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Suleika Klein
© Gedenkstätte Neuengamme

Suleika Klein * 1926

Niemannstraße 5–6 (vor Garage) (Harburg, Harburg)

1943 Auschwitz
am 4.5.1945 im Außenlager Sasel des KZ Neuengamme umgekommen

Georg Pempe, born 20 Oct. 1907 in Hamburg, perished in Auschwitz on 27. April 1943
Suleika Klein, born 17 Oct. 1926 in Hamburg, perished on 4 May 1945 at the Sasel subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp

Harburg Old Town, Niemannstrasse 6

Agnes Suleika Klein‘s mother was Hulda Klein, née Holz. She came from East Prussia (Johannisburg district); after the death of her first husband, she married the shipbuilder’s helper Georg Pempe. The three of them last lived at Niemansstrasse 6 in Harburg; before, they had lived at Lauterbachstrasse (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de, Bertha Töpfer).

Sinti and Roma, like the Jews, were affected by the Nazi race laws. Thus, they were no longer allowed to travel without having reported to the police. Hulda Pempe was accused of planning to cross the border, taken into preventive custody and committed to the Hamburg jail in the street called Hütten on January 18th, 1943.

Following an order of Heinrich Himmler, all Sinti and Roma were to be deported to the extermination camps from 1943 on; a special "Gypsy camp” was set up at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Together with 324 other Sinti and Roma, Georg and Hulda Pempe, Suleika Klein and Georg Pempe’s mother Bertha Töpfer were deported to Auschwitz from the Hamburg freight yard at Lohseplatz on March 11th, 1943.
Their apartment in Niemannstrasse was confiscated by the Gestapo, their possessions taken to the Harburger Ratskeller (the restaurant in the basement of the Harburg town hall) and auctioned there. Georg Pempe died at the "Gypsy camp” after only a few weeks on April 27th – details of the circumstances of his death are unknown. His mother Bertha Töpfer died in June, 1944 of typhoid fever; Suleika Klein escaped extermination in Auschwitz and was taken the Ravensbrück concentration camp to perform forced labor.

In August 1944, Hulda Pempe was also deported to Ravensbrück, where she met her daughter. On January 11, 1945, Suleika Klein gave birth to her son Hermann in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, who died already on February 4. She had been raped by a Kapo in Auschwitz. Shortly before the end of the war, she had to perform forced labor in Hamburg at the Sasel sub-commando of Neuengamme concentration camp. Her cousin Wanda Edelmann, who had also been brought to the camp in Sasel from the Langenhorn subcamp, found her lying seriously ill on the ground. On May 4, 1945, one day after the liberation of Hamburg, she died at the age of 18, presumably of tuberculosis.

On September 14th, 1944, Hulda Pempe was transported to a camp in Wittenberg (Saxony-Anhalt) to perform forced labor at the Arado aircraft plant. She remained there until the liberation, surviving the Nazi era. After 1945, she again lived in Harburg, at Mittelstrasse 26 (now: Beckerberg).

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

Stand: February 2021
© Hans-Joachim Meyer/Änderung 2021 Helmut Rüth, Initiative Gedenken in Harburg.

Quellen: VVN-BdA Harburg (Hrsg.), Die anderen, S. 210f.; StaH, 332-8 Meldewesen, A46; StaH, Adressbücher Harburg-Wilhelmsburg und Hamburg; Mitteilungen des StaH; VVN, Komitee-Akten; Internationaler Suchdienst Arolsen; KZ Sasel, Geschichte eines Außenlagers. Eine Projektarbeit der Klasse 10c des Gymnasiums Oberalster, Hamburg 1981, S. 30f.; Heyl/Maronde-Heyl, Abschlussbericht; Totenliste VAN; Geburtenbuch des KZ Ravensbrück Nr. 30, Mitteilung der KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme (Bessmann).