Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Jenny Reich * 1887

Güntherstraße 40–44 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
JENNY REICH
JG. 1887
VERLEGT 1941 AUS
’HEILANSTALT’
BENDORF-SAYN
ERMORDET

Jenny Reich, born 7 Aug. 1887 in Hamburg, deported 30 Apr. 1942 from Bendorf-Sayn Mental and Nursing Home to Krasniczyn, Lublin, where she was killed

Güntherstraße 44

Jenny Reich was a twofold victim of National-Socialist ideology of the "pure Germanic race”, as a Jewish woman and a person with mental illness. She came from a merchant family with many children. Her father Siegesmund Reich, born on 10 May 1854 in Tönning, Eiderstedt District, had moved to Hamburg in 1880 where he married Mathilde Schmul on 22 Aug. 1881. She was born on 5Apr. 1859 in Krotoschin in the Prussian province of Posen. They both belonged to the Jewish community and first ran an egg, fruit and fuel store in Old Town Hamburg at Spitaler Straße 69. Their first child was their son Martin born in 1882. He was followed by Gertrud (1884), Jenny (1887), Benno (1888), Wilhelm (1891) and Betti (1893), and the late arrival Max then joined them on 8 Mar. 1898. Also part of the family was Louis, a younger brother of Siegesmund, and his wife Paula, née Heymann, and their children Angela and Bruno. Louis Reich sold groceries like his brother.

Siegesmund Reich changed the spelling of his first name, and as Siegmund Reich he opened an egg and fruit store on Spaldingstraße in St. Georg around 1900. His business earned an annual taxable income of 3,000 Marks – enough to apply for membership in the Hamburg Municipal Association. The entire family was naturalized on 4 July 1902. Martin had already become an assistant merchant, and Max had not yet started school. The other children were either still going to school or in vocational training.

Jenny Reich became an office clerk. Her older sister Gertrud worked as a maid, salesperson, business partner and owner of a stationery store in Berlin, Cologne, and Leipzig. Time and again she moved back in with her family until she apparently settled in Berlin in 1924, where she died on 12 Feb. 1934. Wilhelm, Jenny’s second-youngest brother, also moved to Berlin, but further details of his life are not known.

Martin and Benno Reich became soldiers in World War I like their cousin Bruno. None of them survived the war. Martin Reich served as a musketeer in a regiment of the reserve infantry and died in June 1915 at the age of 32 during a battle near Stubno Village in Galicia. Benno Reich, aged 26, was deployed as a groom at the replacement horse stable in Altona-Bahrenfeld when he died at the reserve field hospital in Altona in May 1915.

Before Siegmund Reich settled at Güntherstraße 44b in Hohenfelde in 1917, he ran a stoneware shop at Wandsbeker Chaussee 136, then a shop for household items at Eilbeker Weg 147, followed by a wholesale business importing tropical fruit at the same address. After moving to Güntherstraße, he was only listed as a "merchant” in the Hamburg address book. Their youngest daughter Betti was registered with her parents as a seamstress. Max Reich completed training as a gardener. In 1921 he became a member of the German-Israelite Congregation and began work as a cemetery inspector in 1926 at Ihlandweg Cemetery, today Ilandkoppel, in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf. Siegmund Reich died that same year. He was buried at the cemetery where his son worked. Mathilde Reich continued to live with her daughters Jenny and Betti at Güntherstraße until her death on 16 Jan. 1930. After wedding Erna, née Levy, Max moved into the caretaker’s apartment at the cemetery, where his daughter Fanni was born on 3 Sept. 1932.

When Jenny Reich joined the Jewish community in 1923, she was working as an office clerk at the Stern-Sonneborn Oil Works, a corporation. For a time her contributions to the community were higher than those of her brother Max. The oil works fell into financial difficulties during the time of inflation. In 1928 all of its corporate assets were transferred to the Rhenania-Ossag Petrolium Works Inc. (as of 1947 German Shell Inc.), and by 1932 it had been completely liquidated. In 1933 the new owners removed the company’s Jewish founder from its board of supervisors. Jenny Reich’s income remained roughly the same, only from Jan. 1934 to 1936 she paid her monthly contributions to the community herself, which the community then reported to the tax office. In 1938, now 51 years of age, she acquired recently issued Reich treasury bonds at a value of 8,000 Reich Marks. They were held in her securities account at Deutsche Bank.

Then she became ill. In the parlance of the time, she had a nervous-depressive disorder. As long as she did not need to be institutionalized, she lived with her sister Betti at Breitenfelderstraße 64 in Eppendorf. However, when her condition worsened, she was admitted to Bendorf-Sayn Mental and Nursing Home near Koblenz with the diagnosis of "involution paranoia” – "menopausal psychosis” on 13 Apr. 1939. Yet she remained a member of the Hamburg Jewish Community. Since she was already past menopause, she was spared having to undergo forced sterilization.

