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Regine Victor * 1880

Große Elbstraße 7 (Altona, Altona-Altstadt)

HIER WOHNTE
REGINE VICTOR
JG. 1880
EINGEWIESEN 1940
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

further stumbling stones in Große Elbstraße 7:
Sally Victor

Regine Victor, born 10/2/1880 in Altona, murdered on 9/23/1940 at the killing institution Brandenburg an der Havel

Grosse Elbstrasse 7 (formerly Grosse Fischerstrasse 7)

Regine’s father Lippmann Victor, born June 15, 1850, who in all documents had his first name amended with "vulgo Louis" , had come to Altona from his birthplace Rhina in eastern Hesse around 1872 and taken residence at Grosse Elbstrasse 115. On February 3, 1876, Lippmann vulgo Louis Victor married Line Seligmann, born December 29, 1847 in Segeberg in Holstein, (now Bad Segeberg).

The Jewish couple had five children: Sally, born November 6, 1876, who later always called himself Hans Sally, regardless of the fact that his application to change his name had been rejected; Max, born February 9, 1878; Gertrud, born May 12, 1879, Regine, born October 2, 1880, and Minnalie, born September 8, 1886.

Louis Victor’s brother Perez had also migrated to northern Germany, settled in the neighboring city of Hamburg, where he founded a family. The fates of one child of each family were to become tragically entwined (cf. the biography of Sally Victor)
Like his father before him, Louis Victor ran a products and fur trading business which, judging by the entries in the Altona address book, developed favorably. Initially, the home and business addresses were identical; from 1879, the residence was partly separated from the business premises. Louis Victor owned a property at Grosse Fischerstrasse 52-56, whose ownership passed on to the city of Hamburg in February 1940 – hardly by a voluntary transaction. The Victor family lived nearby at Gross Elbstrasse 7, the company storage facilities were at Lindenstrasse 1 (now Trommelstrasse).

Four of Line and Louis Victor’s children were born at Grosse Elbstrasse 7, only their youngest daughter Minnalie was born at Grosse Elbstrasse 22. Little is known of the children’s biographies, hardly anything about Regine Victor.

The children had long grown up when their parents died at their home in Palmaille 108, where the couple had moved around 1912 -- Line Victor on February 11, 1919, Louis victor on October 2, 1921.

At the latest at the beginning of the 1920s, Regine Victor must have showed signs of mental disease. In August 1925, she was admitted to the Schleswig-Stadtfeld mental hospital, where she lived until 1940.

Regine’s brother Max Victor had married Else Schulz, who was not Jewish. The couple had two daughters, Ingeborg, born August 30, 1910, and Margot, born April 20, 1915. The family was well situated: Max Victor had inherited a wholesale skins, furs, leather, hair and wool business at Grosse Marienstrasse in the St. Pauli district. He ran it until 1930, when he joined the company of his brother Hans Sally. Max Victor’s family had veered away from Jewish customs and rituals. Both daughters attended the private school of the Hübbe siblings. Ingeborg graduated from the highschool branch of the Lichtwark reform school. On May 20, 1935, she left Germany for Cape Town. South Africa.

On July 10, 1936, Margot married the Chinese doctor Chow-Wei-Liang (born October 1, 19111 in Shanghai. She deregistered from Hamburg on July 30, 1936 and went to Nanking, China with her husband. Later, the couple lived in the United States.

On November 9, 1938, a gang of Nazi storm troopers attacked and mauled Max Victor in Innocentiapark. The Nazis arrested him after the November pogrom and detained him at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for about a month, like countless more Jewish men. After his release, Max and his wife Else emigrated to Shanghai, where no visa was required, in December 1938. Three years later, on December 8, 1941, Max Victor died of a stroke in Shanghai. His widow Else later lived in Cape Town.

All we know of Minnalie Victor is that she married Karl Leon Feder, a merchant from Lemberg (Lwiw, Ukraine).

