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Berta Leider (née Kleinberger) * 1890

Schmarjestraße 6 (Altona, Altona-Altstadt)

HIER WOHNTE
BERTA LEIDER
GEB. KLEINBERGER
JG. 1890
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
RIGA

further stumbling stones in Schmarjestraße 6:
Lina Leider

Berta Leider, née Kleinberger, born 10 Nov. 1890, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga
Lina Leider, born 15 Feb. 1930, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga

Schmarjestraße 6 (Turnstraße)

The stamp on Berta Leider’s culture tax card read "6 Dec. ’41 emigration”. She was a widow and single mother. On that day she and her eleven-year-old daughter Lina were forced to board the deportation train headed to Riga. Berta Leider, née Kleinberger, was born on 10 Nov. 1890 in Schaumburg-Lippeschen Hagenburg, near Lake Steinhuder, as the daughter of the Jewish "agricultural produce seller” Josef Kleinberger and his wife Lina Kleinberger, née Mendler. Her sister Fanny had been born eight year earlier. In 1893 her brother Ernst (David) was born, and in 1896 her brother Adolf. Her half-sister Jette, born in 1880, was the offspring from her father’s first marriage to Anna Kleinberger, née Mendler. Her father Josef Kleinberger probably left Niepolomice in Galicia, Poland to come to Germany and first settled with his family in Stolzenau on the River Weser at the end of the 19th century. Since his scrap trade brought in little money, the family lived in poor conditions. Josef Kleinberger passed away in 1904. After the death of her mother in 1920, Berta moved to Dortmund, but returned intermittently to Stolzenau, and moved to Hamburg in Aug. 1924. In Dec. 1927 she married Josef Leider who was Jewish, 25 years her senior, and came from Lopatyn in Galicia, Poland. Through their marriage, Berta Leider also received Polish citizenship. It was Josef Leider’s second marriage. He was a funeral clerk at the German-Israelite Community. When the two of them married, Berta was living at Isestraße 119. She may have been a maid there because her unwed sister Fanny lived in the same house with the Levy Family and worked as a cook. Josef Leider owned a house in old town Altona, near the Platz der Republik, at Turnstraße 6 (today Schmarjestraße) where he lived on the ground floor. Berta Leider moved in with him in Altona. On 15 Feb. 1930 their daughter Lina was born. Lina was eight years old when Josef Leider died on 1 July 1938 and was a student at the Israelite Girls’ School on Karolinenstraße. In 1940 the widow Berta Leider attracted the attention of the authorities at the regional tax office as a Jew and a house owner. Her financial situation was examined; she reported property valued at 7,800 Reich Marks (RM) and other assets of 7,000 RM in value. Upon the authority’s request she estimated her monthly expenses for her daughter and herself at 241 RM. Berta Leider added to her handwritten list: "Since I have heart disease and suffer from kidney and stomach trouble, I have to maintain a careful diet so that I can raise my under-aged, 10 ¾ -year-old child to be a good person.” However the single mother received no sympathy. Her house fell victim to the politics of "Aryanization”, "in accordance with the implementation ordinance of the Reich Ministry of Economics from 6 Feb. 1939 on the provision regarding the allocation of Jewish assets from 3 Dec. 1938”. On 14 Oct. 1940 Berta Leider had to submit an application to the Hanseatic City Hamburg to sell her property in Hamburg-Altona, Turnstraße 6. In Nov. of that year, the authority of the regional tax office director issued a "security order”. Under the order, Berta Leider was no longer able to dispose of her assets freely, she was granted a mere monthly sum of 240 RM for living expenses. She applied in vain to have her under-aged daughter’s savings account maintained as a limited access "security account”. In response to her attempts, the Altona branch of the "Hamburg Savings Bank since 1827” promptly froze the account. In Feb. 1941, the contract for the sale of the house was concluded; after deducting expenses, the sales amount was paid into Lina Leider’s savings account, effectively prohibiting mother and daughter from spending any of the money. The mass deportation of Hamburg’s Jews began in autumn 1941. Berta Leider was forced to watch