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Elsa Schmidt * 1911

Burggarten 7 (Hamburg-Mitte, Borgfelde)

1943 Auschwitz
1944 weiterdeportiert
ermordet

Elsa Schmidt, born 1/14/1911 in Lindenberg, deported to Auschwitz on 3/10/1943, deported on to Ravensbrück, Hasag Schlieben-Berga and Altenburg satellite camp on 4/15/1944; that camp was transferred to the administration of the Buchenwald concentration camp on 9/1/1944

Burggarten 7

Elsa Schmidt was born on January 14th, 1911 in Lindenberg, county Ostprignitz. Her mother Katharina Karoline Franz, née Schmidt was a Lutheran Protestant, whose husband Schwantin Franz, who was not considered Elsa’s father, was Roman Catholic. Because of her illegitimate birth, Elsa was given her mother’s birth name, and expelled from the Sinti community. Nothing is known about her childhood and youth, or when and why she moved to Hamburg. Except in her birth certificate, she was called Else. To avoid confusion with her firstborn daughter, we will refer to her as Elsa in the following.
On December 18th, 1935, Elsa Schmidt gave birth to her first child, a daughter, to be named Else. Like her mother, she was considered a "mongrel Gypsy.” Elsa Schmidt worked as a domestic servant; she moved to Altona, and then to Hamburg. When her daughter was a year old, she put her with foster parents, the Matulat family in Hamburg-Osdorf, where else grew up with the Matulats’ two daughters. Elsa Schmidt’s residence frequently changed back and forth between asylum, institutions and sub-tenancies with non-Sinti tenants; all this indicates she was on her own, and ill. In 1939, Elsa Schmidt gave birth to a further daughter, Elisabeth; and to the twin boys Dieter and Uwe the following year. Her youngest child, Rosemarie, was born on September 22nd, 1941. Their mother Elsa Schmidt also placed these children in foster families.

When the inhabitants of Hamburg classified as "Gypsies” were "resettled” to the Belzec concentration camp in occupied Poland on May 20th, 1940, Elsa Schmidt was not directly affected. Three years later, she was less fortunate: at the beginning of March, she was arrested at her home in Burggarten 7 and taken to an assembly point, an inhospitable fruit shed in the Port near the Hannover train station. On March 10th, 1943, she was deported to the "Gypsy Camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau together with 243 other "Gypsy mongrels” from Hamburg. This special section for Sinti and Roma had only been opened in February 1943, which explains Elsa Schmidt’s relatively low inmate number Z 3782 (for women).
When Elsa Schmidt’s children were deported to Auschwitz in April 1944 – the transport of 26 persons, among them only five adults, left Hamburg on the 18th of the month – they missed their mother. Elsa Schmidt had been transferred to the women’s concentration Ravensbrück on April 15th, 1944 with a transport of 473 female prisoners, where she was given the inmate number 36048. Since Elsa’s daughter Else Schmidt had lived with foster parents, she did not know her siblings, and only learned about them at the camp. Else was given the inmate number Z 10540, Rosemarie got Z 10542. On August 2nd, 1944, both sisters were assigned to the transport to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Those who stayed behind were killed the same day in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
When the children arrived in the Ravensbrück camp, Elsa Schmidt was working at the Hasag-Schlie-ben-Berga satellite camp. From there, she was reassigned to the Hasag-Alternburg satellite camp an August 17th, 1944. On September 1st, that camp was transferred to the administration of the Buchenwald concentration camp; accordingly, Elsa Schmidt’s inmate number was changed again, to 28389. From then on, her trail is lost.

On September 27th, 1944, Else Schmidt, at the instigation of her legal guardian Emil Matulat, Else Schmidt was released from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Only in 1961, she learned that her sister Rosemarie also had been liberated and lived with foster parents in Switzerland. We were unable to determine when and where Else Schmidt died.


Translation by Peter Hubschmid 2018
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.


Stand: January 2019
© Hildegard Thevs mit Karin Guth

Quellen: StaH, 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II 458, Sozialbehörde I, 83.72; Parcer (Hrsg.), Gedenkbuch; Apel/Bajohr, Deportationen, in: Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg, S. 28–35; Katalog zur Ausstellung "In den Tod geschickt; Hoppe, Courage, S. 76–85; Karin Guth, Manuskript der Aufzeichnungen des Gesprächs mit Else Baker, geb. Schmidt, November 2002; Standesamt Lindenberg.