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Breindel Tzirel und Pinkus Majer Stimler (Mitte), (2. R.v.l.n.r.) Samuel (Semi), Eduard Edward (Eddie, Eddy), Zippora (Tzipora), Siegfried (Salomon Leb), (3. Reihe) Markus Jakob (Max), Sarah, Charlotte (Chaja), Frieda (Friedel), Hermann (Hirsch) und Isaak
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Jakob Stimler * 1912

Stresemannstraße 108 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Pauli)

HIER WOHNTE
JAKOB STIMLER
JG. 1912
´POLENAKTION` 1938
BENTSCHEN / ZBASZYN
ERMORDET IM
BESETZTEN POLEN

further stumbling stones in Stresemannstraße 108:
Pinkus Majer Stimler, Breindel Tzirel Stimler, Isaak Stimler, Eduard Eddie Stimler, Chaja Klara Stimler, Samuel Stimler, Zheni Stimler

Pinkus Majer (Meier, Pinka, Pinchas) Stimler, born 27.2.1875 in Brzesko, Galicia, on 28.10.1938 forcibly expelled across the German-Polish border near Zbąszyń (German: Bentschen), murdered in occupied Poland

Breindel Tzirel (Bertha Cerl) Stimler, née Pistrong, born 12.2.1875 in Radomysl, Galicia, on 28.10.1938 forcibly expelled across the German-Polish border near Zbąszyń (German: Bentschen), murdered in occupied Poland

Isaak Stimler, born 22.11.1906 in Brzesko, Galicia, on 28.10.1938 forcibly expelled across the German-Polish border near Zbąszyń (German: Bentschen), murdered in occupied Poland

Jakob Stimler, born 5.5.1912 in what was then Altona, on 28.10.1938 forcibly expelled across the German-Polish border near Zbąszyń (German: Bentschen), murdered in occupied Poland

Edward Edward Eddie (Eddy) Stimler, born 5.4.1914 in what was then Altona, forcibly expelled on 28.10.1938 across the German-Polish border near Zbąszyń (German: Bentschen), murdered in occupied Poland

Chaja Klara Stimler, née Engländer, born 27.10.1915 in Cologne, forcibly expelled on 28.10.1938 across the German-Polish border near Zbąszyń (German: Bentschen), murdered in occupied Poland

Samuel Stimler, born 15.1.1917 in what was then Altona, forcibly expelled on 28.10.1938 across the German-Polish border near Zbąszyń (German: Bentschen), murdered in occupied Poland

Zheni Eugenie Stimler, born in 1927 in what was then Altona, forcibly expelled on 28.10.1938 across the German-Polish border near Zbąszyń (German: Bentschen), murdered in occupied Poland

Stresemannstraße 108 (St. Pauli)

The Jewish couple Pinkus Majer (also: Meier, Pinka, Pinchas) Stimler, born on February 27, 1875 in Breszko, Galicia, and Breindel Tzirel (also: Cerl Bertha) Stimler, née Pistrong recte Eisland, born on February 12, 1875 in Radomysl, Galicia, lived after their marriage first in Breszko and then in Radomysl. Both places are now part of Poland. Between 1907 and 1909 the couple settled in the then independent Prussian city of Altona.

Their granddaughter Cäcilie Landau, called Polly, described Pinkus Majer Stimler in her memoirs as strictly Orthodox. She called him a Talmud scholar and Tzadik (an honorary title in Judaism for persons of righteousness) and described him as a devoted husband and father. His birthplace, Brzesko, was near Krakow and Bobowa, where the Bobov Hasidic community was founded, which is now based in Brooklyn, New York.

According to Cäcilie Landau’s report, Breindel Tzirel Stimler had also enjoyed a strict Orthodox upbringing. She was a caring housewife who strictly observed the Jewish dietary laws (kashrut) and always made sure that her house was beautiful and well-kept, and that hospitality was always a priority.

Pinkus Majer Stimler lost an eye in an accident: One evening, while still in Brezsko, when Pinkus Majer Stimler was about to finish his nightly Talmud studies, the kerosene lamp went out. He took a piece of wood and carved a thin piece in the shape of a candle to light it. A splinter flew up and injured his eye so badly that it had to be operated on. The Bobov Grand Rabbi Ben Zion Halberstam (1874-1941) advised him to go to Germany for the operation. Pinkus Majer Stimler followed the advice. He traveled to Altona with his wife and four children. The doctors replaced the injured eye with a glass eye. As soon as he wore his glasses, no one could tell that one eye was artificial.

