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Wohnhaus Mittelstraße 29
© Stadtteilarchiv Hamm

Mindel Saalfeld * 1892

Carl-Petersen-Straße 29 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

HIER WOHNTE
MINDEL SAALFELD
JG. 1892
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ
1942 CHELMNO
ERMORDET

Mindel Saalfeld, born on 6 Apr. 1892, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to the getto of Lodz, deported on 4 May 1942 to Chelmno

Carl-Petersen-Straße 29 (Mittelstraße 29)

Mindel Minna Saalfeld came from a family of merchants in Lübeck. Her father, Jacob Saalfeld, born in 1858, was a master watchmaker by trade and dealt in antiques. Her mother, Fanny, née Levy, born in 1857, had not learned a profession. Jacob Saalfeld purchased the house at Marlesgrube 7 in Lübeck, where he lived with his family until his death in 1935.

The eldest of the four children who reached adulthood was Franziska, born on July 8, 1886. She was followed, about a year later, by the only son, Leopold, whose Jewish name was Bergold (born October 19, 1887), and Regina (born August 10, 1889). After her, another sister was born, Mindel, on April 6, 1892. She was named after her grandmother Mindel Saalfeld, who had died two years earlier. Mindel, or Minna as she was also called, remained the youngest.

The family lived as orthodox Jews, and the children attended the Israelite (=Jewish) school. No details are known about their childhood and youth. Only the son Leopold learned a trade; he became a commercial clerk.

After World War I, the two older siblings left Lübeck. Franziska was the first to move, relocating to Hamburg in 1920, where she married her fiancé Siegmund/Sigmund Mendel Mindus, born on September 30, 1884, in Jemgum, East Frisia. As a messenger at the Alexander Carlebach Bank, his income was not enough to rent an apartment of their own, so they initially lived in a sublet, even after their two sons were born: Julius on April 1, 1923, and Werner on October 5, 1924.

Their mother, Fanny Saalfeld, died on December 20, 1924, in Lübeck.

Leopold/Bergold Saalfeld married Helene Sternfeld, who was the same age, from Baden-Baden. They initially settled in Leipzig. Their only daughter, Margot, was born there on April 20, 1926. In 1933, Leopold returned temporarily with his family to his parents’ home at Marlesgrube 7 in Lübeck.

His sister Regina married the merchant Max Rosenthal. On July 17, 1928, their only child, a daughter named Fina, was born. They lived in Lübeck in the neighboring house at Marlesgrube 9, where Max Rosenthal ran an art and antiques shop. He died in 1935.

After her mother’s death, Mindel/Minna Saalfeld remained with her father until his death. He died on December 25, 1935. It is not known what she inherited after the sale of her father’s house. Since there is no evidence of either her own income or welfare benefits later on, it can be assumed that she was not entirely destitute when she came to Hamburg. There is no indication whatsoever of any efforts to emigrate.

On April 30, 1937, Mindel Saalfeld joined the Hamburg Jewish Community, listing her occupation as "domestic worker.” Her first address was as a subtenant at Grindelallee 134 I; her next was with her sister Franziska and her brother-in-law Siegmund Mindus at Kielortallee 22. There, in the Oppenheimer Stift, the family of four, who were dependent on welfare, had moved into an apartment on May 11, 1928.

After Jews were banned from attending German schools in November 1938, Margot Saalfeld, Franziska’s and Minna’s niece, had to leave the municipal elementary school in Lübeck; she then attended the Israelitische Töchterschule at Karolinenstraße 35 in Hamburg. She commuted daily between the two cities.

Apparently, Mindel Saalfeld moved in as a domestic worker with Max Haas at the end of 1939; he lived with his family at Mittelweg 29 in Rotherbaum. She presumably worked on a "board and lodging” basis, meaning in exchange for room and board and a small allowance. On November 5, 1940, the Jewish community assessed her for the minimum contribution of 12 Reichsmarks for the year 1940. She paid the full amount on November 25, 1940, and was subsequently exempted from further contributions.

In the fall of 1941, the deportations of Hamburg’s Jews began. Minna Saalfeld and her relatives from the Oppenheimer Stift, her sister Franziska Mindus with her husband Siegmund and their sons Julius and Werner (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de), were ordered to board the first transport "for reconstruction in the East” on October 25, 1941, bound for "Litzmannstadt” in German-occupied Łódź in the Warthegau.

The organization of the deportations was not yet well-established. On the list of 1,000 people compiled by the Gestapo, Minna Saalfeld was listed with the occupation "domestic worker” and the address Mittelstraße 29, i.e., in Hamburg-Hamm. For various reasons, a number of people were struck from this transport list. For these cases, the Gestapo had prepared a replacement list of 200 people. Among them were the Haas family, Mindel Saalfeld’s employers and landlords: Max (born April 16, 1895, in Borken), Lilli, née Weichselbaum (born September 24, 1907, in Berlin), and their son Manfred (born March 5, 1930, in Hamburg) (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de).