Hans Sally Victor married Selma, née Stern. They had four children. Hans Sally Victor had taken over the wholesale metals and chemicals business C. Fürst & Co. in Bugenhagenstrasse 6 in Hamburg’s old town, was a member of the Hamburg metal exchange and a member of its board until 1938. He lived at Parkallee 7 in Harvestehude with his family. When Sally Victor was arrested during the November 1938 pogrom and detained at Oranienburg concentration camp and a government trustee appointed to run his company, he intensified his efforts to emigrate. In March 1939, he and his wife finally succeeded in leaving Germany to join one of their daughters in New York.

In spring and summer of 1940, the Berlin "Euthanasia” agency at Tiergartenstrasse 4 planned a special operation to eliminate all Jewish patients living in public and private mental hospitals in Germany. The agency had all Jewish patients of the institutions registered and then assembled in so-called collecting institutions. In northern Germany, this was the Hamburg-Langenhorn mental hospital. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg and Mecklenburg were ordered to send all their Jewish patients there before September 18, 1940.

Regine Victor arrived in Langenhorn on September 17, 1940. There, she met her cousin Sally Victor (cf. there), son of her uncle Perez. On September 23, the two of them and another 134 patients from north German mental hospitals were taken to Brandenburg on the Havel, where the transport arrived the same day. In the part of the former prison converted into a gas killing institution, all the patients were immediately driven into the gas chamber and murdered by carbon monoxide. Only Ilse Herta Zachmann was spared this fate for the time being (cf. there).

The birth registry entry of Regine was amended stating that the Cholm II registrar’s office had recorded her death that had allegedly occurred on February 10, 1941 under the number 230/1941. The people murdered in Brandenburg, however, had never been in the town east of Lublin called Chelm in Polish, Cholm in German. The mental hospital there had ceased to exist after SS troops had murdered almost all of its patients on January 12, 1940. And there had never been a German registrar’s office in Chelm. It was solely invented to cover up the murder operations, and recording fictive later dates of death served the purpose of demanding board fees for the already murdered patients.

Nothing came to light about the fates of Regine Victor’s sisters Gertrud and Minnalie Feder or Minnalie’s husband Karl Leon. None of the three is listed in the memorial book of the German Federal Archive.

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

Stand: March 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer Patientinnen und Patienten der psychiatrischen Anstalt Langenhorn, die aufgrund nationalsozialistischer "Euthanasie"-Maßnahmen ermordet wurden, zusammengestellt von Peter von Rönn, Hamburg (Projektgruppe zur Erforschung des Schicksals psychisch Kranker in Langenhorn); 213-13 Landgericht Hamburg Wiedergutmachung 8840 Sally Victor, 9124 Louis Victor; 232-5 Amtsgericht Hamburg – Vormundschaftswesen 2083 Margot Victor; 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident – Auswandererakten F und FVg 2310 Hans Sally Victor, 2311 Max, Else, Margot Victor; 332-4 Aufsicht über die Standesämter Nr. 2864 Sally Victor, 332-5 Standesämter 2399 Geburtsregister Nr. 309/1896 Erna Edelstein, 5331 Sterberegister Nr. 382/1919 Line Victor, 5343 Sterberegister Nr. 1263/1921 Lippmann vulgo Louis Victor, 5862 Heiratsregister Nr. 66/1876 Lippmann vulgo Louis Victor/Line Seligmann, 5989 Heiratsregister Nr. 1038/1909 Leon Feder/Minnalie Victor, 6193 Geburtsregister Nr. 3262/1876 (Hans) Sally Victor, 6200 Geburtsregister Nr. 518/1878 Max Victor, 6206 Geburtsregister Nr. 1352/1879 Gertrud Victor, 6244 Geburtsregister Nr. 2628/1886 Minnalie Victor, 8723 Heiratsregister Nr. 269/1918 Valk, James/Edelstein, Erna; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 4966 Hans Sally Victor, 7881 Else Victor; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26. 8. 1939 bis 27. 1. 1941; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig.
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