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Heinrich Frederig * 1901

Greifswalder Straße Ecke Helmuth-Hübner-Gang (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

KZ Sachsenhausen
ermordet März 1945

Heinrich Frederig, born 24 Apr. 1901 in Frankfurt am Main, declared date of death 8 May 1945

Last address: Beyerstraße 8 (today corner of Greifswalderstraße and Helmuth-Hübener-Gang)

Heinrich Frederig attended school in Nieder-Ramstadt near Darmstadt until he was 14, then apprenticed as a baker from 1915-1918. In 1918 he was called for military duty. After the First World War he moved to Hamburg and worked as a deckhand at the state-owned company "Strom und Hafenbau” (responsible for construction projects in the Port of Hamburg), where he remained until he was let go at the end of 1930. He was unemployed until his arrest in 1935. He married Frieda Gravert (*1902) in 1930. The couple had one son, Hans-Joachim (Lentz), born in 1929, before they were married, and a daughter Liselotte, born in March 1935, only a few weeks after Heinrich’s arrest.
Heinrich Frederig was a member of the KPD (German Communist Party). He was arrested by the Gestapo in January 1935 and sent to the Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp.

The Hamburg Regional Court sentenced him to six years in prison for "conspiracy to commit high treason” in August 1935. He was first sent to the Fuhlsbüttel prison, then transferred to the Aschendorfer Moor prison camp near Papenburg/Ems in March 1936. It is possible that he escaped over the nearby border to Holland in September 1938. He was probably sent back to Germany, and he was back in prison at Fuhlsbüttel in June 1939. In early July of the same year he was sent back to the Emsland camps, this time to the Esterwegen prison camp.

After serving his prison sentence he was transferred to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in June 1942. The last sign of life was a letter sent from there in January 1945 to his wife. According to statements by witnesses, he was transferred to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp shortly thereafter, and was detailed to its satellite camp at Sandborstel near Bremervörde. He was already in poor health, and was possibly a victim of the typhoid fever epidemic that raged there.
During the ten years that he was in prison, his wife Frieda, who took a job as a waitress at the Jäger train station restaurant, was left to support herself and her daughter Liselotte alone. As the wife of a "traitor” she was refused any subsidies from the Welfare Agencies.

The Stolperstein in memory of Heinrich Frederig was laid in 2007 at the corner of Greifswalderstraße and Helmuth-Hübener-Gang, where he lived with his family before his arrest.

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: AfW, Entschädigungsakte; Auskunft des Archivs der Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen, D 1 A/1039, Bl. 079; VAN (Hg.), Totenliste Hamburger Widerstandskämpfer und Verfolgter, Hamburg 1968; AB 1933,1938 und 1940.