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Walter Heinemann * 1896

Heilwigstraße 39 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1942 aus NL nach Auschwitz

Walter Heinemann, born 26.7.1896 in Düsseldorf, deported 18.1.1944 from the Netherlands to Theresienstadt and on 6.10.1944 to Auschwitz

Heilwigstraße 39

Walter Julius Heinemann was born in Düsseldorf on July 26, 1896, as the son of Joseph Heinemann (1866-1951) and Henriette, née Gugenheim (1866-1933). He had two brothers: Fritz (born Febr. 5, 1894 in Düsseldorf) and Hugo (born July 18, 1900 in Düsseldorf).

The extremely successful paternal family business Joseph Heinemann KG (import of casings, meat waste, fat goods or "Därme-Sortieranstalt") from Düsseldorf opened a branch in Hamburg-St. Georg (Repsoldstraße 84) in April 1920, which was managed by merchant Walter Heinemann as co-owner of the company. The company founder Joseph Heinemann and his sons Fritz Heinemann and, from the mid-1920s, Hugo Heinemann were also personally liable partners in the Düsseldorf headquarters. In addition, the three brothers were each 1/3 owners of Rheinisches Margarine-Werk Jos. Heinemann, Neuss, in which Julius Wertheimer (Neuss) was also a silent partner with a share of RM 136,000.

Walter Heinemann lived in Hamburg at Eppendorfer Baum 34 (1921) and at Johnsallee 26 in Rotherbaum (1922-1924). He married the doctor's daughter Karoline Margarethe "Margot" Frank (born Nov. 27, 1904 in Landau/Pfalz) on May 24, 1924 or 22, 1925, here the sources differ, the wedding was celebrated in the bride's hometown. Margot Frank had attended a boarding school in Heidelberg for a year after attending the Höhere Töchterschule (Lyceum).

The couple moved to Hamburg and lived there at Brahmsallee 15/Harvestehude (1925-1928). After the birth of their first son Rolf (born Sept. 6, 1927 Hamburg) and before the birth of their second son Hans Wolf (born March 3, 1930 in Hamburg), the Heinemanns looked for a larger and quieter domicile. From 1928 to July 1934, the family lived in the villa suburb of Groß Flottbek, which had been incorporated into Hamburg's western neighboring city of Altona. Here the Heinemanns had bought a villa at Schenkendorfstraße 26. When the elder son was refused to attend the citizen school in Groß Flottbek in 1934, the Heinemann family moved to Hamburg to Heilwigstraße 39/Harvestehude in the summer of 1934. Son Rolf was admitted to the Jewish Talmud Tora School (Grindelhof 30) in Hamburg-Rotherbaum in 1933.

Walter Heinemann had belonged to the Jewish community of Hamburg since 1927. This noted ten years later on his index card his "Verzug” (move). The memorial book of the Federal Archives gives January 1937 as the date of emigration, the wife (in 1957) in the restitution proceedings for Walter Heinemann gives March 1937 and for herself and her two sons November 1937, since the passports of all family members had only been handed over after payment of all penalty taxes and special levies. Walter Heinemann's entry into the Netherlands, however, does not seem to have been registered there until October 27, 1937.

The Nazi state looted almost all of the Heinemanns' assets. The Düsseldorf company had been placed in receivership since July 1937 by order of the Düsseldorf District Court, and the company founder Joseph Heinemann (born April 25, 1866 in Königheim) was in Italy at the time. This was followed on August 2, 1939 by a verdict of the Düsseldorf District Court, which stipulated long prison sentences and a fine of 3.6 million Reichsmarks for alleged economic misdemeanors for the three partners Walter, Fritz and Hugo Heinemann. The Nazi state had thus found an apparent legal legitimization for their expropriation. Walter Heinemann's assets had already been blocked since July 2, 1937 by a "security order" issued by the Chief Finance President of Düsseldorf; he also had to pay RM 89,000 in "Reich Flight Tax" and RM 50,000 in "Jewish Property Tax". In the course of the "aryanization" of the economy, the Hamburg branch of Joseph Heinemann was sold, in the absence of all owners, on March 16, 1940 to the intestine wholesaler Lange, Plambeck & Co. At that time, the company owners were Ernst Lange (Hamburg), Wilhelm Völsch (Lübeck) and August Plambeck (Berlin). In 1941 the company name was changed to "Ernst Lange, Düsseldorf, Zweigniederlassung Hamburg, Ex- und Import, Repsoldstr. 84".

In the Netherlands, Walter Heinemann first lived in The Hague at Sonderdanckstraat 13 (from Dec. 19, 1938), Ruychrocklaan 96 (from May 26, 1939) and Van Hogenhoucklaan 6 (from June 7, 1939). The first and last addresses were identical with the residential addresses of his father, who had emigrated to the Netherlands in January 1938.

After divorcing his wife in November 1939, Walter Heinemann moved to Baarn to Eemnesserweg 84 (from Oct. 23, 1940) and Kettingweg 11 (from June 4, 1941), where his father also lived. Walter Heinemann's sons stayed with his divorced wife, where their mother Bertha Frank, née Frank, who died in Hilversum at the end of 1940, also lived in the meantime.

With the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, Walter Heinemann was also persecuted in the Netherlands. Nazi Germany had used his departure as a pretext to expatriate him and his family from Germany; their names appeared on the expatriation list in the German Reichsanzeiger of March 11, 1941 (paragraphs 83-86).