The Bendorf-Sayn Mental and Nursing Home was originally founded as the Jacoby’sche Institution, one of four institutions founded in Bendorf and expanded into Sayn as "mental and nursing institutions for nervous and depressive disorders”. The Jacoby’sche Institution had been founded around 1870 by Meier Jacoby to care for sick Jews in accordance with orthodox rules, which was not guaranteed at the other three institutions. Thanks to a benefit society founded in 1903, it was the only one of the four to survive the inflation years. It not only cared for wealthy private patients, they also took in patients living on welfare. Under the provision that it be expanded, the institution was handed over to the Reich Association of Jews in Germany on 1 Apr. 1940, its number of beds grew from 190 to 474. In accordance with the decree issued by the Reich Interior Minister on 12 Dec. 1940, "mentally ill Jews” from then on had to be housed at the Bendorf-Sayn Mental and Nursing Home.

On 2 Aug. 1939 Jenny’s younger sister Betti married Wilhelm Samson who was 18 years her senior. He assumed guardianship of his sister-in-law Jenny. Since 1937 she had been treated as an "independent person” in the records of the Jewish Community and continued to pay considerable contributions. We have not been able to determine the source of her income. Since her assets were greater than 5,000 Reich Marks, they were subjected to a "security order”. However the corresponding documents are missing from Hamburg’s tax office. On 1 Oct. 1939 two of five installments of the levy on Jewish assets, 900 Reich Marks each, were paid from Jenny’s securities account at the Deutsche Bank in Hamburg. She apparently paid the three remaining installments from savings at another bank. In 1940 she paid an annual fee of 80.70 Reich Marks to the Jewish Religious Association in Hamburg. Her final contribution to her local community was 10 Reich Marks for the year 1941. As of 31 Mar. 1941, she left the Hamburg Jewish Community.

Jenny’s brother Max Reich and his family escaped persecution by the National-Socialist regime by departing for the USA on 6 June 1941. That same month, her sister Betti Samson died. She was buried at the Jewish cemetery at Ilandkoppel. Wilhelm Samson was deported to Riga on 6 Dec. 1941. After that, Jenny’s only remaining relative was her Aunt Paula in Hamburg, the widow of her Uncle Louis Reich. Their daughter Angela had married Percy Felix Spiegel in 1924, who then died in 1936. The couple had two children, and Angela Reich immigrated with them to Great Britain in 1938.

The deportation of patients at "Sayn” began on 22 Mar. 1942, as the institution was now called in abbreviated form. The first transport of approximately 300 Jews from Koblenz held 93 patients. The second transport of about 100 people, nearly all from Sayn, left Koblenz on 30 Apr. and was underway until 3 May. Jenny Reich and four other patients who had been transferred from Hamburg to Sayn were assigned to that transport. It was originally scheduled to go to Travnicki but then was rerouted to Isbicza and finally ended at Krasnikow, Krasniczyn near Lublin where the deportees were put in the ghetto. All further trace of them vanished there. The third transport on 15 June 1942 included 322 individuals from Sayn who likely were killed at the extermination camps Majdanek and Sobibor. Following two more smaller transports, the Bendorf-Sayn Mental and Nursing Home was closed and kept as a reserve field hospital.

Jenny Reich’s Aunt Paula was taken to the ghetto Theresienstadt on 15 July 1942 and on 21 Sept. 1942 transported onward to Treblinka where she was killed immediately upon her arrival.

Jenny Reich likely reached the age of 55. In Dec. 1942, the Deutsche Bank transferred her remaining treasury bonds and assets, about 9,300 Reich Marks, to the Reich Finance Minister.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: December 2019
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 5; 9; StaH 314-15 OFP Abl. 1998, R 306; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 913 u. 389/1929; 7105 u. 69/1930; 2143 u. 2755/1887; 5309 u. 1315/1915; 6943 u. 510/1915; 8174 u. 212/1941; 13164 u. 543/1899; StaH 332-7 Staatsangehörigkeitsaufsicht B III 68596; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen K 6783; StaH 351-11 AfW 21414 (Angela Spiegel, geb. Reich), 21845 (Max Reich); StaH 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn 183; JFHH O 2 – 326/327; Alfred Gottwald, Diana Schulle, Die "Judendeportationen" aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941–1945, Wiesbaden, 2005; Dietrich Schabow, Die israelitische Heil- und Pflegeanstalt für Nerven- und Gemütskranke/Jacoby’sche Anstalt, 1869–1942, und die spätere Verwendung der Gebäude, S. 55–95, in: Rheinisches Eisenkunstguss-Museum (Hrsg.), Die Heil- und Pflegeanstalten für Nerven- und Gemütskranke in Bendorf, Bendorf-Sayn, 2008; Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, 512,1 Gesundheitsamt, Nrn. 2568 u. 2570, durch freundliche Recherche von Dietrich Schabow, 27.11.2013.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".