They were to report to the lodge house on Moorweide, where staff members of the Jewish community cared for them as best they could, while the Gestapo monitored them and prepared their expulsion from the German Reich a process that entailed the loss of all valuables and all rights.

In addition to these individuals designated by the Gestapo for transport to the "Litzmannstadt” ghetto, others volunteered to join them, so that ultimately a train carrying 1,034 deportees departed on October 25, 1941, from the Hannover station, located south of Hamburg’s main station.

The ghetto consisted of a quarter of residential buildings where a Jewish self-administration had been established under Gestapo control. This administration was responsible for the entire organization within the ghetto, which initially meant housing and the assignment of work. Mindel Saalfeld was housed with her landlords from Mittelweg at Hausiererstraße 6/3.

Building on the textile industry that existed in Lodz for a long time, many textile workshops operated in the ghetto, where, among other things, uniforms for the German Wehrmacht were manufactured. Mindel Minna Saalfeld worked as a seamstress.

At times, there was postal and financial communication between the ghetto and Hamburg. On December 6, 1941 Mindel Saalfeld wrote a postcard to "Mrs. Illy Himmelstern” at "Hammer Landstraße 217.” The postcard bears no postmark; it was never mailed, but it was also not destroyed and is now in the archive in Lodz.
The text reads:
"My dear ones!
I hope you are all well. I simply cannot understand why I haven’t heard anything from you, my dear ones. Mail and money arrive here daily via money orders, yet I receive no word from you. Have you two dear ones forgotten me entirely? I really cannot understand it, since I’ve already written to you three times. How is the work going for Herbert, and you, Illy? Have you heard any good news from your loved ones? As I’ve already written, I’m living with Haas; they send their warmest regards. Well, my dears, heartfelt greetings and kisses from your loving Mia.”

December 6, 1941, was the day of the last autumn transport from Hamburg in 1941. Apparently, Minna Saalfeld knew nothing about it. Along with him, her brother Leopold Bergold, her sister-in-law Helene, and her niece Margot, as well as her widowed sister Regina Rosenthal and her daughter Fina, were deported from Lübeck to Riga-Jungfernhof, where all traces of them are lost (see www.stolpersteine-luebeck.de).

The nature of Minna Saalfeld’s relationship with Ida Himmelstern, known as Illy, who was thirteen years her junior, remains unclear. She lived without her husband at Hammer Landstraße 214. Ida Himmelstern, née Röper, was the "Aryan” wife of the Jewish butcher Hermann Himmelstern. Their marriage was not considered privileged, as they had no living non-Jewish children. Their twins, born in 1934, had died one day after birth. To protect his wife, Ida and Hermann Himmelstern separated. He registered at Rutschbahn 25a as of January 31, 1940. It cannot be verified why the card was not sent.

Hermann Himmelstern was deported to Theresienstadt on the last transport from Hamburg on February 14, 1945; he lived to see the end of the Nazi regime and eventually emigrated to South Africa in 1951 with his wife Ida.

The extermination camp in German-occupied Poland was established in late 1941 in Chelmno/Kulmhof, approximately 70 km northwest of Łódź. Initially, Jews from the surrounding area were killed there with carbon monoxide; beginning in early 1942, Jewish ghetto residents from Łódź were also killed in the same manner and buried in a nearby forest.

When, after a one-month hiatus, the extermination of Jews from the ghetto in Kulmhof/Chelmno resumed on May 4, 1942, Mindel Saalfeld was among them. In the ghetto administration’s address list, her name is crossed out; under "Remarks” it reads: "Deportation on May 4, 1942.”

The only person from Mindel Saalfeld’s immediate circle to die in the ghetto was her brother-in-law, Siegmund Mindus, on March 18, 1942; he was buried in the ghetto cemetery, while the others, like Mindel herself, were deported to Kulmhof/Chelmno and murdered there: her sister Franziska Mindus along with her son Werner on May 15, 1942, and the Haas family on September 10, 1942. The date and place of Julius Mindus’s death in the ghetto of Lodz or outside are unknown.

Due to an illegible entry on the deportation list, the Stolperstein commemorating Mindel Saalfeld was mistakenly laid at Carl-Petersen-Straße 29 (formerly Mittelstraße 29) rather than at Mittelweg 29.

Translator: Erwin Fink /changes Beate Meyer
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2026
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9; Hamburger Adressbücher; StAH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 e 2, Band 1, 5; Arolsen Online Archiv; Archivum Panstwowe Lodz; Kugler-Weiemann, Heidemarie, Stolpersteine in Lübeck, Fleischhauerstraße 1 – Familie Saalfeld, 2008; Lange, Paula, Stolpersteine Hamburg, Rutschbahn 41, Mindus, 2015.
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