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Jacob de Groot, bei einem letzten "Kameradentreffen" in Hamburg
© Privatbesitz

Jacob de Groot * 1896

Fuhlentwiete 1 (ggü. ABC-Straße) (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
JACOB DE GROOT
JG. 1896
VERHAFTET 1937
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
1940 BUCHENWALD
ERMORDET 21.5.1940

Jacob de Groot, born on 20 July 1896 in Hamburg, detained in 1937, 1939 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, died on 21 May 1940 in the Buchenwald concentration camp

Fuhlentwiete 1, opposite ABC-Strasse (Fuhlentwiete 63)

Jacob de Groot’s parents had met in Argentina. His father Marcos (Meyer) de Groot was born on 17 July 1851 to a middle-class Jewish family in Amsterdam. He had learned the trade of a paperhanger and later went to sea. The mother Lea/Leda, née Serman, was born on 26 June 1864 in Lublin, which at that time belonged to the Russian Empire. Her family, who were farmers, had left their homeland in 1890 to start a new life in South America. Still in Lublin, Lea had married Michael/Michel Mandelbaum, who died shortly after their arrival in South America. This first marriage had produced Jacob’s half brother Maximilian Nathan (born on 8 May 1887 in Lublin, died on 16 Nov. 1969).

Lea Mandelbaum and her second husband Marcos de Groot married on 5 May 1892 and left Buenos Aires one year later. Their first child, daughter Bertha, was born on 18 June 1893 in Hamburg. Alexander followed on 3 May 1895. Jacob was born on 20 July 1896 at Kurzestrasse 27 (today Kurze Strasse), Sister Rosa was born on 26 Nov. 1899. The other siblings, Frieda (born on 11 Sept. 1898, died on 6 Jan. 1901), Alfred (born on 27 Apr. 1902, died on 17 May 1903), and Walter (born on 13 Jan. 1906, died on 9 Aug. 1906) died already as infants. When Jacob was about 13 years old, his parents separated and the siblings were separated as well. Jacob stayed with his father, who was employed at the Barsdorf & Liebhold GmbH tobacco plant in Ottensen. The household at Marktstrasse 7 was run by a housekeeper in return for room and board. The mother, Lea, first moved to Rademachergang 30 and opened a "job lot store” there (a shop selling cheap mass articles and special items).

After attending the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule), Jacob de Groot learned the baker’s and confectioner’s trade. However, during his apprenticeship at the Franz Gogl bakery at Wandsbeker Chaussee 317, he had to give up his occupation for health reasons, finding a new job with the Menk & Hambrook machine factory in Altona, located at Grosse Brunnenstrasse 78. Like many others of his generation, Jacob de Groot volunteered during the First World War. However, since held Dutch citizenship, he had to first become a citizen of the Hamburg Federation [Hamburgischer Staatsverband] on 25 Nov. 1916.

Jacob de Groot converted to Christianity, was baptized, and got married on 30 Sept. 1917. The church wedding took place on 25 Dec. 1925 in St. Catherine’s Church in Hamburg’s historic downtown. His bride, Johanna Goj, born on 17 Jan. 1893, came from Michalkowitz, then in Austrian Upper Silesia (today Michalkowice in Poland). Like her parents, Karl Goj and Johanna, née Budin, she was of the Catholic faith. Johanna Goj lived at Pelzerstrasse 7 in Hamburg-Altstadt and brought her son Ernst, born in 1915, into the marriage, who received the last name of de Groot. Their first child together, Lilian Wilhelmine Olga, born on 10 May 1918, was followed by son Rolf on 23 Sept. 1920; daughter Edith was born on 7 Sept. 1923 and the youngest, Ilse, on 25 Sept. 1925.

