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Hermann Rosner * 1897

Schloßmühlendamm 32 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER ARBEITETE
HERMANN ROSNER
JG. 1897
ABGESCHOBEN 1938
RICHTUNG POLEN
VERHAFTET 1939
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
1940 KZ DACHAU
ERMORDET 1.2.1941

Hermann Rosner, born on 10 Nov. 1897 in Dukla, expelled on 28 Oct. 1938 to Zbaszyn, from 1939 to 1940 detained in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, died on 1 Feb. 1941 in the Dachau concentration camp

Schlossmühlendamm 32 (District of Harburg-Altstadt)

On 12 July 1927, Hermann Rosner became a member of the German-Israelitic Community in Hamburg. Many things were different here in his new home by comparison to his birthplace in Galicia, which was under Habsburg sovereignty until 1918 and then became Polish. In the 1920s, his native Dukla at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains was a small town with a population of a little more than 2,000, 72 percent of whom were of the Jewish faith. Coexistence of the different population groups was not always peaceful by any means. Particularly severe was the anti-Jewish pogrom at the end of the First World War, from which the city recovered only slowly in the ensuing years. Many Jews left their hometown after that because they no longer felt safe in their own four walls after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Hamburg, by contrast, was a big city with more than one million residents and a Jewish share of the population amounting to only 1.7 percent. Relations between Jews and non-Jews were not entirely free of tensions but until then Hamburg had not seen any such anti-Jewish excesses as had taken place in Dukla in 1918. That was probably Hermann Rosner’s impression as well when he arrived in Hamburg with his wife Sara-Chaja, née Weinbach (born on 24 Aug. 1907), after World War I. She also came from a Jewish family and she had grown up in the small town of Lancut near Rzeszow in the extended environs of Dukla. In Hamburg, the young couple moved into a home at Schäferkampsallee 21. The two children Sami and Bernard were born on 2 July 1932 and 29 Mar. 1937.

We do not know exactly when Hermann Rosner opened a specialist store for work wear at Mühlenstrasse 9 (today: Schlossmühlendamm 32) in what was then still the Prussian city of Harburg. That he established himself as an independent businessman by early 1933 emerges from the list of the Harburg city council that details the 54 Jewish businesses in the city not to be considered for municipal contracts from then on. Subsequently, on 1 Apr. 1933, during the day of "defensive boycott against Jewish atrocity propaganda” ("Abwehrboykott gegen die jüdische Greuelpropaganda”) across the German Reich, SA men took up positions in front of his store, too, pointing out to passers-by and customers that the owner was Jewish, he probably sensed that the past had caught up with him.

Afterward, the situation seemed to calm down somewhat, and Hermann Rosner, too, apparently waited and saw how things developed. Earning an annual taxable income of approx. 6,000 RM (reichsmark), he probably managed fairly well during the next years. When economic conditions for Jewish businesspeople deteriorated dramatically in the course of 1938, Hermann Rosner revealed his intention to leave the country as fast as possible. As a result, the Hamburg Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) used a "security order” ("Sicherungsanordnung”) to deprive him of unrestricted disposal of his assets, effective immediately.

The arduous preparations for emigration to the USA came to a complete halt when the Posner family was expelled to Poland on 28 Oct. 1938, causing them to be stranded in an emergency shelter at Gramiezna 2 in Zbaszyn with Jasinski for several weeks. The Polish government was not willing to grant entry permits to the majority of the expelled persons. Thousands were not allowed to leave the small border town during the following weeks and months. Without spontaneous help from many Jewish communities and institutions in Poland and abroad, their distress would have been even greater.

Contact to the outside world was limited. Only in a roundabout way, Hermann Rosner found out one day that the authorities in Germany had commissioned an "administrator for absent heirs” ("Abwesenheitspfleger”) with liquidating his business on Mühlenstrasse in Harburg. It took several weeks until he obtained a temporary residence permit for Hamburg in order to pursue his emigration proceedings further and to settle his financial affairs. However, the authorities strictly refused the necessary extension beyond 18 Aug. 1939.

Apparently, Hermann Rosner did not take these instructions too seriously, staying in Hamburg illegally for a few more days. Shortly after the German invasion of Poland, the Gestapo arrested him in Sept. 1939 as a stateless Jew of Polish descent, committing him to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. From there, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp on 6 Sept. 1940, where he received prisoner number 18,433. In this concentration camp just outside the Bavarian capital of Munich, his life ended on 1 Feb. 1941. The registrar noted as the cause of death: cardiac and circulatory failure. Three and a half months later, the urn with the ashes of the deceased arrived at the Jewish Cemetery on Ihlandkoppel in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf, where Hermann Rosner was laid to rest.

We have no further details about the subsequent fate of his wife and that of his two children. The last sign of life from Sara Rosner suggests that in the summer of 1939, still from Zbaszyn, she apparently tried in vain to emigrate to Great Britain. After that, all traces of her disappear, as do those of her children. A cousin submitted a Page of Testimony for Sara Rosner at the Israeli Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem. The Memorial Book of the German Federal Archives names her as a victim of the persecution of Jews, indicating Duisburg as her last residence in Germany, something the local city archive is unable to confirm, however. The Memorial Book also lists Sami and Bernhard Rosner, without any details on their fate available.


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

Stand: October 2018
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: 1; 2 (FVg 7435 Hermann Rosner); 4; 5; 8; StaH, 430-2 Bestand Harburg, 2 Stadtbücher, III 1 Bd. IX, Protokolle der Magistratssitzungen 1933; StaH, 430-5 181.08 Bestand Magistrat Harburg-Wilhelmsburg, Angelegenheiten der städtischen Polizei, Ausschaltung jüdischer Geschäfte und Konsumvereine 1933–1938; Heyl (Hrsg.), Harburger Opfer; Heyl, Synagoge, S. 369; Auskunft Dr. Diana Schulle vom 27.2.2012; Auskunft Stadtarchiv Duisburg vom 14.3.2012; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukla_(Polen) (eingesehen am 19.3.2010).
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