Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Liselotte Schlachcis * 1910

Wandsbeker Marktstraße 79 / 81 (Wandsbek, Wandsbek)

1942 Auschwitz

Liselotte Schlachcis, born on 23.3.1910, 1933-34 imprisonment in Hamburg, 1934 escape to Copenhagen, 1941-1942 imprisonment in Hamburg, Lübeck and Neumünster, from there deported to Auschwitz on 17.12.1942, murdered there on 30.1.1943

Wandsbeker Marktstraße 79/81 (Lübeckerstraße)

Liselotte Schlachcis, also called Lotte, was only 32 years old when she was murdered. Although she had fled to Denmark, she was not taken to safe Sweden and rescued like most Danish Jews, but rather betrayed, deported and handed over to the German police.

Liselotte Schlachcis had been born on March 23, 1910, in Pinne, then still Prussian, in the district of Samter in the province of Posen. Her parents were the Jewish couple Martha, née Levinsohn, and Eduard Schlachcis, who died already on November 25, 1913.

In 1922 Liselotte and her mother came to Wandsbek. Like many ethnic Germans, they had left Pinne, which, as part of the province of Posen, had become part of the Polish cession area after the Treaty of Versailles. In Wandsbek they moved into an apartment at Hamburgerstraße 29 (today Wandsbeker Marktstraße). Martha Schlachcis had been running a shoe store there since 1924/25.

Liselotte Schlachcis went to Segeberg after leaving school in 1926 and returned in 1928. In 1931 and 1932, mother and daughter lived at Lübeckerstraße 13/14 (today Wandsbeker Marktstraße) with the merchant Karl Florstedt as subtenants. The shoe store was now run by G. Kohn (jun.). In 1933, Liselotte Schlachcisals worked as an office clerk.

On March 29, 1931, she registered in Hamburg-Hamm at Wichernsweg 28, presumably with her then 19-year-old boyfriend and later fiancé Rudolf Lindau, called Rudi. He was a construction worker and - like Liselotte in the meantime - active in the communist youth movement. In 1932, both joined the Communist Party, the KPD. Liselotte Schlachcis now lived at 177 Steilshooper Straße, again together with her mother. At first Rudi Lindau also moved in there, but later took a room at 17 Kenzlersweg in Hamm.

On October 26, 1933, Rudi Lindau was arrested in his fiancée's apartment. He, Friedrich Winzer and others were accused of having participated in the assault on policeman Perske on August 27, 1931. The group had intended to disarm him, but the policeman was shot in the stomach and later died as a result. The National Socialist Hanseatic Special Court considered it proven that Lindau had fired and was mainly responsible for the policeman's death. While the others involved in the crime were sentenced to many years in prison, the court imposed the death penalty on Rudi Lindau on December 30, 1933.

Two days before his execution, Liselotte was able to speak to him. On January 10, 1934, Rudolf Lindau was beheaded in the remand prison (UG) in Hamburg; he was 21 years old.

Meanwhile, Liselotte Schlachcis was also in "protective custody" in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. She told the Gestapo that she was engaged to a member of the Social Democratic Schutzverband Reichsbanner. The Gestapo, on the other hand, accused her of attempting to get her fiancé out of the country in order to remove him from the jurisdiction of the courts. During the interrogation on January 2, 1934, Liselotte Schlachcis confessed to having illegally distributed letters and papers under the alias "Kurt" in the period from August to December 1933. After three months, she was transferred to the remand prison, where she stayed until July 12, 1934.

Until her arrest, Liselotte had probably also belonged to the communist resistance group led by Kurt Lammers. His father was the owner of a greengrocer's store in the Wandsbeker Langereihe. Leaflets and other illegal writings were produced there in one of the back rooms. Kurt Lammers was arrested in 1935. As a contemporary witness, he remembered Liselotte in 1988.