Jacob de Groot had gone to war in the ranks of the 31st Infantry Regiment and had been awarded the Iron Cross Second Class, the Hanseatic Cross, and later the Honor Cross for Frontline Soldiers; but had also returned from the war severely impaired in hearing and vision after being buried alive several times. In the difficult time after the First World War, he tried to feed his family, who lived in the St. Georg quarter at Viktoriastrasse 6 and starting in 1935 at Jenischstrasse 54, by street trading. Since he did not receive a booth permit for a fixed place, he had to change location every ten minutes, which did not foster his trade in fruit and vegetables, and later also in fashion accessories. For his seven-person household, his earnings were not enough. The family was temporarily dependent on welfare support. In 1926, Jacob de Groot was granted permission for a permanent sales booth at the port. He sold sausages, ice cream, tropical fruits, confectionery, and milk in his "stall” under a viaduct section of the Hamburg subway at the intersection of Vorsetzen and Baumwall at the Roosenbrücke bridge. Small signs pointed to his hearing loss due to his war injury. He was very proud of his independence and his war decorations, as his daughter Ilse remembered. Later, however, his patriotism was of little use to him: "The thanks of the fatherland” eventually entailed Gestapo officials picking up from the parental home the document, on which this sentence was written in large letters, along with the medals and badges of honor. Ilse described her father as very musical, even though due to his hearing loss, he was no longer able to hit the right note, which amused them as children. Her father also attached great importance to a "smart” appearance. She remembered him as a loving man who also made toys for the neighboring children to give to them as presents on Christmas Eve, with him dressed as Santa Claus.

On 13 Nov. 1933, Jacob’s mother Lea died shortly before her seventieth birthday; his father Marcos shortly thereafter on 6 Jan. 1934. Their graves (like those of their children deceased early) are located in the Jewish Cemetery on Ilandkoppel in Ohlsdorf.

Jacob de Groot’s wife Johanna died of stomach cancer on 17 Nov. 1935 after a protracted and serious illness. After her death, the oldest daughter Lilian took care of the household and helped out with the sales stall in the harbor. Her half-brother Ernst had already left the family in 1931. Brother Rolf was employed as a "servant boy.” The younger sisters Ilse and Edith still attended school on Bäckerbreitergang and were first accommodated in the Sachsenstrasse day center. However, this was not a permanent solution. Jacob de Groot needed a "mother” to look after his underage children. A suitable candidate, 35-year-old Elisa Haarstrich (born on 16 Aug. 1901) from Evern near Lehrte, responded to a marriage advertisement. She had been living in Hamburg since 1929 and in Apr. 1936, she took over the family’s household, which by then was at Fuhlentwiete 63 following relocation. In the same year, Jacob de Groot had to give up his stall at the harbor.

The planned marriage with Elisa Haarstrich did not come about anymore. Since 15 Sept. 1935, after passage of the Nuremberg Laws [on race], Jews were no longer permitted to enter into "mixed marriages” ("Mischehen”), nor were they allowed to engage in extramarital sexual relationships with "Aryan” women. On 17 Mar. 1937, Jacob de Groot was arrested by the Gestapo during his "compulsory labor” on the Ohlsdorf cemetery because he had "taken a non-Jewish woman into his household with whom he lived in matrimonial relations.” On 25 Nov. 1937, the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht), "Sixth Grand Criminal Chamber” (Grosse Strafkammer 6), sentenced him to two years in a penitentiary. The fact that he volunteered in the First World War as an "alien national war volunteer” had a mitigating effect on the penalty. Probably in order to avoid a conviction, Jacob de Groot stated in his defense that he assumed to be "half-Jew” ("Halbjude”), so that the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” ("Gesetz zum Schutz des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre”) did not apply to him. The court found that the defendant "had not imagined the consequences of his actions in all their ramifications.” Four months in custody were calculated against his prison sentence. Paradoxically, Elisa Haarstrich was allowed to continue looking after the younger children, but she was supervised by the Gestapo. She left the apartment on Fuhlentwiete and moved with the children to Caffamacherreihe 103/05. Jacob de Groot should have been released from prison on 3 Aug. 1939. However, since he remained in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) by order of the Gestapo, his immediate emigration to Palestine together with his children, on which he had resolved while still in prison, could not be realized.

