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Gertrud Penkert (née Blankenstein) * 1888

Sierichstraße 56 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)

HIER WOHNTE
GERTRUD PENKERT
GEB. BLANKENSTEIN
JG. 1888
VERHAFTET 1943
GEFÄNGNIS FUHLSBÜTTEL
DEPORTIERT 1943
AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET 1.12.1943

further stumbling stones in Sierichstraße 56:
Siegfried Salomon, Martha Salomon

Gertrud Penkert, neé Blankenstein, born on 8.1.1888 in Hamburg, arrested on 9.4.1943, deported to Auschwitz, murdered there on 1.12.1943

Sierichstraße 56

Gertrud Betty Blankenstein was the youngest of five children born in Hamburg. Her parents, the merchant Hermann (Herz) Blankenstein and his wife Emma Eleonore, née Levinger, had moved from Dortmund to Hamburg in 1879. The Jewish family initially lived on Steindamm, from where they moved in 1891 - with a stopover in Rutschbahn - to Altona, which was then Prussian.

In 1892, they had their five children baptized as Protestants in the Johanniskirche in Altona. They all received a good education. Their sons Curt (born in 1878) and Georg (born in 1879) (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) attended the Christianeum and then completed a commercial apprenticeship. Gertrud's sisters Bertha (born 1876) and Edith (born 1883) (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) decided to become teachers. At that time, the prerequisite for becoming a teacher was that they remained unmarried. They shared an apartment in Abendrothsweg. When "non-Aryan” civil servants were dismissed from the teaching profession in 1933, the sisters lost their secure income, could no longer afford the shared apartment and were increasingly exposed to anti-Semitic reprisals.

Brother Georg was married and worked as a self-employed merchant after the First World War. The eldest son Curt was married and had three children, two of whom were able to emigrate. Like his brother, he had set up his own business. After 1933, he was increasingly exposed to Nazi reprisals in his profession and died of a heart condition in 1939.

Gertrud Blankenstein had trained as a music teacher at the Vogt Conservatory (at Verbindungsbahn 10) and passed her final examination in 1908. She probably met her non-Jewish husband Anton Penkert, who taught there, at the Vogt Conservatory. The marriage took place on July 10, 1909 and it can be assumed that Gertrud Penkert was not employed in the following years.

The childless couple lived in the Winterhude district (Bussestraße, Hirtenstraße, Immenhof) until 1934, when they moved to Sierichstraße 56.

During the Nazi era, Gertrud Penkert's marriage was considered a "privileged” mixed marriage, which protected her from deportation. She also did not have to wear a "Jewish star”. However, if the Gestapo criminalized such protected Jews for actual or assumed misconduct, the protection of the mixed marriage expired. This could be, for example, failure to declare their Jewish origin to an authority. Whether this or another pretext drew the Gestapo's attention to her: Gertrud Penkert was initially taken to the police station for interrogation on March 26, 1943. She remained in "protective custody” in the "Kolafu”, the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp in Hamburg, until her deportation to Auschwitz in the fall of 1943. The exact date of her transfer to Auschwitz is not known.

She was murdered there on December 1, 1943, without the couple having been able to see each other again since their arrest.


Gertrud Penkert's siblings were also victims of the Holocaust: Bertha and Edith Blankenstein were deported to Lodz ghetto on 25.10.1941 and murdered in Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp on 20.5.1942 (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de). Stolpersteine commemorate them on Abendrothsweg.

Georg Blankenstein had been imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison (= concentration camp) since October 24, 1942, was deported to Theresienstadt on February 24, 1943 and murdered there on April 14, 1943. Like the Penkert couple, he lived with his non-Jewish wife Helene in Sierichstraße (house number 70) from 1938. A Stumbling Stone was laid for him there (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de).

Gertrud Penkert's husband Anton Adolph Penkert (born 8.3.1875) worked as a permanent seminary teacher and had several other jobs: He worked as an organist in the Borgfelde parish, was employed with some hours as a teacher at the Vogt Conservatory and at the Hamburg Conservatory, and worked as a music critic for the Hamburger Fremdenblatt.
His permanent position was terminated in 1933, so that he took early retirement at the age of 58 and subsequently also lost his part-time jobs. The couple's financial situation therefore became increasingly critical. In reparation proceedings, Penkert was awarded compensation after the war. He suffered greatly from the reprisals against his wife and her family, which were increasingly directed at him as well, and this certainly contributed to him becoming seriously ill with a heart condition.
He lived with his second wife at Sierichstraße 56 II until his death on October 3, 1959.

Translation: Beate Meyer
Stand: November 2024
© Ursula Mühler

Quellen: StaH 351-11_2652, 361-3_A1672, 332-5_11911 und 1453/1959, 331-1II_7254; arolsen-archives.org; Hamburger Adressbücher; www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de Biografien von Maria Koser (Bertha und Edith Blankenstein) und Björn Eggert (Georg Blankenstein); Maximilian Strnad: Privileg Mischehe, Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Bd 54; Beate Meyer: Fragwürdiger Schutz-Mischehen in Hamburg, In: Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der Hamburger Juden 1933-1945, hrsg. v. Beate Meyer; zum Judenreferat siehe:https://schluesseldokumente.net/beitrag/althoff-rothenbaumchaussee38#section-1