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Samuel Herbert Hirsch * 1906

Hütten 87 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
SAMUEL HERBERT
HIRSCH
JG. 1906
DEPORTIERT 1941
MINSK
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Hütten 87:
Lea Hirsch

Lea/Laura Hirsch, née Rimberg, born on 25 Mar. 1880 in Lemberg (today Lviv in Ukraine), deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Samuel Herbert Hirsch, born on 9 Apr. 1906 in Hamburg, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk

Hütten 87 (Hütten 92)

Minna/Czipe Rimberg, born on 7 June 1883 in Lemberg, died after an assault on 27 Dec. 1941 in the Israelite Hospital

Peterstrasse 36 (Peterstrasse 33b)

The sisters Lea and Minna were born in Lemberg (Galicia), then part of the Austrian Empire. Their parents Meyer (Majer) Simon Bluhstein (born on 22 Sept. 1854) and Gittel, née Flecker (born on 17 July 1855), had left their native country along with them in 1883 and settled in Hamburg-Neustadt. There they had five more children: Frieda (born on 28 Mar. 1886, died on 5 Dec. 1981 in the USA), Adolf Jacob (born on 8 June 1888), Hermann (born on 17 Apr. 1891), David (born on 28 Oct. 1894, died in 1979 in the USA), and Alfred (born on 25 Jan. 1901).

In Hamburg, Meyer Simon Bluhstein changed the family name to Rimberg and in 1888 opened a linen goods store at Neuer Steinweg 84 and a few years later, a "job lot warehouse” ("Partiewarenlager,” i.e., a shop for discounted mass-produced goods and special items) at Elbstrasse 96 (today Neanderstrasse). Business success enabled the family to obtain citizenship in the Hamburg Federation (Hamburgischer Staatsverband) in 1904. In 1912, the family moved to Peterstrasse 33b.

Daughter Lea, who was called Laura, had married Siegmund Hirsch (born on 7 Oct. 1879) from Hamburg on 30 Dec. 1903. The son of the office clerk Harry Hirsch und Auguste, née Levy (Levi), was born at Elbstrasse 23 (today Neanderstrasse) and worked as a salaried employee for the Bacharach grain wholesale.

The young couple moved nearer to Siegmund’s widowed mother Auguste Hirsch to Grindelhof 75. Their oldest son Harry, born on 12 Dec. 1904, was named after his deceased grandfather. Another son, Samuel Herbert, was born two years later on 9 Apr. 1906. Siegmund Hirsch started his own company and in 1909, he registered a business as a grain wholesaler for oilseeds and animal feed. In 1912, the company relocated to Bornstrasse 25.

When Siegmund Hirsch was drafted in the First World War, Lea was given power of attorney. After the end of the war, the office was moved to Kleine Bäckerstrasse 21 in Hamburg-Altstadt, where Lea’s brother Adolf Rimberg also traded as a broker in metals, ore, and chemicals. In 1924, their business address was Schauenburgerstrasse 26/27.

In June 1933, the Hirsch couple moved back to Hamburg-Neustadt, closer to Lea’s father, after their mother, Gittel Rimberg, had died on 15 Dec. 1932. Meyer Simon Rimberg passed away on 2 Oct. 1933. The Hirsch couple lived at Hütten 92 until Mar. 1936 and then moved to Schäferkampsallee 61, from where Siegmund Hirsch ran his operation. Due to the boycott of Jewish companies in 1933, the business did not go well anymore.

The oldest son Harry had attended the Talmud Tora School and received commercial training. He then learned the antique trade from Frieda Waldschmidt, née Hirsch (born on 6 June 1892), one of his father’s cousins, at the book and art bookshop located at "An der Alster” 81.

After relocating the business to Holzdamm 26/28, Harry Hirsch officially became the sole owner in 1933. However, the store was attacked by a group of Nazis who burned a valuable reference library owned by Frieda Waldschmidt’s father Julius Hirsch (born on 2 June 1858) and irreplaceable family documents, letters from Salomon and Heinrich Heine to their grandmother Hendel Hirsch, née Heine, in public in front of the shop. Moreover, the owner of the house, Continental Gummiwerke, a major rubber company, gave notice of termination for the business premises to them "because it was not compatible with its [the company’s] attitude to have non-Aryans in the building.” Frieda Waldschmidt and Harry Hirsch first opened a shop at Gerhofstrasse 8 but had to give it up again in the summer of 1936 due to anti-Jewish regulations and ordinances. Shortly afterward, Harry Hirsch emigrated to the USA. Frieda Waldschmidt followed with her daughter Hedwig (born in 1924) in Oct. 1936.

In New York, Harry Hirsch received two letters from Hamburg in which his father reported that he had to make a contribution to the "levy on Jewish assets” ("Judenvermögensabgabe”) and did not know where to find the money. His brother Samuel wrote about a "great event”: As a forced laborer, one morning he was allowed to stand in line for cigars at a railway station.

