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Rosa Loebel (née Hertz) * 1866

Schmilinskystraße 24 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

1942 Theresienstadt
1942 weiterdeportiert Minsk

Rosa Loebel, née Hertz, born on 5 Nov. 1866 in Hamburg, deported on 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 21 Sept. 1942 to the Treblinka extermination camp

last residential address: Schmilinskystrasse 24

Rosa Loebel was widowed since 1923 after the death of her husband Henry Loebel (born in Dresden in 1857), who owned a liquor plant at Kleiner Kielort 6–8 and, beyond the city limits, in Ellerbek, an agricultural estate. Since 1913 at the latest, the couple lived at Schmilinskystrasse 24 in St. Georg. They had two daughters, Ruth (born in 1887) and Alice (born in 1899).

After the death of her husband, Rosa Loebel did not continue to manage the family enterprise but instead lived off the revenues of her inherited properties at Schmilinskystrasse 24 and 26 as well as Koppel 82 in St. Georg well into the 1930s; in addition, she also owned the estate in Ellerbek. She lived together with her married daughter Alice and her husband, the physician Dr. Emil Friedländer (born in 1890 in Langenhain near Gotha), as well as their children Walter (born in 1925) and Margit (born in 1930) at Schmilinskystrasse 24.

In the course of the 1930s, she, too, must have been in increasing financial difficulties through the discriminatory measures of the Nazi regime, and eventually she found herself with no choice but to sell all of the properties to a man named Carl Küsters. These sales probably took place at prices extremely unfavorable to the widow because in a court settlement with Albert P. Küsters – probably the heir of Carl Küsters – in 1953, the heirs managed to achieve a back payment of 12,500 on the property sale one and a half decades before.

After selling her properties, Rosa Loebel gave up the apartment on Schmilinskystrasse in Oct. 1936, moving on with her daughter’s family to Oderfelderstrasse 15 in Eppendorf. However, she lived there only until the beginning of June 1939, after the Friedländers had emigrated to the USA the previous month. In this connection, it is not known why the mother did not leave Germany together with them.

The older daughter, Ruth, was also married to a physician – Julius Jolowicz (born in 1877 in Posen [today Poznan in Poland]) – about whom we know merely that he emigrated to Brazil in Feb. 1939. However, he was no longer accompanied by his first wife Ruth but by his second wife, Charlotte, née Monasch (born in 1886 in Stettin [today Szczecin in Poland]). Of the two children from the first marriage, son Hans (born in 1909) was in Rotterdam; the whereabouts of daughter Eva (born in 1913) are not known. Nor was it possible to find out anything about the subsequent fate of mother Ruth.

Rosa Loebel, now left to fend for herself, lived as a subtenant in single rooms since that time: initially, a few months on Hegestrasse, then, from Aug. 1939 until Oct. 1941 on Parkallee, before being admitted to the Jewish retirement home at Rothenbaumchaussee 217 as of Apr. 1942. Probably due to the closure of the retirement home, she eventually moved to the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Beneckestrasse 6, three month prior to her deportation to Theresienstadt. Rosa Loebel, who still had a considerable fortune before the Nazis assumed power, lost the largest part of it through the arbitrary measures of the regime – like many other fellow Jewish citizens who did not succeed in emigrating early on. At the end of 1938, a "levy on Jewish assets” ("Judenvermögensabgabe") amounting to 26,000 RM (reichsmark) was imposed on her; in addition, bonds worth more than 15,000 RM and cash assets of close to 1,000 RM were confiscated, and as late as Apr. 1942, she had to pay a special levy of 5,800 RM to the Prussian State Bank.

On 15 July 1942, she was deported to Theresienstadt on a transport including 925 Jewish residents of Hamburg, of whom only 40 survived the persecution measures. The last station of her long ordeal was the deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland, which took place on 21 Sept. 1942. At this point, all traces of her disappear. Since Dec. 2003, a Stolperstein for Rosa Loebel has been located on Schmilinskystrasse at the address of her former home, which she herself once owned.


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

Stand: March 2017
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 4; 7; AfW, Entschädigungsakte; Verzeichnis der jüdischen Ärzte, Zahnärzte, Dentisten, Bandagisten, Optiker in Hamburg, Altona, Wandsbek, o.O., o.J.; Villiez, Anna von, Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Ärzte Hamburgs aus dem Berufsleben 1933–1945, M.A. Examensarbeit, Universität Hamburg, 2002, S. 181.
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