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Siegfried Moses * 1870

Bornstraße 32 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
SIEGFRIED MOSES
JG. 1870
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
ERMORDET 1.12.1942

further stumbling stones in Bornstraße 32:
Jettchen Moses

Jettchen Moses, born on 18 Sept. 1879 in Grebenau, deported on 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further to Auschwitz on 15 May 1944
Siegfried Moses, born on 23 Dec. 1870 in Hamburg, deported on 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, died there on 1 Dec. 1942

Bornstrasse 32

During 20 of 25 years of their marriage, Jettchen and Siegfried Moses lived at Bornstrasse 32. When the couple married in 1917, Siegfried Moses had already been a widower for three years and he was a father of three children.

He had been born on 23 Dec. 1870 as the son of the married couple Jacob and Betty Moses, née Schwabe. His father was a tradesman. We know nothing about his childhood and youth. In Feb. 1897, when Siegfried Moses married his first wife, the trader in finery goods (Putzhändlerin) Clara Simon, he lived with his parents in the house at Grosser Neumarkt 1 a. Siegfried Moses’ occupational designation was also trader. In Jan. 1898, daughter Jeannette was born, named after Clara’s deceased mother. In Oct. 1899, son Ludwig followed, and in Aug. 1903, another daughter was born, Hanna Hertha. Until 1904, the family lived on Zeughausmarkt, close to the house of Siegfried’s parents. When Clara Moses died in the Israelite Hospital in Nov. 1914, the family lived on Eppendorfer Baum. By then, Siegfried Moses operated an agency for footwear, and the children were 16, 15, and 11 years old. Just who cared for them in the following three years is not known.

In Dec. 1917, Siegfried Moses married Jettchen Freund, a native of Grebenau in Hessen. She was one of 12 children of the livestock dealer Löb Freund and his wife Adelheit, née Stern. Her sister Hannchen lived in Hamburg with her husband Albert Halberstadt since 1912. He was the overseer of the Daniel Wormser Haus, a Jewish aid institution for tramps and homeless persons.

Eight months after the wedding, in Aug. 1918 and thus shortly before the end of the war, Siegfried’s son, who by that time fought as a soldier for Germany, was killed in action. The artilleryman Ludwig Moses, not even 19 years old, had been a commercial apprentice in his civilian life.

Two years after this stroke of fate, in Apr. 1920, by then 40-year-old Jettchen Moses gave birth to a son who received the name of Ernst Ludwig Jacob in the Calmann’sche Hospital at Johnsallee 68. He attended the nearby Talmud Tora School and was, since age 14, the soccer youth leader of the "Schild” sports association within the Reich League of Jewish Frontline Soldiers (Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten).

Hanna Hertha Moses, his older half-sister, had attended the Israelite Girls’ School. In 1928, she converted to the Protestant faith and married Karl Hans Cleff, also a Protestant. The couple lived in Wuppertal and had one son who remained the only grandchild of Jettchen and Siegfried Moses.

Daughter Jeannette Moses worked as a salaried employee and lived as a subtenant on Schulweg since the mid-1920s. In Dec. 1930, she moved to Sweden, probably following her subsequent husband, the Hamburg merchant Max Karl Gustav Warmbt, who had already relocated there in Apr. 1930. He belonged to the Lutheran Church, and like her younger sister, Jeannette converted as well. In May 1933, the couple was joined in matrimony in Stockholm; the marriage produced no children.

In the following years, Jeannette visited her family at least twice. In Nov. 1934, Jettchen Moses’ sister-in-law wrote, "Currently, Nettel is here visiting from Stockholm; she feels very happy and content there with her husband …” And in Mar. 1937: "We were very delighted at Nettel’s visit here yesterday; she is a really smart, pleasant, and hard-working woman …” Jeannette Warmbt and her husband assumed Swedish citizenship in 1938.

