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Gertrud Weidner (née Wagner) * 1898

Dillstraße 16 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
GERTRUD WEIDNER
GEB. WAGNER
JG. 1898
DEPORTIERT 1942
IN AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Dillstraße 16:
Julius Cohn, Paula Cohn, Walter Horwitz, Else Horwitz

Gertrud Weidner, née Wagner, born 28.5.1898, forcibly quartered in a "Jews' house” after 1939, deported to Auschwitz on 11.7.1942, murdered.

Dillstraße 16, Rotherbaum

Gertrud Weidner, née Wagner, was born in Hamburg on May 28, 1898, the fifth of six siblings. Her parents were Moritz and Mary Wagner, née Nathan. Her father ran the company "M. Wagner & Co. Book Auditors and Bankruptcy Trustees”. The Hamburg address book contains entries for Moritz Wagner from 1903 to 1927. From 1906 to 1917, his company was listed as "Wagner und Co.” at Rentzelstraße 5 until 1911, then at Rutschbahn 8 and from 1916 to 1917 at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 85. From 1903 to 1905, the accountant Moritz Wagner lived at Glashüttenstraße 78. In 1917, in addition to the company address, his home was registered at Grindelberg 10 a and from 1918 at Heinrich-Barth-Straße 1.

The family does not appear to have been very wealthy. A document on the Jewish Community's index card for Moritz Wagner states: "Until 1918, he was assessed an annual religious tax of 15 RM, but did not pay it. They were repeatedly brought forward, so that in 1918 there was an arrears of 75 RM. He retired in 1927 due to death.” His file card contains the following note: "1919 arrears remain. Children may later be able to pay. 23/4/1919 not yet able to pay, very suffering, children do not earn much and have to support father.”

The children were brought up according to "Israelite religious custom”. Like her sisters, Gertrud will have attended the "Higher Israelite Girls' School” in Karolinenstraße. According to her siblings, she is said to have worked in her father's business. In another context, her profession is described as "house daughter”, i.e. she learned housekeeping in a household.

On October 27, 1923, she married the non-Jewish Herbert Max Gustav Theodor Weidner, born on September 8, 1896 in Hamburg. Herbert Weidner joined the Hamburg police force on September 8, 1923. Herbert and Gertrud Weidner had no children of their own, although they did have a foster son, Karl-Heinz Wagner, born on April 17, 1926. He was the illegitimate son of Erna Wagner, later married Willroth, Gertrud Weidner's sister.

Herbert Weidner, now a police constable, was retired at the end of October 31, 1937 on the basis of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of April 7, 1933, as his wife was Jewish. Herbert Weidner died on September 23, 1938 and Gertrud Weidner received a widow's pension from the police after his death. According to National Socialist laws, she had to belong to the compulsory organization of the "Reich Association of Jews in Germany”.

She is listed on the membership card from 1940 until July 11, 1942.

According to the Hamburg address book, Gertrud and Herbert Weidner lived at Meerweinstraße 8 from 1931 to 1933 and at Großheidestraße 32 in 1934 and 1935, both in the Winterhude district. There is no entry for the years 1936 to 1938. In 1939 the entry reads: "- Herb., Pol.-Btr., Ericastr. 89a”. There is no entry in the Hamburg address book after 1939. In a letter from the police dated January 1951, the last address given for Gertrud Weidner is Dillstraße 16 in the Grindel district.

This house at Dillstraße 16 was a so-called "Jews' house”: at the beginning of 1939, the Hamburg Jewish community had begun to move Jewish residents from their previous apartments into houses that it owned (or had owned, but which it had to continue to use to concentrate the Jewish population) on the instructions of the social welfare authorities. The living conditions in the "Jews' houses” were extremely poor, as the people assigned there had to share rooms and apartments and thus lived in cramped conditions with other persecuted Jews. In the "agonizing confinement, Jewish functionaries had to settle many a dispute between the residents. The occupancy density was constantly increased, often falling short of the intended 8 square meters per person,” according to a later historical study.