on 8 Nov. as her nephew Hans, the 23-year-old son of her half-sister Jetta Weinberg, née Kleinberger, a widow like herself, was deported to Minsk from his home at Mansteinstraße 49 where he lived with his mother and sister Johanna Luise (Anneliese). One month later, Berta and Lina Leider also received the "order to evacuate” on 6 Dec. 1941. Their destination for deportation was the Riga Ghetto in German-occupied Latvia. Her sister Fanny Kleinberger (erroneous listed as "Klein” on the deportation list and in the memorial books), who lived in the "Jewish house” at Bogenstraße 5 in Eimsbüttel, was scheduled for the same transport. The day before their departure, eleven-year-old Lina, her mother and her aunt had to report to the lodge at the Moorweide which the Gestapo used as a collection site for the first deportations. The next day on 6 Dec., they were driven to the Hannoversche Train Station where they set out in the direction of Riga on a mass transport of 753 people. Those deported also included Altona’s former Chief Rabbi Joseph Carlebach. At the time of their arrival, a mass shooting of the local Jewish population was taking place in Riga Ghetto to make space for Jews from the German Reich. As a consequence, their group of deportees was housed at a sub-camp of the ghetto in dilapidated and mostly unheated barns, barracks and cattle sheds belonging to the former estate Jungfernhof. When the camp was liquidated in Mar. 1942, those who had managed to survive the hunger, typhoid and cold of winter were shot and killed in a nearby forest. Berta and Lina Leider and Fanny Kleinberger all perished. After her deportation, Berta Leider’s assets were confiscated for the benefit of the German Reich. A moving company picked up the furniture from her ground-floor apartment at Turnstraße 6 on 9 Jan. 1942 and auctioned it off at the court bailiff’s auction hall by order of the Office for the Use of Seized Assets under the Hamburg Regional Tax Office. Everything was sold, including a crib, a chaise longue, a desk, a mangle, a damaged kitchen sideboard, a sewing machine and porcelain. According to the auction accounting, the bailiff transferred nearly 400 RM to the regional tax office account after fees were deducted. On 18 Apr. 1942, Berta Leider’s half-sister Jetta Weinberg and her daughter Johanna Luise (Anneliese) were taken into "protective custody” at the Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison. Both were released on 4 May 1942, yet deported two months later, on 11 July 1942, from the "Jewish house” at Großneumarkt 56 to Auschwitz extermination camp. Her brother Ernst (David) Kleinberger was detained in Hamburg in Nov. 1942 for an identity card and name regulation offense. In Feb. 1943 he was serving a sentence at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp when he was transferred to Berlin and from there deported to Auschwitz on 2 Mar. 1943. From there he was deported on to Groß-Rosen concentration camp and on 10 Feb. 1945 to Buchenwald concentration camp. On 26 Feb. he was taken to the sub-camp Berga/Elster where he was forced to begin a death march probably between 10 and 12 Apr. 1945; one group headed to Dachau concentration camp and a second to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Since the arrival lists at both places do not show Ernst Kleinberger, he likely perished during the death march. Nothing is known about the fate of his brother Adolf Kleinberger. A Stumbling Stone has been laid at Bogenstraße 5 for Fanny Kleinberger. A Stone was placed at Mansteinstraße 49 in remembrance of the Weinberg Family. (To see their biographies, visit www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de)


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2018
© Birgit Gewehr

Quellen: 1; 2 (R 1940/457, Leider, Berta); 4; 5; 6; 8; AB Altona; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 e 2 Band 3 (Deportationsliste Riga, 4.12.41); StaH 332-5 Standesämter, 5414 (Eintrag Nr. 982, Tod Josef Leider); Biographie von Jetta Weinberg, in: Lohmeyer, Stolpersteine, S. 516f.; Deutsch-Jüdische Gesellschaft Hamburg (Hrsg.), Wegweiser; Auskunft Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, Zugangsbuch KZ Buchenwald, 26.11.2014; Auskunft KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, 4.12.2014
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