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Bertha Themans (née Seckel) * 1859

Neue Straße 50 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
BERTHA THEMANS
GEB. SECKEL
JG. 1859
UMZUG / HEIRAT / HOLLAND
INTERNIERT WESTERBORK
DEPORTIERT 1943
SOBIBOR
ERMORDET 28.5.1943

Bertha Themans, née Seckel, born on 31.1.1859 in Harburg, deported on 25.5.1943 from camp Westerbork to Sobibor extermination camp, murdered

Neue Straße 50, Harburg

Bertha Seckel was born as the daughter of the Jewish rawhide merchant Joseph Seckel and his wife shortly after the Kingdom of Hanover joined the German Customs Union (Deutsche Zollunion), which explosively accelerated the industrialization of her native city. Neue Straße, where the young family lived at that time, ran parallel to Schlossstraße (today: Harburger Schlossstraße), which connected the old center of Harburg around the former citadel and the harbor with the new settlements around the sand and showed the direction of further urban development. Here the steeple of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche, the town's main church, rose into the sky, and here one store lined up after another. Life on the street also reflected the central importance of this important access road to the department store in Harburg Harbor.

Bertha Seckel moved to the Netherlands after her marriage in 1890, where she started a family with her husband Salomon Themans in Amelo. Her husband died 30 years later. We know as little about Bertha Themans' life after his death as we do about the years before. That the occupation of the neutral Netherlands by German troops in May 1940 was associated with profound changes in her life is not surprising.

After the dismissal of all Jewish civil servants and employees from the public service, all Jews living in the Netherlands had to register. Blow by blow, other anti-Jewish orders followed. In April 1942, all Jews in the Netherlands were ordered to mark their clothing with the Yellow Star, and soon after the first deportation trains left the country for the East.

Bertha Themans had to say goodbye to her granddaughter Bertha Rika de Vries-Suskind, who had taken her in, on May 18, 1943, and report to the Westerbork collection camp. A week later she was deported from there to Sobibor in the "Generalgouvernement".

At this remote location, the Nazi occupiers had built a huge extermination camp in early 1942, which was handed over to its destination in the summer of 1942. Immediately after the arrival of the trains, the newcomers were led to the luggage barracks, where their suitcases and backpacks were taken from them; then they had to undress and make their way to the gas chambers disguised as shower rooms.

In 15 months, more than 150.000 Jewish children, women and men were murdered in this "death factory" by about 30 SS men and 120 - mostly Ukrainian - assistants. The bones of the murdered were then buried in pits where pine trees soon covered the ground to cover all traces of this crime.

Bertha Themans was 83 years old when her life was snuffed out in Sobibor.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: Hamburger jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Gedenkbuch, Jürgen Sielemann, Paul Flamme (Hrsg.), Hamburg 1995; Gedenkbuch. Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933–1945, Bundesarchiv (Hrsg.), Koblenz 2006; Yad Vashem. The Central Database of Shoa Victims´ Names: www.yadvashem.org; Harburger Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, Bezirksamt Harburg (Hrsg.), Hamburg 2003; Herinnerungscentrum Kamp Westerbork; Helms-Museum, Harburger Adressbücher; Jules Schelvis, Vernichtungslager Sobibor, Münster/Hamburg 2003