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Leopold Baruch * 1902

Mansteinstraße 39 (Eimsbüttel, Hoheluft-West)

HIER WOHNTE
LEOPOLD BARUCH
JG. 1902
VERHAFTET 1937
ZUCHTHAS FUHLSBÜTTEL
1939 SACHSENHAUSEN
ERMORDET 7.8.1940

further stumbling stones in Mansteinstraße 39:
Franziska Baruch, Max Baruch

Leopold Max Baruch, born 13.6.1902 in Hamburg, died 7.8.1940 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Mansteinstraße 39 (Eimsbüttel, Hoheluft-West)

Leopold Baruch was the youngest son of Max (born 1868 in Hamburg) and Franziska Baruch (born 1871 in Hamburg), née Gradenwitz, who had three other children named Bernhard (born 1899), Herbert (born 8.4.1901) and Ilse (born 1906).

Leopold attended the Stiftungsschule von 1815 (Realschule) at Zeughausmarkt in Hamburg, originally a purely Jewish private school, which, however, had only one-tenth Jewish students at the time of Leopold's school attendance and was nationalized in 1920. After graduating from it, he completed a three-year vocational training program to become a landscape gardener. After some time, he opened a flower stand on Steinstraße in Hamburg's old town in 1929. He operated this stand from the beginning with his non-Jewish wife Frieda, née Dewner (born 1901). However, as early as 1935, as a Jew, he was forbidden by the Nazi authorities from practicing his ambulant trade which made him unemployed, although he may have continued to trade "on the black."

On May 21, 1937, Leopold Baruch was arrested on suspicion of "racial defilement" because he had entered into an extramarital sexual relationship with an "Aryan woman." Despite the fact that he had already been married to an "Aryan woman" for several years, the Grand Criminal Chamber of the Hamburg Regional Court, chaired by Dr. Ehlert, sentenced him in a grotesque verdict of November 1, 1937, to two years in prison for "continued racial defilement," taking into account the fact that he had met his mistress after the "Nuremberg Laws" had been enacted.

After serving his sentence in Fuhlsbüttel Prison, Leopold Baruch was taken into "protective custody" and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on November 12, 1939. Here, the 37-year-old last lived in prisoner block 36 until he perished under unknown circumstances on August 7, 1940.

Leopold Baruch was not the only member of his family to lose his life as a result of the persecutions of the Nazi regime. His brother Bernhard, who lived in Grindelallee, was deported to Minsk together with his family and perished there. His parents, who lived at Bismarckstraße 35 a until 1938, when they moved into what later became a "Judenhaus" on Bundesstraße 35, were deported to Theresienstadt in July 1942, from where they never returned.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; AfW, Wiedergutmachungsakte; Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen, schriftliche Auskunft v. 25.9.2007; Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte Hamburg, E-Mail von Herrn Joachim Szodrzynski v. 30.1.2008; Mosel, Wilhelm (Bearb.), Wegweiser zu den ehemaligen Stätten jüdischen Lebens oder Leidens in den Stadtteilen Neustadt, St. Pauli (Schriftenreihe der Deutsch-Jüdischen Gesellschaft Hamburg, Reihe 1), Hamburg 1983, S. 18.
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