After her release from custody, Liselotte Schlachcis feared further interrogations by the Gestapo, so she left Hamburg. She sailed on the passenger ship SS Kaiser to Copenhagen, where she arrived on Sunday, September 9, 1934. She spent the first night at the Hotel Helgo in Helgolandsgade, and the next few days she lodged with a Jewish family she had met on the street.

She was supported by the Jewish community from the beginning, as she was not allowed to take a job, and - like other refugees - she had to report to the alien department of the police headquarters in Copenhagen, where she received a residence permit.

Although she was out of the country, the Gestapo continued to search for her. Refugees from Germany were still tolerated in Denmark at this time, but they had to try to find a way to enter a third country. At the beginning of 1935, Liselotte Schlachcis wanted to leave for Russia. The Jewish community was willing to pay the travel costs. However, Liselotte Schlachcis did not get a transit permit for Finland or Latvia, and the Russian side refused to allow her to enter the country.

In February 1938, the Danish authorities considered sending Liselotte Schlachcis back to Germany. The Social Directorate wanted to get rid of her because of accruing residence costs. "Return to Germany for compelling reason, as it is not found suitable that the aforementioned should continually be a burden on the public welfare system." Refugees were expected to take up employment or support themselves from cash allowances.

But the Aliens Department objected to the deportation. Liselotte Schlachcis had not been able to obtain a visa to enter the Soviet Union. She was still being sought. They were not thinking of sending her home, since she still had to be recognized as a political refugee. Although aid organizations had taken care of her, they had not yet succeeded in finding suitable work for her. The aliens police further stated as reasons: "... that Miss Schlachcis, who is only 149 cm tall, looks skinny and spindly and very anemic, absolutely does not look as if she could take on any work at all that requires physical strength."

The "Committee of May 4," a Jewish aid organization for German refugees, was unable to find her a job. Eventually, they managed to get her an education at the Handelswissenschaftliche Lehranstalt in Copenhagen.

In the meantime, Liselotte had apparently found a new life partner, Wilhelm Adam, called Willi. For a time (1937/38), the two lived together in a shared apartment with the party comrades Kurt and Marie Richter, before conflicts arose. Under the aliases Gilbert and Kleiner Hans, Willi Adam headed the Northern Section of the KPD in Copenhagen until 1936. Adam was expatriated from Germany in 1938. He remained in the country after the German occupation of Denmark and edited the illegal, anti-fascist newspaper "Deutsche Nachrichten”. In April 1945, he was arrested by the Gestapo and was released only after the end of the war.

The friendship pact between Hitler and Stalin (August 1939) caused confusion in the leadership of the KPD, leading to different instructions to the cadres. On the one hand, party members were to respect the pact; on the other, they were to fight the Nazi regime. The KPD's illegal branch for the north (Abschnittsleitung Nord, ALN) welcomed the pact as a peacemaking measure. Functionaries in exile were urged to activate old connections in Germany and build up structures as part of a re-emigration. But the strategy failed; rather, the party leadership's unrealistic misjudgment led to the arrest and conviction of numerous comrades sent to Germany.

The occupation of Denmark on April 9, 1940, by the German Wehrmacht directly affected those who had fled there. Their situation became increasingly dangerous. Although the Nazi regime did not touch the Danish state authorities, it expected cooperation, even collaboration. This included the arrest of members of the political resistance who had fled Germany. A first major wave of arrests was carried out by the Danish police at the end of May 1940 at the request of the Germans. Prior to this, compulsory registration had been introduced for all foreigners. Communist refugees were particularly affected. From December 1940, the occupying forces systematically used the refugee file of the Danish police as well as records of the disbanded or banned aid committees. After the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the German authorities demanded that the Danish police arrest and intern all communist refugees. Soon after, they were extradited to Germany.

