Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Hedwig Eisemann
© Vad Vashem

Hedwig Eisemann (née Löbenstein) * 1886

Heinrich-Barth-Straße 21 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
HEDWIG EISEMANN
GEB. LÖBENSTEIN
JG. 1886
FLUCHT HOLLAND
DEPORTIERT 1942
AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Heinrich-Barth-Straße 21:
Jenny Jastrow, Felix Levy, Amalie Levy, Gerda Link

Hedwig Eisemann, née Löbenstein, born 13 Jan. 1886 in Hamburg, fled to Holland 3 Jan. 1939, deported 6 Nov. 1942 to Auschwitz, murdered there

Heinrich-Barth-Straße 21

Hedwig (Hebrew name: Chava) was the daughter of Abraham and Berta (Seligmann) Löbenstein. She was born on 13 January 1886 in Hamburg. In 1905 she married Moses Eisemann (*6 Feb. 1869 in Bad Orb), a teacher at the Talmud Tora School in Hamburg. Their first child, Else-Tzipora, was born on 28 May 1906. Their son Joseph was born on 22 July 1907, and exactly three years later, on 22 July 1910, Erich-Daniel was born. The family lived a well-to-do lifestyle, lived from 1911 till 1919 in the Isestrasse 25 and then moved to the Heinrich-Barth-Straße 21. From 1919 "Moses Eisemann, teacher” can be find in the Adress book of Hamburg.

After her husband died on 30 October 1930, Hedwig 1931 moved to an apartment at Grindelhof 8.

At this time her son Joseph had just been accepted into the civil service and was working on his juris doctorate at the University of Hamburg. His dissertation was titled "The Practical Meaning of Article 4 of the Reich Constitution of 11 August 1919.” When the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was proclaimed in April 1933, he was fired from his service with the Hamburg courts. In the same year her second son Erich was denied work with the Hanseatic School System because of his Jewish heritage. He then moved to Berlin and worked as a teacher with the Jewish Community until 1938.

In 1931, her daughter Else-Tzipora married the Dutchman Marcus de Groot (*25 Dec. 1901 in Groningen). His parents were Moses de Groot and Sientje Nieweg. Else-Tzipora and her husband emigrated to Groning, where Marcus lived before. They had two children – Martin-Moses (*24 May 1934) and Erich Joseph (*21 May 1937).

Since Hedwig Eisemann’s children had all left home and she was living on a small widow’s pension of 130 Reichsmarks, she moved to rented rooms in the apartment of the Bachrach-Halle family at Feldbrunnenstraße 18 on 8 December 1936. On 2 June 1938 she moved again to rooms with the Lichtenstein family at Hansastraße 63. In the fall of that year her son Erich-Daniel visited her from Berlin. It was the last time he ever saw his mother.

Because of the growing enmity to Jews, Hedwig decided to leave Hamburg on 3 January 1939 and move to Groningen in the Netherlands. In a letter that Hedwig sent to her son Erich on 7 January 1939 from a quarantine station in West Rotterdam, she described the last days before her departure, when she was trying to sell her household goods, including expensive walnut furniture and a Rosenthal porcelain dinner service for twelve. Finally nothing was left but to sell her last things to "a packer from Brasch & Rothenstein for 20 Reichsmarks.”

Hedwig-Chava Eisemann lived in a boarding house in Groningen, run by Abraham Engers and his wife Else Engers-De Vries. Else, Marcus, and their children lived at Lingestraat 21.

Joseph Eisemann also fled to Holland in January 1939, but moved later that year to Palestine. In Jerusalem he married Ada (Adelheid) Rzeszewski. They had three children, Eitan-Dov, Tamar, and Chava.

Hedwig’s youngest son Erich-Daniel had emigrated to Palestine in 1938. He had already got his PHd and studied at the Hebrew University. Then he lived in Kfar-Hanoar-Hadati in Kfar Chassidim. Until 1948 he worked as a teacher at Yavneh School in Haifa.

After the German occupation of the Netherlands Jews there were persecuted and in the end deported to extermination camps. Hedwig-Chava Eisemann was brought to Auschwitz and murdered there. The memorial Joods Monument gives us no data, the German memorial book published by the Bundesarchiv mentions only the year 1942. The Eisemann family follows the message of the Red Cross that she was murdered on 16th of November 1942.

Else-Tzipora de Groot and her two sons were taken to Westerbork and deported to Sobibor on the 7th of June in 1943 and murdered there. Martin was nine years old, his younger brother Erich Joseph was six. Marcus de Groot was sent to Auschwitz on 21th of September 1943 and murdered immediately upon arrival.

The last communication Erich-Daniel had with his mother was in 1941/42. After the war he wanted to know what had happened to her in Holland, and contacted the Red Cross. On 10 December 1946 he received an answer: From 1 May 1942, Hedwig-Chava Eisemann was forced to wear a Yellow Star, and was deported from the Westerbork Transit Camp in Holland to Auschwitz on 6 November 1942 and murdered there on 16th of November, aged 56.

Erich Daniel submitted a Page of Testimony for his mother to Yad Vashem.

He was working in Haifa as a teacher until 9148, then was asked by the Israeli’s Ministry of Social Welfare to found and to run a home for juvenile delinquents. So the Mosad Mechorah at Kfar Chassidim was created where Erich-Daniel lived and worked until 1958.

Author: Nils Rannacher/Changes Beate Meyer

Translator: Amy Lee
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Nils Rannacher (Änderungen Beate Meyer)

Quellen: StaHH, 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 922b, Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelischen Gemeinde Hamburg; Hamburger Adressbücher (HAB) 1913, 1931; Morisse, Heiko, Ausgrenzung und Verfolgung der Hamburger jüdischen Juristen im Nationalsozialismus, Band 1 – Rechtsanwälte, Göttingen 2013; StaHH, 332-5 Standesämter, 49062 DI, Generalregister Sterbefälle 1930; StaHH, 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 8664, 1215 und 1216; StaHH, 241-2, Justizverwaltung-Personalakte, A1280, Eisemann, Joseph, Dr.; http://db.yadvashem.org/names/nameDetails.html?itemId=1730560&language=de (Hedwig Eisemann); e-mail Michal Shvager v. 17.1.2017.