Walter Heinemann was interned in the "police transit camp for Jews Kamp Westerbork" on March 30, 1942 or on April 9, 1942, here the sources differ slightly. It is possible, however, that the internment took place somewhat later, because on July 23, 1942, he married Trude Kirchheimer (born January 4, 1905 in Grombach) in Baarn, who had emigrated to the Netherlands in November 1937 and was interned on September 2, 1942.

Walter and Trude Heinemann were deported from the Westerbork camp to the Theresienstadt ghetto on January 18, 1944 or May 10, 1944, and on to the Auschwitz death camp on October 6, 1944. It is assumed that both were murdered by gas immediately after their arrival in Auschwitz on October 8, 1944. Documents about the exact date of death do not exist.

The divorced wife Margot Heinemann, née Frank moved with her two sons and her mother from The Hague to Hilversum (Middenweg 10), as she was no longer allowed to live near the coast after the German occupation of the neutral Netherlands in May 1940. In March 1942 she also had to leave Hilversum on the orders of the occupying forces, leaving behind her household goods. She found accommodation in Amsterdam (Jekestraat 3) in a garret. Shortly before, on January 21, 1942, she had married Karl Julius Sonnenberg (born February 27, 1904 in Selters), who is said to have been director of a sub-company of Sonnenberg AG Düsseldorf before 1933. On August 8, 1942, Margot Sonnenberg, her two sons aged 15 and 12, and her husband were also interned in the Westerbork camp and deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on January 1, 1944.

Margot Sonnenberg was assigned here as the head of a women's barrack and, together with another woman, had to carry, among other things, the food bucket, which weighed up to 80 kg, into her barrack. The concentration camp was evacuated before the approaching Allies; on April 21, 1945, they were liberated by the Red Army in Tröbitz/Lower Lusatia.

Her husband Carl Julius Sonnenberg died a few days later in Tröbitz on May 4, 1945 at the age of 41 from the consequences of concentration camp imprisonment.

With her two sons, Margot Sonnenberg went back to the Netherlands in July 1945, where she married again 1½ years later in The Hague and moved to Amsterdam a year later.

The older son, Rolf, emigrated to the United States in April 1947. The younger son was under guardianship and lived in Arnhem.

Walter Heinemann's younger brother Hugo Heinemann (born July 18, 1900 in Düsseldorf), married to Augusta "Gustl", née Loeb (1901-1997), last residing at Herderstraße 92 and Grunerstraße 9 in Düsseldorf, was imprisoned in Düsseldorf in 1937. He did not appear in the census records of May 1939 because of his imprisonment. According to the memorial book of the Federal Archives Koblenz, he died on February 16, 1943 in the Auschwitz extermination camp. Presumably he was deported directly from the prison to Auschwitz in 1943.

His wife fled to Belgium with their two daughters in 1939, since there was no chance of emigration together due to Hugo Heinemann's imprisonment.

The older brother Fritz Heinemann (born Febr. 5, 1894 in Düsseldorf), married since 1927 to Gertrud "Trude", née Stern (1906-1994), lived in Düsseldorf at Grimmstraße 5. In 1935 he emigrated with his wife and their two children to the Netherlands to The Hague and later on to England. The Nazi regime revoked their German citizenship on August 24, 1939. In May 1940, his Düsseldorf property at Grimmstraße 5 was forcibly sold and the proceeds confiscated by the Nazi state; the same was done with his property at Belsenplatz 3. Fritz "Fred" Heinemann died in London in 1993.

His father Joseph Heinemann (born Apr. 25, 1866 in Königstein/Baden) had emigrated to the Netherlands in January 1938. From his last accommodation in Amsterdam (Tintorettostraat 2) he was taken to the transit camp Westerbork on February 19, 1943, and from there to the Theresienstadt ghetto on January 18, 1944.
He survived and emigrated to England where he died in Northwood in 1951. He was buried in the Düsseldorf Jewish Cemetery.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Björn Eggert

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; Staatsarchiv Hamburg (StaH) 351-11 (Amt für Wiedergutmachung), 18944 (Walter Heinemann); StaH 522-1 (Jüdische Gemeinden), 992b (Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde Hamburg); Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Düsseldorf (Angaben zu Hugo Heinemann, Fritz Heinemann und Joseph Heinemann); Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork (NL), Personalkarte von Walter Heinemann, Informationen zu Joseph Heinemann; Yad Vashem, Page of Testimony (Walter Heinemann); Adressbuch Hamburg 1921, 1922, 1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929 (Firma Joseph Heinemann, Walter Heinemann); Adressbuch Hamburg 1941, 1942 (Ernst Lange); Telefonbuch Hamburg (mit Altona) 1931; Handelskammer Hamburg, Handelsregisterinformationen (Joseph Heinemann, HR A 25543); Hamburger Börsenfirmen, Hamburg 1926, S. 430 (Joseph Heinemann); Hamburger Börsenfirmen, Hamburg 1935, S. 352 (Joseph Heinemann); Ursel Hochmuth/ Hans-Peter de Lorent (Hrsg), Hamburg – Schule unterm Hakenkreuz, 1985, S. 40–45; www.ancestry.de (Ausbürgerungskartei; Familienstammbaum Levy; eingesehen 6.2.2017); www.ancestry.de (Joseph Heinemann: Gesinderegister Speyer 1886/1887, Bevölkerungsindex Niederlande, Sterbeindex England Dezember 1951, eingesehen 24.3.2017).
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