, where Hilda Laski was apparently murdered immediately after her arrival.
The date of her death is 7 May 1944.

The sons were sent to perform forced labor. The date of Gerd Carl’s death is considered to have been 31 Aug. 1944. Frank Gunther received prisoner number 179,670. He was deployed in the Monowitz camp and hospitalized there several times, perishing on 17 Jan. 1945, ten days before the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Richard Ohlekopf probably died in Russian captivity in 1945.

Gerda Ohlekopf experienced the end of the war with her daughter Dagny in Fuhlsbüttel. They emigrated to the USA in 1951, where Gerda Ohlekop passed away in New York on 4 Apr. 1972.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: September 2020
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; StaHH 351-11 Wiedergutmachung, 11702; Joodsmonument.
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