Samuel Hirsch had completed a commercial apprenticeship. In 1935, he was listed as unemployed by the Jewish Community, in 1936 as a trainee without remuneration. Until May 1938, it was still possible for him to represent his father, who had been suffering from heart problems for a long time, at the Hamburg grain exchange. After that time, Jews were no longer allowed to act as brokers, and Samuel Hirsch had to hand in his "stock exchange card.”

Siegmund Hirsch died on 25 May 1940 at the age of 61. His business was deleted from the company register on 15 Nov. 1940. Lea and her son Samuel lived at Schäferkampsallee 61 for another year and a half. On 8 Nov. 1941, they were deported together to the ghetto in Minsk.

Lea’s sister Czipe Rimberg, called Minna, had remained unmarried. According to her Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) file card with the Jewish Community, she had taken over her father’s business at Elbstrasse 96, where she sold upholstery fabrics. In 1935, she resided with her sister Lea and her brother-in-law Siegmund Hirsch. In the very end, she lived on her own in the "Nordheim-Stift” retirement home at Schlachterstrasse 40/42. Her younger siblings had already left Germany.

After an "assault,” Minna Rimberg died on 27 Dec. 1941 in the Israelite Hospital on Johnsallee. Her sister-in-law Anita Rimberg testified in 1971 at the Yad Vashem memorial site in Israel: "Nazis threw her down, broke her legs, she died.”

Like her parents before, Minna Rimberg found her last resting place in the Jewish Cemetery on Ilandkoppel in Ohlsdorf.

The brother Alfred Rimberg, owner of an oil import company at Grindelallee 79, did not return to Hamburg after a business trip from Stockholm in 1936. His wife, the tailor Ides/Edith, née Biedak (born on 1 Jan. 1897 in Lodz), lived with their son Eugen (born on 28 Jan. 1930) at Carolinenstrasse 6 until they, too, emigrated to the USA via Russia and Japan in Apr. 1941.

Adolf Jacob Rimberg from Hansastrasse 59 left Germany with his wife Anita, née Meyer (born on 19 Aug. 1903 in Plauen) and their sons John David (born on 10 Mar. 1929) and Felix Justus (born in 1931) on 10 Feb. 1937, after his trading company, the "Chemische Industrielle GmbH,” a manufacturer of chemicals located at Colonnaden 49, had been "Aryanized” in Jan. 1938.

Since 1920, Hermann Rimberg owned a cloth warehouse for women’s and men’s fabrics at Elbstrasse 107/09 (today Neanderstrasse). In 1925, he opened a second store selling attire for fishermen as well as work wear in Finkenwärder (today Finkenwerder) at Norderdeich 20. Another shop for stockings and women’s underwear was located in Uetersen on Bahnhofstrasse. After the forced business closure, he emigrated to New York on Christmas Day 1938 with his wife Dora (Dwojra), née Paigin (born on 3 Sept. 1898 in Grodno/Russia) and their daughters Mary (born on 19 June 1921) and Vera (born on 22 June 1931). His son Max (born on 4 Sept. 1922) had already left Germany in July 1938.

Sister Frieda Hartogsohn, née Rimberg, lived in Herne, Westphalia, at the end of 1938; she was the last of the siblings to emigrate via Antwerp to the USA on 20 Mar. 1940.

Brother David Rimberg had already left Hamburg at the age of 17, emigrating to the USA in 1912.

Siegmund Hirsch’s younger sister Martha Dessen, née Hirsch (born on 21 Nov. 1895), is commemorated by a Stolperstein at Schäferkampsallee 29 (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel und Hamburg-Hoheluft-West).

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 9; StaH 351-11 AfW 29188 (Hirsch, Harry); StaH 351-11 AfW 13299 (Rimberg, Hermann); StaH 351-11 AfW 19203 (Kass, Edith, gesch. Rimberg); StaH 351-11 AfW 14078 (Waldschmidt, Frieda); StaH 351-11 AfW 21083 (Rimberg, Dora); StaH 351-11 AfW 10371 (Rimberg, Adolf); StaH 314-15 OPF, F 1998; StaH 314-15 OFP, R 1940/792; StaH 314-15 OPF, F 1997; StaH 314-15 OPF, FVg 3067; StaH 332-7 B III 77214/1904; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2126 u 1679/1886; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 246 u 2632/1888; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2760 u 554/1890; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2255 u 1863/1891; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3006 u 1380/1903; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 14189 u 3409/1904; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3370 u 829/1920; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1008 u 266/1933; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8174 u 456/1941; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2347 u 3933/1894; Yad Vashem, Zentrale Datenbank der Namen der Holocaustopfer Minna Rimberg (Gedenkblatt); diverse Hamburger Adressbücher; Lohmeyer: Stolpersteine, S. 154; www.ancestry.de (New York, Passagierlisten, 1820–1957 für Frieda Hartogsohn, Zugriff 11.11.2015); www.ancestry.de (Hamburger Passagierliste vom 29.5.1912, David Rimberg, Zugriff 24.5.2017).
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