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Pauline Frankenthal (née Wolff) * 1894

Dillstraße 15 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
PAULINE FRANKENTHAL
GEB. WOLFF
JG. 1894
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Dillstraße 15:
Gustav Gabriel Cohn, Siegbert Stephan Frankenthal, Lothar Frankenthal, Judith Moritz, Margot Moritz, Siegmund Nissensohn, Aron Julius Rosemann, Werner Streim, Dr. Siegfried Streim, Sulamith Streim, Johanna Streim, Kurt Salo Streim, James Tannenberg, Senta Tannenberg

Siegbert Stephan Frankenthal, born on 4 June 1894 in Altona, deported to the Lodz Ghetto on 25 Oct. 1941, perished there on 9 Apr. 1942

Pauline Frankenthal, née Wolff, born on 23 Dec. 1894 in Hamburg, deported to the Lodz Ghetto on 25 Oct. 1941, further deported to the Kulmhof (Chelmno) extermination camp on 7 July 1944, murdered

Lothar Frankenthal, born on 2 Aug. 1924 in Hamburg, deported to the Lodz Ghetto on 25 Oct. 1941, deported to Kulmhof (Chelmno) on 7 July 1944, murdered

Dillstrasse 15

Siegbert Stephan Frankenthal was born on 4 June 1894 in Altona as the son of a Jewish family. His parents were Joseph Levy Frankenthal, born on 23 Apr. 1863 in Lübeck and Frieda, née Leser, born on 24 Feb. 1863 in Altona. He grew up with two younger siblings, Alfred (born on 22 Nov. 1895) and Margot (born on 6 Oct. 1904). Margot later learned the profession of office worker (= commercial clerk), but died already in 1926 under unknown circumstances. Joseph Frankenthal passed away on 23 Apr. 1940 and he is buried in the Hamburg-Ohlsdorf Jewish Cemetery, grave number K2-221. Frieda Frankenthal died on 19 Nov. 1932.

Siegbert Frankenthal worked for his father-in-law Michaelis Wolff in his tobacco goods wholesale business at Dammtorstrasse 18 in the late 1920s, probably as a sales representative, merchant, or accountant. At the time of Nazism, however, he was a gymnastics teacher at the Israelite girls’ school on Karolinenstrasse.

His wife, Pauline Frankenthal, née Wolff, was born in Hamburg on 23 Dec. 1894. When their son Lothar was born on 2 Aug. 1924, the couple lived at Hudtwalckerstrasse 16. Her older sister Hedwig Wolff, born on 29 Oct. 1888, also worked in her father’s wholesale business but passed away in 1931; she is buried at grave number K1-84 in the Ohlsdorf Jewish Cemetery. Pauline Frankenthal was a trained office worker with an additional qualification as a stenographer.

In 1933, Siegbert, Pauline, and Lothar Frankenthal moved to live with the Wolff parents-in-law at Dillstrasse 15, where they had already resided in the early 1920s. Together with father Michaelis and mother Sara Wolff, they spent the years before the deportation there. The building belonged to a Jewish foundation once established by Zacharias, Nanette, Mathilde, and Simon Hesse. Jewish people in need lived there rent-free. When the "Law on Tenancies with Jews” ("Gesetz über die Mietverhältnisse mit Juden”) in 1939 caused many Jews to lose their apartments rented from "Aryan” landlords, the Jewish Community housed them mainly in buildings of such foundations, which were then declared "Jews’ houses” ("Judenhäuser”), as was the building at Dillstrasse 15.

Lothar attended the ninth grade of the Talmud Tora School around 1939/ 1940 with homeroom teacher Bamberger. Lothar’s student number was 6108. After finishing school, he apparently took up an apprenticeship as a carpenter (presumably in the carpenter’s workshop of the Jewish Community on Weidenallee), because in the address list of the Lodz Ghetto, he was registered as a carpenter.

On 25 Oct. 1941, the family was deported to the Lodz Ghetto, where they arrived on 26 October. There, on 1 Nov. 1941, they moved into a room without a kitchen for six people at Hanseatenstrasse 42/17. Siegbert and Lothar Frankenthal performed excavation work and shoveled snow in the ghetto.

We know based on letters from the Lodz Ghetto that Siegbert and Pauline Frankenthal maintained close friendships there with colleagues, neighbors, and other members of the Hamburg Jewish Community. In some letters on New Year’s 1942 to friends and colleagues at home, Siegbert Frankenthal reported that they were doing reasonably well and asked whether money could be sent to them so that they could fulfill "some wishes.”

For example, a letter dated 1 Jan. 1942 to Walter Bacher (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) states, "Dear Doctor, I use the first day of the New Year to wish you the best and to thank you for the suggestion that some students write to me on the occasion of the Festival of Lights [Hanukkah]. On behalf of Lothar, please extend special greetings to Inge Reiss, Claus Borchardt, Günther Neustadt, Arno Zimack, and Hilde Dublon. I thank them all most sincerely. (...) In terms of health, we are doing reasonably well, but the weather is cold and wet and it snows almost every day. If perhaps you, together with other colleagues still at work, would send me a sum by banker’s order, I would be very happy and could fulfill some urgent wishes! I often get together with Fräulein Rothschild and Thea Bernstein, we think so often of our former place of work! Please give my best to all colleagues as well as the principal, Fräulein Hirsch, and to the Julius Meyer family and I send my warmest regards to you along with your wife, Your Siegbert Frankenthal and wife as well as Lothar.”

Seven letters overall, preserved in the Lodz archives (thus presumably, they did not reach their addressees) are very similar: Siegbert Frankenthal reported on the weather, mainly inquiring about the wellbeing of his friends and colleagues at home, and asking for money as well. He wrote to some of them that he was looking forward to seeing them again and that he would return the favor if they sent him money, as in the letter to Harry Goldstein from Bogenstrasse 25-27: "You of all people know me best to realize how difficult such a request is for me. So please do not let me down. Maybe one day I can make it up to you! (...) Please reply soon to your old, eternally loyal comrade, Siegbert Frankenthal.”

Whether remittances by mail to the Lodz Ghetto, which were permitted at times, arrived there for the Frankenthals is as unknown as are the "wishes” for which they needed the money.
A few months later, on 9 Apr. 1942, Siegbert Frankenthal died in the ghetto.

Pauline Frankenthal held a "workers’ legitimation card” since 5 Jan. 1943: As a worker in the carpentry shop at Reiter[strasse] 3, she was authorized to pass through the streets after curfew. Despite this job, Pauline and Lothar were taken to the Chelmno extermination camp on 7 July 1944, where they were murdered.

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

Stand: May 2021
© Franziska Harder

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; Hamburger Adressbücher von 1924-1941; Jüdischer Friedhof Ohlsdorf jfhh.org;; Loose, Ingo: Das Vernichtungslager Kulmhof am Ner 1941 bis 1945, in: Deutsche Jüdinnen und Juden in Ghettos und Lagern (1941-1944), Beate Meyer (Hg.), Hamburg 2017, S. 54-75; Löw, Andrea: In der Öde von Lodz. Deutsche Jüdinnen und Juden im Ghetto Litzmannstadt, ebd., S. 24-42; Archiwum Panstwowe w Lodzi, An- und Abmeldungen, Briefe; Irmgard Stein, Jüdische Baudenkmäler in Hamburg, Hamburg 1984.
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