The historian Angela Schwarz demonstrated a connection between the housing shortage and deportations in her work on the residential homes that were converted into "Jews' houses”: The 1,000 Hamburg apartments destroyed by bombs by September 30, 1941 were to find a replacement in the estimated 900 to 1,000 apartments that would be vacated by the deportations of Jews.

A certificate from the Jewish Community of Hamburg states that Gertrud Weidner was deported on July 11, 1942 on the orders of the Hamburg Gestapo headquarters to an unknown destination. Several letters from the Economic Office of the Police and the Personnel Office speak trivially of an "evacuation to Theresienstadt”, for which the payment of the widow's pension was stopped at the end of July 1942.

In fact, on 11 July 1942, a transport with 1002 Jews from northern Germany, including 294 Jews from Hamburg, left Hamburg for Auschwitz (different figures: 1005/299 from Hamburg), whereby the deportees themselves and the Jewish organizations were kept in the dark about the destination due to special secrecy measures. On October 7, 1958, the International Red Cross confirmed that Gertrud Weidner was deported to Auschwitz on July 11, 1942. Like - as far as is known - all participants in this transport, she was also murdered there.

After the war, Gertrud Weidner was declared dead at her brother's request.

The exhibition "We don't need Jews here - Hamburg's Jewish police officers - repressed, persecuted, forgotten (1918-1952)” paid tribute to Gertrud Weidner's fate, among others.

Gertrud Weidner's siblings Hugo Wagner, Bella Homann, Martha Schmidt and Erna Willroth survived the war. They lived in so-called privileged mixed marriages. Erna Willroth was deported to Theresienstadt on February 14, 1945, where she was liberated by Allied troops.

Her brother Gustav Wagner, born March 28, 1896, was arrested together with his wife in August 1939 for listening to foreign radio stations and sentenced to one year and six months in prison on April 20, 1940. While his wife, a non-Jewish woman, was released after seven months, Gustav Wagner was deported to Auschwitz after serving his sentence. He died there on November 11, 1943 and a Stumbling Stone was laid for him at Fraenkelstraße 6 (for his biography, see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de).

Translation: Beate Meyer
Stand: November 2024
© Martin Bähr

Quellen: Hamburger Adressbuch, Jg. 1903 – 1939; StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II 1696 Gefangenenakte Frieda Wagner; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 10398 Hugo Friedrich Wagner, 11735 Auguste Wagner, 12273 Bella Homann, 13134 Martha Schmidt, 19119 Gustav Wagner, 23426 Erna Willroth, 48105 Karl-Heinz Wagner, 14368 Frieda Wagner; zu Herbert Weidner StaH 331-1 I Polizeibehörde I 142 Maßnahmen zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums; zu den "Judenhäusern": Meyer, Beate: Die Deportation der Hamburger Juden 1941 - 1945. in: Meyer, Beate (Hrsg.): Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der Hamburger Juden 1933 - 1945. Hamburg 2006. S. 50 u. 51 und Lorenz, Ina: Verdrängung und Vernichtung der Juden unter dem Nationalsozialismus. In Zusammenarbeit mit Saskia Rohde. Hamburg 1992. S, 215 f; Christopher Browning beschreibt den erzwungenen Umzug in Judenhäuser als "eine Art Ghettoisierung" im Rahmen der Strategie der Separierung der Juden in einer Zwangsgemeinschaft. (Browning, Christopher: Die Entfesselung der "Endlösung". München 2003, S. 255); Schwarz, Angela: Von den Wohnstiften zu den "Judenhäusern". in: Ebbinghaus, Angelika; Linne, Karsten (Hrsg.): Kein abgeschlossenes Kapitel. Hamburg im "Dritten Reich". Hamburg 1997. S. 238, 240, 242;zur Diskussion über den tatsächlichen Bestimmungsort des Deportationszuges s.: Sielemann, Jürgen: Der Zielort des Hamburger Deportationszuges vom 11. Juli 1942. In: ZHG, Bd. 95 2009. S. 91 – 102; https://www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/prisoner/te-willroth-erna (26.02.2020); http://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/list_ger_nwd_420711.html (17.04.2019); https://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/list_ger_nwd_420711.html, Zugriff 10.1.2023.