Liselotte Schlachcis also fell into the clutches of the Gestapo. She was listed as a member of the KPD Abschnittsleitung Nord under the code name "Ruth". On June 27, 1941, the State Advocate (Staatsadvokater) for Special Matters arranged for Liselotte's arrest. This took place in her apartment, where she was registered with the police. The Danish police had been able to seize her because she had not disappeared into illegality, but was staying at her registered address. She had received instructions from a secretary of her KPD section, Karola Kern, to remain registered at this address. Kern was presumably an agent of the Gestapo. Willi Adam was also temporarily accused of working for the Gestapo, but this was not confirmed.

According to a note from the Ministry of Justice dated July 21, 1941, Liselotte Schlachcis’s residence permit had been revoked. Her transfer to Germany was approved. On August 3, 1941, she was transferred via Warnemünde and handed over to the German police.

The police took her to Hamburg, where she spent about 11 months in pre-trial detention from August 5, 1941. She was classified as politically dangerous. A stamp imprinted on her prisoner card said, "Strictly separate from all political prisoners!" On June 26, 1942, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court sentenced her to six years in prison for continued "preparation for high treason." She was first sent to the Lübeck-Lauerhof penitentiary for women on July 9, 1942, and then to the women's section of the Neumünster penitentiary on November 14, 1942.

The National Socialists planned the "extradition of asocial elements from the penal system to the Reichsführer SS for extermination through labor" for certain prisoners. Those in preventive detention, Jews, Gypsies, Russians and Ukrainians, Poles ... Czechs or Germans ... will be extradited without exception according to the decision of the Reich Minister of Justice." In parallel, a decree determined that German prisons, penitentiaries, and concentration camps should be "free of Jews." Liselotte Schlachcis was considered Jewish. On December 17, 1942, she left Neumünster Penitentiary at 9:45 a.m. and was taken to the Auschwitz death camp. There she was murdered. The date of death is given as January 30, 1943.

Liselotte Schlachcis's life was full of changes and ended tragically. She was in her early 20s when she turned politically to the KPD. After the Nazis took power in 1933 and began to crack down on opposition activists, she was targeted by the Gestapo, which continued to observe her in Denmark. Initially, she had a chance to survive as a Jewish refugee, but her integration in the host country failed. The German occupation of the country, the false assessment by the section leadership of the KPD, in which Gestapo agents also worked, prevented Liselotte from considering going into hiding in order to avoid her imminent arrest and deportation.

Back in Hamburg, she was imprisoned for months before and after her conviction. Persecuted and sentenced for her KPD membership, she was killed in Auschwitz at the age of 32 because she was Jewish. As a Danish citizen or integrated in the country of exile, she might have been one of the Jews rescued to Sweden in October 1943.

Liselotte Schlachcis's mother was fortunate to survive the war in Copenhagen, where she had fled. She had remarried and hoped for her daughter's return at the end of the war, but in vain.

Now Martha, who by then had the name Bukrinsky, wanted at least the sentence for high treason to be overturned, and in 1955 she called in a Hamburg lawyer. She succeeded in having the sentence against Liselotte Schlachcis lifted in the same year.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Astrid Louven

Quellen: Astrid Louven/Ursula Pietsch, Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Wandsbek mit den Walddörfern – Biografische Spurensuche, Hamburg 2008, S. 128-131, S. 219, S. 259, dort weitere Hinweise auf Quellen; Stefan Romey, Flucht vor Hitler – Kampf aus dem Exil Beispiele: Liselotte Schlachcis in: Widerstand in Wandsbek 1933-1945, herausg. von der Bezirksversammlung Hamburg-Wandsbek, Hamburg 2021, S. 139-149; VilhjalmurÖrnVilhjalmsson, Medaljensbagside:jødiskeflygtningeskæbner i Danmark ; 1933 - 1945, (übersetzt: Rückseite der Medaille: Jüdische Flüchtlingsschicksale in Dänemark 1933-1945) København, 2005. Der dänische Text über Liselotte Schlachcis wurde von Dr. Torkild Hinrichsen übersetzt und von Astrid Louven übertragen; Astrid Louven, Die Juden in Wandsbek 1604-1940. Spuren der Erinnerung, Hamburg 1989/91.