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Paula Jaffé (née Marcus) * 1884

Klopstockterrasse 4 (Altona, Ottensen)

1941 Lodz
ermordet

further stumbling stones in Klopstockterrasse 4:
Carl Arthur Jaffé, Paul Friedrich Jaffé

Carl Arthur Jaffé, born 26 Nov. 1915, deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, perished 1 Mar. 1942
Paul Friedrich Jaffé, born 21 Nov. 1911, deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, deported 10 May 1942 to Chelmno, where he was killed
Paula Jaffé, née Marcus, born 24 July 1884, deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, where she perished

Klopstockterrasse 4

The deportation list from Hamburg to "Litzmannstadt” (Lodz) on 25 Oct. 1941 contains the family members Carl Arthur, Paul Friedrich (or Friedrich Paul) and Paula Jaffé under the transport numbers 324 to 326. Their mother had lived with her two sons in Ottensen at Klopstockterrasse 4 until they were deported. The couple Paul and Paula Jaffé, née Marcus, first lived at Arnoldstraße 17 in Ottensen. Paula Jaffé, born on 24 July 1884 as the daughter of Paul and Helene Marcus, was six years younger than her husband, son of the merchant Ludwig Salomo Jaffé, who worked as an engineer at a nearby parquet and furniture factory located at Donnerstraße 10. The couple had three sons who were all born in Altona: Kurt was born on 17 July 1910, Friedrich Paul on 21 Nov. 1911 and Carl Arthur on 26 Nov. 1915. From 1913 the family lived at Flottbeker Chaussee 40 (today Elbchaussee). In 1925, the Jaffés moved into their own house at Klopstockterrasse 4 in the popular middle-class neighborhood am Elbhang in Altona-Ottensen. The Jaffés led a religious life and celebrated the Jewish holidays. In the yard of the house, they built a "booth”, a temporary hut which the Jewish family used to celebrate the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. The hut with a roof of leaves symbolized the provisional dwellings in which the Israelites dwelt during their forty years of travel in the desert after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. Their son Paul Friedrich completed an apprenticeship from 1932 to 1935 as operations assistant with Emil Mengers in Hamburg at Loogestieg 21. Carl trained as an office clerk and book keeper with Frankfurter & Liebermann, an import-export company on Lenhartzstraße in Hamburg. In 1933, the Altona address book listed Paul Jaffé’s occupation as "furniture sales representative”. On 14 Feb. 1938 he died of pneumonia. By now it was nearly impossible for people of Jewish extraction to practice their profession or find work. The pressure to emigrate increased. Their son Kurt Jaffé managed to immigrate to Australia. Paul Jaffé’s sister Vera Spickernagel, widowed Falk, immigrated to the USA via England, where Paul Jaffé’s brother Georg also immigrated. Paula Jaffé also possibly considered plans for emigrating a month after the November Pogrom which triggered a further wave of emigration. "The widow Paula Jaffé … is suspected of going abroad”, the Hamburg-Altona tax office informed the Hamburg-Altona Gestapo on 16 Dec. 1938. Paula Jaffé was affluent. Her property included the house at Klopstockterrasse 4 and three eighths each of properties at Eggersallee 9 and at Hohenzollernring 10. Moreover, she owned securities in an account at the Warburg Bank and a savings account at the branch on Große Rainstraße. These assets brought her to the attention of the authority of the regional tax office director which strove to appropriate the assets of wealthy Jews for the benefit of the German Reich. The reason she was suspected of "fleeing abroad” was that the widow Paula Jaffé, her mother, the widow Helene Marcus, née Frank, and her sister Edith Marcus, both residing at Eggersallee 9, had sold the undeveloped property at Hohenzollernring 10 on 7 Dec. 1938. Paula Jaffé was summoned to the foreign currency office where she declared in Jan. 1939 that the properties on Hohenzollernring and Eggersallee were to be sold and that she was also considering selling the unencumbered property at Klopstockterrasse 4. On a document dated 12 Dec. 1938, the foreign currency office of the regional tax office director issued a "security order”: Paula Jaffé was only allowed to dispose of her Klopstockterrasse property, her securities account, savings account and the proceeds from the sale of the properties at Hohenzollernring and Eggersallee with prior consent of the foreign currency office. In Jan. 1939 she, her mother and her sister sold the property at Eggersallee 9. In May of the same year, Paula Jaffé sold the property at Klopstockterrasse 4 to the Hanseatic City Hamburg for 10,500 Reich Marks (RM) and simultaneously entered into a rental contract. She then lived on the first floor of the house. The proceeds from the sale had to be deposited in her frozen account at Altona Savings Bank from 1799. In July 1939 after the proceeds from the sale of the house on Klopstockterrasse had been deposited in her account at the Altona Savings Bank, Paula Jaffé requested approval from the foreign currency office that the monthly sum of 500 RM be paid from the balance to cover the living expenses for herself and her two sons. The amount was approved. Two months later she again had to disclose her assets and register her requirements. Her monthly limit was recalculated. She noted expenses for a house keeper and a monthly 100 RM support for her 82-year-old mother and sister who were suffering hardship. Yet she was only granted 300 RM a month for living expenses. On 25 Oct. 1941, Paula Jaffé was deported to the Lodz Ghetto in German-occupied Poland along with her grown sons Carl Arthur and Paul Friedrich. Her assets were seized for the benefit of the German Reich. In the ghetto, the Jaffé Family was housed at Richterstraße 11, apartment 3. The residents of the ghetto lived in wooden houses with no running water or sewage drains. They suffered from hunger, cold and infectious diseases. Most residents had to work in textile manufacturing workshops which primarily produced goods for the armed forces. Out of the 1034 residents of Hamburg on the transport from 25 Oct. 1941, fewer than twenty people survived. Paula Jaffé perished in Lodz. The date of her death is not known. Carl Jaffé died on 1 Mar. 1942 in the ghetto. Paul Friedrich Jaffé was deported on to Chelmno on 10 May 1942. Located 70 km away from Lodz, Chelmno was the first extermination camp. Prisoners from the ghetto were forced along a ramp into a van which had been altered so that those inside were asphyxiated by exhaust fumes. Paul Friedrich Jaffé was also killed in Chelmno.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2018
© Birgit Gewehr

Quellen: 1; 2 (R 1939/20, Paula Jaffé); 4; 5; 8; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 e 1 Band 1 (Deportationsliste Litzmannstadt, 25.10.1941); StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 3290 (Spickernagel, Vera); Auskunft von Johann-Hinrich Möller und der Stolperstein Initiative Hamburg; AB Altona.
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