In 1920, Siegfried Moses had registered a business as a merchant. Because of the anti-Jewish legislation since 1933, he had to sustain major losses in sales. In 1937, the family moved – probably for financial reasons – out of their apartment on Bornstrasse and afterward resided as subtenants, first at Gneisenaustrasse 8 with Sander, and starting in 1939 at Heinrich-Barth-Strasse 8 with Jacobs. Siegfried Moses had to give up the plans for the future, too, which he had made for his son. He was supposed to have studied law, specializing in commercial law. Now the father could no longer come up with the money for a higher education though, and in 1935, Ernst Ludwig had to leave school. "In order to be able stand on his own feet financially soon,” he completed a commercial apprenticeship with Louis Schröter and Co. However, the enterprise was "Aryanized” in 1938 and Ernst Ludwig was not kept on as an assistant sales representative. Thus, he became unemployed and, as a "non-Aryan,” had no chance of finding work in Germany. He intended to try his luck abroad. On 15 Oct. 1938, his father signed a written confirmation that he agreed to the emigration of his underage son. Max Warmbt, the brother-in-law in Sweden, financed the getaway. On the official "questionnaire for emigrants,” Cuba is indicated as the destination. Ernst Ludwig’s aunt, Helene Freund, described his parents’ depressing situation: "Of course, you ponder thoughts that deprive you of your sleep. The dreadful situation supersedes everything else. Aunt Jetty [Jettchen Moses] is also very ill, apparently suffering from a serious gallbladder condition, which perhaps requires an operation … Now the boy is to leave soon as well, in any case first to Havana (Cuba), but he is still half a child who must venture out into the world.”

In 1939, Ernst Ludwig eventually reached Trinidad, then part of the British West Indies, but not Cuba. This was probably owing to the difficulties in finding a host country as a refugee at all. From 1940 until 1943, he was interned as an "enemy alien” on the Caribbean island, and he had to do physically hard "compulsory labor.”

Hanna Hertha Cleff, Siegfried Moses’ younger daughter, was compelled to perform forced labor at different Wuppertal-based companies since 1939. Like all Jewish men and women, she had to carry an identification card with her at all times. During labor duties at the Engels & Co. metal-processing plant in Wuppertal-Wichlinghausen, she was denounced verbally on 4 Aug. 1943 and in writing one day later for "idling at work” and arrested on 6 Aug. 1943. She was detained for almost three months in the prison at police headquarters before being deported to Auschwitz on 25 Oct. 1943. She was murdered there on 4 Dec. 1943. Since Dec. 2014, a Stolperstein on Lederstrasse in Wuppertal has been commemorating her.

Siegfried Moses’ business ceased to operate on 31 Dec. 1938. It is not known how the couple earned their livelihood from then on. They eventually moved to the former Samuel Levy Stift at Bundestrasse 35. The building was later used as a "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”). Three years of further humiliations, deprivation of rights, and material distress followed upon this.

On 15 July 1942, Jettchen and Siegfried Moses, 62 and 71 years old, were deported to Theresienstadt, where Siegfried Moses perished on 1 December of that year. His wife lived through nearly two more years in the ghetto, before she was transported to Auschwitz on 15 May 1944 and murdered there.

Ernst Ludwig Moses emigrated to the USA in 1946, according to his own information "considerably run down in terms of health.” He remained unmarried and childless. In 1957, he returned to Hamburg, but he was unable to regain a foothold there. Ten years later, he moved to Canada, where he passed away in 1991.

Max Warmbt died in Hamburg in 1967 at the hospital on Beim Andreasbrunnen, perhaps during a visit. Jeannette returned to Hamburg in 1970, passing away in Rissen in 1978. Both of them are buried in a cemetery near Stockholm.


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

Stand: April 2018
© Sabine Brunotte

Quellen: 1, 3, 5, 8; http://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de Hamburger Adressbücher 1901–1904, Zugriff vom 11.8.2014; StaH 332-5 2886; StaH 332-5 1024; StaH 332-5 8047; StaH 332-5 705; StaH 332-5 5581; StaH 332-5 8716; Stah 332-5 705; StaH 332-5 2335; StaH 332-5 2455; StaH 332-5 13927; StaH 332-5 13176; StaH 332-5 10194; StaH 351-11 43350 AfW; StaH 351-11 1652 AfW; StaH 314-15 Fvg 7563; schriftliche Auskunft I. C., E-Mail vom 30.6.2014; Angaben zu Hanna Hertha Cleff, geb. Moses, von I. C. aus der Rede, die sie am 11.12.2014 bei der Stolpersteinverlegung für Hanna Hertha Cleff in Wuppertal gehalten hat; schriftliche Auskunft Riksarkivet Stockholm, E-Mail vom 31. Juli 2014; schriftliche Auskunft Armin Ziegler, Geschichts- und Museumsverein Alsfeld, vom 22.10.2014; schriftliche Auskunft Eric Brück, E-Mail vom 21.1.2015; Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz VIII. HA, C Nr. 471, 474 und 475; www.ancestry zu Ernst Ludwig Moses, Zugriff vom 11.7.2014.
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