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Charlotte Dammann * 1922

Hallerstraße 76 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

1941 Riga
ermordet

further stumbling stones in Hallerstraße 76:
Alice Baruch, Sara Carlebach, Charlotte Carlebach, Dr. Joseph Zwi Carlebach, Noemi Carlebach, Ruth Carlebach, Margarethe Dammann, Gertrud Dammann, Dina Dessau, Felix Halberstadt, Josabeth Halberstadt, Elsa Meyer, Margarethe Meyer, Alice Rosenbaum, Julius Rothschild, Jente Schlüter

Margarete Dammann, née Güdemann, born 3/20/1890 in Hildesheim, deported to Riga-Jungfernhof on 12/6/1942
Gertrud Dammann, born 10/17/1920 in Göttingen, deported to Riga-Jungfernhof on 12/6/1942
Deported on to Stutthof on 10/11944
Charlotte Dammann, born 5/4/1922 in Göttingen, deported to Riga-Jungfernhof on 12/6/1942

Hallerstrasse 76

Margarete Dammann was born on 3/20/1890 in Hildesheim as the daughter of the master butcher Güdemann and his wife Bertha, née Fränkel. The Dammann family had been butchers for generations. Margarete’s mother was born on 2/7/1867 in Bolzum near Hildesheim. She had a younger daughter, Hanna, born 7/8/1891, and a son, Ivan, born 1/26/1896. Nothing is known about the lives of her husband and her son. A chronicle, however, mentions that Bertha Güdemann kept living at the family house with her daughter Hanna, who remained single.

Otto Dammann, who was to become Margarete’s husband, came from Bad Salzdetfurth. He was born on 10/1/1884 as the second son of the merchant Hermann Dammann. His parents had a manufactured goods and textile fabrics store, i.e. they sold cloth by the meter. His father, born ca. 1850 in Gronau near Hannover, was a respected citizen, a city councilor. He was married to Bertha, née Dammann. The couple had seven children. Otto’s father died in 1932 at the age of 82.

Otto Dammann was a commercial clerk in Berlin, presumably, he worked at a bank, before he moved to Hildesheim in 1919, where he married Margarete Güdemann on November 9. The couple moved to Göttingen, where Otto Dammann became director of the local branch of the Dresdner Bank. The Dammanns’ daughters were born in Göttingen, Gertrud on 10/17/1920, Charlotte on 5/4/1922. The family lived in Göttingen until August 1927, when they moved back to Hildesheim, back to the home of Margarete’s parents, to live with her mother and her sister. Otto Dammann left his family to go travelling for several years.

Margarete, however, did not stick to her family of origin for long. Not quite two years later, on November 25, 1929, she and her daughters moved to Hamburg, to Nerlichsweg 2 in the Hamm quarter. The girls lived there with their mother for eight years, while they attended the Jewish girls’ school in Karolinenstrasse in the far away Sternschanze quarter. A former lady neighbor and witness to history recalled that the Dammann daughters were dark-haired pretty girls. The neighborhood kids met to play in the spacious back yard gardens, not on the street, slipping through holes in the fences to the next-door garden.

Their mother Margarete was sociable and enjoyed having friends for dinner. And she liked to sing in the bathroom, so that the neighbors could enjoy her singing via the light wells. Otto Dammann was small and dainty, his wife chubby, black-haired and full of life, a real "Jewish mamme.” The neighbor recalls "a real kids’ clique, who played marbles and skip rope or circus – until one after the other were "gone” someday.

Gertrud and Charlotte were 17 and 15 when their father returned to his family. According to the address book, they moved to Hallerstrasse 76 in 1937, a 3 ½-room apartment on the fifth floor. Sadly, the family only stayed together for a few months. Otto Dammann was seriously ill, and died of a stomach ulcer on January 27, 1938 at the Israelitic hospital in Hamburg. It was Johanna "Sara” Güdemann, Margarete’s sister Hanna, who reported the death of her brother-in-law to the registrar’s office in Hildesheim. Otto Dammann was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Ilandkoppel in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf.

After Otto’s death, his family further confined themselves by accommodating a second family in their apartment, a mother with her two daughters: Herta Hammerschlag, née Magnus (born 6/16/1907), Ellen (born 10/28/1929), and Inge (born 6/9/1933). The Hammerschlags had been forced to give up their apartment in Oberstrasse 22 and moved in with the Dammanns for more than three years, from August 22, 1938 until December 12, 1941, when they moved on to Sierichstrasse 140. The Hammerschlag family was deported to Theresienstadt on June 23, 1943 and on to Auschwitz on October 28, 1944. Stumbling Stones lie before their last home in Sierichstrasse 140.

The culture tax card for Margarete Dammann in Hallerstrasse 76 reveals that she (again?) was a member of the Jewish Community from January 1, 1938. According to the card, she worked as a clerk and paid slight dues for herself and her daughters up to 1939. The entry for December 6, 1941 reads "migration” – the euphemism for deportation. Margarethe Dammann and her daughters were deported to Jungfernhof, a satellite camp of the Riga ghetto. We do not know when and how Margarete Dammann and her daughter Charlotte perished.

Her elder daughter Gertrud lived there for almost three more years. She married Siegfried Bramfelder (born 1904 in Oppach, Bavaria, deported from Würzburg in November 1941) in a Jewish ceremony conducted by a rabbi in the Riga ghetto. On October 1, 1944, they were both deported on to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. Gertrud’s track is lost there. Her husband survived the camp and returned to Germany. From 1956 to 1958 he was head of the Jewish Community of Würzburg. He died in the USA in 1960.

It is known that Margarete Dammann’s relatives by marriage, the five siblings of her husband from Salzdetfurth – one brother died in infancy – all perished in Nazi concentration camps.

Margarete‘s mother Bertha Güdemann and her sister Hanna were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto via Hannover on July 23, 1942 . Bertha died there on June 30, 1943, Hanna was deported on to Auschwitz on May 15, 1944 and perished there.

The Stumbling Stones commemorating Bertha, Hanna and Margarete were laid in Hildesheim. By initiative of the Hildesheim Goethegymnasium, the stone for Hanna was laid before the highschool she attended.


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


Stand: September 2019
© Ulrike Martiny Schüddekopf

Quellen: 1; (Karte Nr. 18486); StaH 332-5 Standesämter_1101/46/1939 Sterbeurkunde Otto Dammann; 522-1, Jüdische Gemeinden, Deportationslisten; http://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch (eingesehen am 15.2.2015); http://vernetztes-erinnern-hildesheim.de/pages/home/bad-salzdetfurth/personen/helene-baruch-geb.-dammann.php; www.mainpost.de (Artikel v. 6.3.2014) Meldekartei; Göttinger Adressbuch 1927; Prauss, Verfolgt, S. 13f., 38–41; Auskunft Rolf Lohmar v. Stadtarchiv Göttingen v. 24.8.2015; Gespräch mit der Zeitzeugin Frau Schubert, Hamburg, am 14.9.2016; Auskunft von Frau Schäfer, Generalregister Hamburg per E-Mail vom 19.1.2016: Auskunft von Peter Landé, USHMM v. 19.1.2016, Auskunft von Herrn Schlabitz, Bundesarchiv v. 15.1.2016; Auskunft von Frau Tartakowska v. 1.2.2016, Auskunft Gedenkstätte Stutthof.
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