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Leo Jacobsohn * 1888

Wetternstieg 4 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
LEO JACOBSOHN
JG. 1888
DEPORTIERT 1945
THERESIENSTADT
TOT 26.5.1945

Leo Jacobsohn, born on 31 July 1888 in Altona, deported on 14 Feb. 1945 to Theresienstadt, died there on 26 May 1945

Harburg-Altstadt district, Wetternstieg 4

When Leo Jacobsohn was born, his parents were members of the Jewish Community in Altona. He spent his early childhood there. However, soon his focus increasingly shifted to the neighboring Hanseatic city of Hamburg. At first, he attended the Talmud Tora School at Kohlhöfen and then completed a commercial apprenticeship with the J. Markus wholesale company (jewelry and leather goods) on Grosser Burstah. After that, more years of serving this company followed.

In 1913, at the age of 25, Leo Jacobsohn got married to Frieda Mehrens, who came from a non-Jewish family. On 22 Aug. 1914, their first daughter Ursula was born. The young family moved into an apartment furnished in solid middle-class style on Alardusstrasse in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel, where they shared good times and bad for 25 years.

In the First World War, Leopold Jacobsohn fought in the ranks of the German Army for the emperor and the fatherland. When he returned in 1919, he dared to start a new career. He founded a representation for Offenbacher Lederwaren, a leather goods company, which covered Hamburg and environs. Depending on the economic situation, his monthly income including commissions fluctuated between 600 and 750 RM (reichsmark). In these years, during the summer, the family traveled to the Baltic Sea on a regular basis to relax in Grömitz for several weeks.

After 1933, things changed quickly. Leo Jacobsohn’s income dropped rapidly when one of his most important business partners emigrated in 1934 and sold his company to an "Aryan” owner who was not interested in continuing the cooperation. Further losses in sales followed when Leo Jacobsohn was banned from engaging in any job-related activities outside of Hamburg in 1938.

Although Frieda Jacobsohn was not affected directly by the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazis, they did make her life more difficult, especially when her husband was arrested during the November Pogrom of 1938, having to spend the following eight weeks in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.

After his release, Leo Jacobsohn made great efforts toward emigration to the USA. Step by step, he attempted to overcome the financial and bureaucratic obstacles that the Nazi government had built up by then. In this connection, he also gave notice for the apartment on Alardusstrasse. The family was forced to sell the bulk of their furniture and household effects for ridiculously low prices or even give them away. It is not known what caused the emigration to fail at the last moment. The police station in charge had already noted in its files that the family had made off for Antwerp. That was not correct, though: As late as 1939, Leo Jacobsohn and his family moved as subtenants into a house on Heinrich-Barth-Strasse.

After a few "non-Aryans” receiving welfare assistance had already been enlisted to perform forced labor in Hamburg since 1935, this type of labor duty for Jews was escalated further at the beginning but particularly during the course of the Second World War. On 4 Mar. 1941, the Reich Minister of Labor issued an order according to which all Jews aged 15 to 65 had to report for labor duty. Starting in June 1942, Leo Jacobsohn had to perform forced labor for the Semmelhack & Wulf Company on Grindelhof, forced labor remunerated with a weekly wage of 27.36 RM. An "Aryan” earned at least twice as much, if not even three times as much.

When the apartment on Heinrich-Barth-Strasse was completely destroyed during heavy air raids on Hamburg in July 1943, Leo Jacobsohn was assigned accommodation initially on Reeseberg and then at Lerchenweg 4 (today: Wetternstieg) in Hamburg-Harburg.

On 14 Feb. 1945, he was among the 161 men and 115 women married to "spouses of German blood” ("deutschblütige Ehepartner”) and ordered for "external work duties” to Theresienstadt. Eighty-two persons did not comply with the order anymore. They had arranged for exemptions or deferrals, obtained doctor’s certificates, or simply hidden away somewhere.

The train took nine days overall for the journey from Hamburg to Theresienstadt. Several times, it had to stop between stations or in station – sometimes for hours – to wait for the end of an air raid alert or to allow transports essential to the war effort to pass.

In Theresienstadt, the following weeks saw the constant arrival of additional trains and marching columns with thousands of starving and completely exhausted persons from the evacuated concentration camps in the East. The situation got out of control entirely at the end of Apr. 1945 when the ghetto was struck by a typhus epidemic. Imposing quarantine on the entire area of the old garrison town, the Soviet Red Army stopped the epidemic from spreading to other towns after the liberation of the ghetto. The measure was unable to prevent, however, the fact that within the former ghetto, many erstwhile survivors perished even after the end of the war. Although physicians and medical orderlies worked practically round the clock, they could not perform miracles. It was impossible to save Leo Jacobsohn’s life either in those days. He died, though liberated already, on 26 May 1945.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: 1; 2 (FVg 3790, R 1941/62); 5; 7; 8; StaH, 351-11, 10932; Heyl (Hrsg.), Harburger Opfer; Heyl, Synagoge; Gottwaldt/Schulle, "Judendeportationen", S. 467f.
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