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Dr. Moses Goldschmidt, etwa 1930er Jahre
© Privatbesitz

Dr. Moses Goldschmidt * 1873

An der Alster 21 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

HIER WOHNTE
DR. MOSES
GOLDSCHMIDT
JG. 1873
FLUCHT 1939
BRASILIEN
TOT 12.8.1943

further stumbling stones in An der Alster 21:
Rosa Glass

Dr. med. Moses Goldschmidt, born 21.10.1939, fled to Brazil 1939, died 12.8.1943 at Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

An der Alster 21

Dr. med. Moses Goldschmidt came from a respected orthodox Jewish family of merchants, resident initially for a long period in Altona, then in Hamburg. He was the elder brother of Clara Goldschmidt (1886-1934), for whom a Stolperstein has been laid at Warburgstrasse 26. The two had five sisters and one brother: Bella born 1876, Meta born 1879, Esther born 1881, Rahel born 1882, Lea born 1885, Meyer born 1887, and Hannah born 1890. With the exception of Clara Goldschmidt, they all survived the Nazi period.

Moses’ father Salomon (1844-1897) died, aged 53, while Moses was still studying; his mother Pauline Perle Lebiah (1848-1917) died, aged 68. Both are buried at the Hamburg Jewish Cemetery at Bornkampsweg.

Moses attended the Royal Christianeum School in Altona and then studied medicine at Würzburg and Freiburg/Breisgau. After conferral of his doctorate he gained his initial medical experience at the St. Georg General Hospital and subsequently at the Eppendorf Hospital. In 1901, he was a ship’s doctor on a sea passage via Southampton, Lisbon and Madeira to Brazil and back. During that same year he took over a practice at the Besenbinderhof in St. Georg and, several years later, was furthermore a doctor at a Hamburg charity hospital. He was also the house doctor for the Atlantic Hotel’s employees’ health insurance company and, when required, was responsible too as the hotel physician for guests.

In 1907, he married Anita Friedmann (born 21.1.1887). The couple had three children: two sons, Hans Werner (1909-1982) and Gerhard Wolfgang (1915-1995), and a daughter Ellen (1910-1986).

Moses was already too old to participate actively in the First World War. However, he provided medical consultations and support to patients of colleagues who were fighting at the front. In addition to working in his own practice he was active at an outpatients’ department.

The marriage of Moses and Anita was dissolved in 1919; in 1921, Moses married Thea (Dorothea) Martens, born on 3. December 1887, who died in 1934.

Moses closed his doctor’s practice in 1936. To avoid Nazi persecution, he had to emigrate in February 1939 to Brazil, where both his sons, Hans-Werner and Gerhard Wolfgang had settled already in 1928 respectively in 1934. His daughter Ellen had already left Hamburg in 1932 and lived in Paris. Here she married a Parsi, a British national. (Parsi is a Hindi word for Persian; Parsis are descended from Persian Zoroastrians who emigrated to India over a 1000 years ago to avoid Muslim religious persecution.) With her Indian-born husband, Ellen had to flee Paris after it fell to the Wehrmacht in June 1940, eventually reaching Bombay (Mumbai) via Vichy-France, Spain, Portugal, Mozambique, and South Africa.

Moses was a cultured, intellectual and life-affirming person, who carried out his profession in a dedicated manner and whose foremost love was for his children.

When he left Germany at the age of 65, the National-Socialist political system had robbed him of all his assets. He therefore arrived practically penniless at his sons in Brazil. In the following years he assisted them in their business. His grandchildren were a great pleasure to him. By contrast, it was not granted to him to see his daughter again. In a letter dated 16 September 1941, he writes to her: "…but what is really painful and disrupts my nights’ sleep, is the thought of being separated from one’s only daughter and her family by thousands of miles and having to get accustomed to the thought that one might never see her again, as who knows, when this war will end, whether I, with my uncertain health and at my age, will even live to see the war’s end?”

Dr. med. Moses Goldschmidt died on 12 August 1943 in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery at Tristeza near Porto Alegre.

His handwritten memoirs were found among his belongings. His granddaughter Anita Fromm née Shroff’s husband, Raymond Fromm in London, reviewed his chronicles and made a typed manuscript out of them. They were published in 2004 by the Hamburg publishing house Ellert & Richter under the title My Life as a Jew in Germany 1873-1939 and, in a valuable time-witness way, describe the Wilhelmine German Empire era, the First World War, the Weimar Republic, the 1923 hyperinflation and its consequences, the gradual rise of the National Socialists, the impact of the Nuremberg Laws, as well as an unpleasant, yet interesting conversation with a Gestapo officer.


Translated by Raymond Fromm

Stand: August 2025
© Raymond & Anita Fromm mit Ergänzungen von Sabine Brunotte