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Elisabeth Mansfeld, 1933
© Privatbesitz

Elisabeth Mansfeld * 1920

Wellingsbütteler Landstraße 165 (Hamburg-Nord, Ohlsdorf)

HIER WOHNTE
ELISABETH MANSFELD
JG. 1920
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
RIGA

further stumbling stones in Wellingsbütteler Landstraße 165:
Dora Canepa, Anna Röhmann, Amalie Röhmann, Martin Röhmann

Elisabeth Mansfeld, born 29.8.1920 in Lüchow, deported to Riga on 6.12.1941 and murdered

Wellingsbütteler Landstraße 165

Elisabeth Mansfeld was born on August 29, 1920 in Lüchow in the region Wendland. She was the daughter of Karoline, called Lina, née Holländer (born April 13, 1882 in Mönchen-Gladbach), and Willi Mansfeld (born August 19, 1877), who came from Salzwedel. According to the Lüchow residents' registers, the merchant Willi Mansfeld lived at Langestraße 46 in 1929 and from 1934 at Drawehnerstraße 1. Elisabeth's paternal grandfather had already set up a tobacco business in Lüchow.

Her uncle's family also lived in Lüchow. Her father's brother Siegmund Mansfeld (born Sept 11, 1869 in Lüchow), who was eight years older, was a trader in furs, raw materials, metals and porcelain. His wife Johanna, née Löwenstein (born January 18, 1870), came from Wusterhausen at river Dosse. Together they had four children born in Lüchow, Ottilie (born January 20, 1900), Margarete (born March 8, 1903), Elli (born May 18, 1906) and Walter (born January 29, 1910). The family had initially lived on a farm at Georgstraße 7. After a fire, Siegmund Mansfeld acquired the house at Kalandstraße 5 and lived there with his family. The Mansfeld brothers presumably worked together in the produce trade.

Elisabeth Mansfeld, known as Liesel, grew up in Lüchow and attended elementary school there. Together with 66 pupils born in 1920/21, she was taught by teacher Hermann Hildebrandt.

Her eldest cousin Ottilie had already gone to this school, as had presumably her other much older cousins. It can be assumed that Elisabeth Mansfeld and her family, like other relatives, went to Salzwedel on the High Holidays to visit the synagogue of the small Jewish Community.

The Mansfeld families were apparently well integrated into rural community life before 1933, as photos from the 1920s show Elisabeth's cousin Elli as a member of the gymnastics team at the Lüchow gymnastics club and Elisabeth's uncle Siegmund Mansfeld in the Lüchow shooting club.

The "produce dealer” (traded in agricultural products) Siegmund Mansfeld had run his business in the village - until the shop windows of his store and several items of porcelain were destroyed by "five tall men in civilian clothing” during the pogrom night in November 1938, according to the police report. The men also destroyed the workshop of the non-Jewish shoemaker Kautz on the first floor. Siegmund Mansfeld subsequently had to pay for all the damage.

In 1939, Elisabeth's family was forced to move into her uncle Siegmund's house at Kalandstraße 5, the "Jews' house” right next to the steeple of St. Johannis Church.

Elisabeth Mansfeld came to Hamburg via Hanover at the age of 19. On June 5, 1940, she initially registered with Edgar Hirsch (see his biography www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) at Brombeerweg 47. She lived and worked there together with Dora Canepa, née Röhmann, as additional household help for five months, from June to October 1940. Afterwards, from October 28, 1940, she lived and worked in the household of Dora Canepa's brother, Martin Röhmann, at Wellingsbütteler Landstraße 165 (see his biography www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de). However, this was only possible for ten months.

On August 31, 1941, she had to move once again. She found accommodation in the Grindel district, at Grindelallee 54, house 3, with Cohen. Just three months later, she received the deportation order and had to leave Hamburg.

On the same train, on December 6, 1941 to Riga-Jungfernhof, her parents Karoline and Willi Mansfeld, her cousin Ottilie Mansfeld, her cousin Walter and his wife Ursula Mansfeld, née Leyser, and their son Heinz were also deported. They boarded the deportation train in Lüneburg. Elisabeth Mansfeld, aged 21, her mother Lina, aged 59, her father Willi, aged 62, and her cousin Ottilie, aged 41, her sister-in-law Ursula, aged 27, and their son Heinz, aged 4 - they were all murdered in Riga.

Her cousin Walter, 31 years old, Deported to Buchenwald concentration camp, was murdered there. Ottilie Mansfeld had previously tried in vain to emigrate to England; nothing is known about Elisabeth Mansfeld and her parents’ intentions to emigrate.

The further fate of her relatives
Elisabeth Mansfeld's other relatives, her uncle Siegmund Mansfeld and his wife Johanna, née Löwenstein, were the last Jews to be deported from Lüchow to Theresienstadt on July 17, 1942. Siegmund Mansfeld died there on April 11, 1943 at the age of 73, Johanna Mansfeld a year later, on April 14, 1944, at the age of 74. Their daughter Elli, 36, a paralegal in Meiningen, was deported to Belzec in May 1942 and murdered. Elisabeth Mansfeld's cousin Margarete was not Jewish by marriage and was one of the last deportees to Theresienstadt on February 9, 1945. She is the only survivor of the Mansfeld family from Lüchow.

In 1995, a memorial plaque for the extended Mansfeld family was placed on the bell tower of St. Johannis Church in Elisabeth's birthplace, adjacent to the Mansfelds' former last home at Kalandstraße 5.
In the same year, an anonymous caller informed the Lüchow town archives that his father had met Willi Mansfeld, Elisabeth's father, as a soldier in 1942 in a work column on the runway in Smolensk, Russia.

Translation: Beate Meyer
Stand: November 2024
© Margot Löhr

Quellen: Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover, Hann. 210 Acc. 2004/025 Nr. 1385; Niedersächsischen Landesarchiv, Bestand NLA Hannover Hann. 210 Acc. 160/98 Nr. 8, fol. 100-101, Deportationsliste; Recherche und Auskünfte Bettina Wolf, Standesamt Lüchow, Geburtsregister 1920, Nr. 76; Historisches Handbuch der jüdischen Gemeinden in Niedersachsen und Bremen, hrsg. von Herbert Obenaus in Zusammenarbeit mit David Bankier und David Fraenkel, Göttingen 2005, Bd. 2, S. 1001–1006 (Lüchow); Axel Kahrs/Christiane Beyer: "Meinen Glauben habe ich verloren". Erinnerungen von Margarete Mansfeld, in: Elke Meyer-Hoos (Hrsg.): Das Hakenkreuz im Saatfeld. Beiträge zur NS-Zeit in den Landkreisen Lüchow-Dannenberg und Salzwedel, Neuaufl., Wustrow 2013, S. 468–471; Elke Meyer-Hoos: Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung: Die Großfamilie Mansfeld, Lüchow, in: dies. (Hrsg.): Das Hakenkreuz im Saatfeld. Beiträge zur NS-Zeit in den Landkreisen Lüchow-Dannenberg und Salzwedel, Neuaufl., Wustrow 2013, S. 450–463; Die Online-Datenbank zur Geschichte des Landkreises Lüchow-Dannenberg, http://www.wendland-archiv.de, eingesehen am: 14.3.2022; Theresienstadt-Lexikon, Margarete Mansfeld, http://www.ghetto-theresienstadt.de/pages/m/mannsfeldm.htm, eingesehen am: 7.4.2022; Zeitzeugin Lydia Kulow, http://www.damals-im-wendland.de/1940-1945-Luechow.htm, eingesehen am: 7.4.2022. Herzlichen Dank an Burghard Kulow!