On 17 Oct. 1939, Jacob de Groot was transferred as prisoner 3,205 to the Buchenwald concentration camp, Block 9. He died there on 21 May 1940, allegedly from pulmonary consumption. His body was cremated two days later in the crematorium. At that time, Ilse, who was 14 years old by then, was in her "country service year” ("Landjahr”) with a farmer in Hannover and could not afford the fee charged for sending the urn and burying it in Hamburg. She also believed that it would be urn randomly filled with ashes anyways. The former German-Israelitic Community also rejected the interment on the denominational burial ground in Hamburg, as her father had not belonged to its religious denomination. His estate was sent to Ilse in a cardboard box containing the clothing he had worn when he was arrested, his pipe, and his broken glasses.

Ilse and her siblings survived the Nazi persecution, despite severe harassment. Edith married a Danish citizen during the war in 1943 and returned with him to his homeland. Lilian emigrated to Canada after the war. Ilse started a family in Australia, her brother Rolf in Hamburg.

Jacob de Groot’s younger sister Rosa had acquired German citizenship through her marriage to the "bank official” Max Alexander. Under the stage name of Marion Zander, she worked as a singer and elocutionist. In 1939, she followed her son Karl-Heinz to the Netherlands, where she lived underground to see eventual liberation. The older sister Bertha resided at Marschnerstrasse 12, later at Kleiner Schäferkamp 34. Her husband, the warehouseman Adolf Tesche (born on 16 Nov. 1885), came from a non-Jewish family based in Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland). Bertha had worked as a seamstress until 1939 and then had to do forced labor at the Egmont Gross sack factory in Rothenburgsort. Her husband was pressured into divorcing his Jewish wife. Together with other "persons interrelated to Jews” ("jüdisch Versippte"), he was enlisted by the garden and cemetery administration at the Ohlsdorf cemetery for forced labor and accommodated there in a barracks camp. Shortly before the end of the war, in Feb. 1945, Bertha was to be deported to Theresienstadt. Due to her heart condition, she was deferred, so that she experienced the end of the war in Hamburg.

Her half-brother Maximilian Nathan Mandelbaum belonged to the 128 Jewish men who were taken to Theresienstadt on 14 Feb. 1945 for "external labor deployment.” The trained lithographer lived with his non-Jewish wife Elisabeth, née Nielsen (born on 12 June 1890), and the four children at Altonaerstrasse 41. After his liberation by the Red Army on 8 May 1945, he returned to Hamburg and was reinstated as a mechanic and collector of the Hamburger Electricitäts-Werke (HEW), the local electricity company, where he had been dismissed because of his Jewish descent.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 351-11 AfW 18904 (de Groot, Jacob); StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht-Strafakten 1902/38; StaH 351-11 AfW 15454 (Tesche, Bertha); StaH 351-11 AfW 8130 (Tesche, Adolf); StaH 351-11 AfW 22589 (de Groot, Rosa); StaH 351-11 AfW 47663 (Klimek, Ilse); StaH 351-11 AfW 42185 (Pietrzyk, Lilian); StaH 351-11 AfW 43854 (de Groot, Rolf); StaH 351-11 AfW 9458 (Mandelbaum, Nathan); StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden Abl. 1993/01, 37; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2306 u 1510/1893; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2372 u 1538/1895; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2403 u 2467/1896; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2460 u 2886/1898; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13176 u 3801/1899; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3245 u 188/1914; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3304 u 356/1917; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3387 u 748/1920; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 10094 u 416/1933; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1024 u 10/1934; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1036 u 1686/1935; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 5; Archiv der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald Auskunft von Sabine Stein, E-Mail vom 19.5.2009; schriftliche Auskünfte und Dokumente von Ilse Klimek (Australien) vom 27.8.2011; de Groot: Opa; Meyer: Verfolgung, S. 79–87.