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Mimi Weile (née Hedemann) * 1895

Bunatwiete 3 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
MIMI WEILE
GEB. HEDEMANN
JG. 1895
GEDEMÜTIGT / ENTRECHTET
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
18.12.1941

Mimi Weile, née Hedemann, born on 10 Oct. 1895 in Harburg, suicide on 18 Dec. 1941

Bunatwiete 3 (formerly: Kleine Feldstrasse), Harburg-Altstadt quarter

Mimi Weile was born as the child of assistant brakeman Friedrich Wilhelm Hedemann and his wife Wilhelmine, née Kreith. Her parents, members of the Harburg Synagogue Community (Synagogengemeinde), lived in the Phoenix quarter, a new development area that had been built on the Krummholzberg between the (Old) Cemetery and Wilstorfer Strasse in the course of the rapid industrialization of Harburg during the last years of the nineteenth century. The character of this residential area, which was constructed at lightning speed based on an urban development plan, with its rectangular streets and multi-story apartment buildings, has hardly changed since then.

Little is known about the subsequent life of this Harburg-born Jewish woman. She later married Leonhardt Weile (born on 3 Jan. 1893), who came from a Jewish family in Altona.

After 1933, the young couple lived in Berlin, where, in the fall of 1941, they witnessed that the deportations of Jews "to the East” had begun. More than 7,000 people were deported from Berlin alone in Oct. and Nov. 1941 to Litzmannstadt (Lodz), Minsk, Kaunas (Kowno), and Riga. Further transports were only a matter of time.

Mimi and Leonhardt Weile did not leave the decision about their death to the Nazis; they departed this life by committing suicide on 18 Dec. 1941.

Studies on suicides among German Jews during the Nazi era conclude that in their desperation, more than 10,000 persons chose this way out to preserve their dignity. For them, suicide was an act of self-assertion.

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

Stand: June 2020
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: Hamburger jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Gedenkbuch, bearbeitet von Jürgen Sielemann unter Mitarbeit von Paul Flamme, Hamburg 1995; Yad Vashem, The Central Database of Shoa Victims´ Names: www.yadvashem.org; Harburger Adressbuch 1898; Harburger Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, bearbeitet von Matthias Heyl, Hamburg-Harburg 2002; Matthias Heyl, Vielleicht steht die Synagoge noch, Hamburg 2009, Beate Meyer (Hrsg.), Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der Hamburger Juden 1933–1945, Geschichte, Zeugnis, Erinnerung, Hamburg 2006; Phoenix-Viertel, Bezirksamt Harburg in Zusammenarbeit mit der Staatlichen Pressestelle Hamburg (Hrsg.), Hamburg 1981.