Pinkus Majer Stimler did not return to Galicia. He took up residence for himself and his family in Altona.

Five of the ten children of Pinkas and Breindel Stimler were born in Poland:
Charlotte (Chaja) on May 2, 1898, Sarah on March 1, 1900, Hermann (Hirsch) on July 11, 1902, Zippora (Eigra) on July 31, 1904, these four were born in Radomysl. The fifth child, Isaac, was born on November 22, 1906 in Breszko.

The other five children were born in Altona: Salomon Leb (Siegfried) on June 5, 1909, Frieda Jette (Friedel) on November 7, 1910, Markus Jakob (Max), on May 5, 1912, Eduard Edward Edmund (Eddie, Eddy) on April 5, 1914, and Samuel (Semi) on January 15, 1917.

A Page of Testimony at Yad Vashem, written by Pinkus Majer Stimler’s niece Sarah Schulewitz from Bnei Brak/Tel Aviv, suggests that another child lived in the family, Zheni (Eugenia) Stimler, born in 1927. (Confirmation of this can be found in entries about the Stimler family at geni.com and ancestry.de.) However, we do not know whether Zheni was a child of Pinkus Majer and Breindel Tzirel Stimler or lived in the family as a relative.

All of Pinkus Majer and Breindel Tzirel Stimler's children went to the Altona Jewish schools on Kleine Papagoyen-Straße and Palmaille. The family was very musical. Charlotte played the piano very well, Isaak and Siegfried even played four-handed, and Siegfried also played the violin.

After their immigration, the Stimler family always lived in Altona. Pinkus Majer Stimler initially ran a clothing store there, then a wholesale goods business, and from 1911 to 1920 a clothing store again. The family lived at several addresses until they were able to buy the building at Kleine Gärtnerstraße 75 in 1919. This street, renamed Stresemannstraße in 1930, was called General-Litzmann-Straße from 1933, and since 1945 it has been called Stresemannstraße again.

Here, Pinkus Majer Stimler traded in sacks after 1920, until he started a wholesale haberdashery business in 1925, which developed successfully. He sold buttons, threads, buckles, needles, zippers, stockings and perfumes, among other things, which small traders offered from house to house.

Unlike the many Jews in Altona who had immigrated from Poland, Pinkus Majer Stimler continued to wear the Hasidic costume with shtreimel and beketsche (fur headgear and frock coat) as well as sidelocks (peyes) visible in his business premises, which he pushed behind his ears outside.

Daughter Charlotte Stimler married on March 11, 1920 in Altona the merchant and Rabbi Lemel (also: Alter Usher Leonel Halevi) Landau, born on February 26, 1888 in Sanok/Galicia. He was a great-grandson of the Prague Chief Rabbi Ezechiel Landau. Lemel Landau ran a clothing store at Schulterblatt 65. The couple lived with their children: Toby (Toni), born on February 9, 1922, Cäcilie (Polly), born on October 9, 1923, and Sarah (Sari), born on October 21, 1927, at Brunnenhofstraße 16.

After graduating from school, six of the Stimler children worked in their parents’ haberdashery wholesale business.

After leaving school in Altona, Siegfried Stimler completed a commercial apprenticeship at the textile wholesaler Seeligmann & Frank in Hamburg. He then worked in his father's company.

Frieda Stimler first attended the Gronesche Commercial School in Hamburg and then joined her father's company. In 1932, she took over management when Pinkus Majer Stimler withdrew from the company.

After the National Socialists came to power, the company, like all Jewish-owned businesses, suffered from increasing discrimination and boycotts, so that business results declined rapidly. Pinkus Majer and Breindel Stimler could no longer meet the interest and repayment obligations for the building plot at General-Litzmann-Straße 75. They lost it through compulsory auction to the mortgage creditor, the Altonaer Unterstützungs-Institut (later taken over by the Hamburger Sparcasse). The company and family residence therefore had to be moved to the rented building at General-Litzmann-Straße 108 in 1935.

In line with the actual company management, the haberdashery trade operated under the name Frieda Stimler from 1936. In 1936, she married the Cologne-born merchant Jacob (Yakoov) Wendum, born on May 12, 1902 in Krakow, in Frankfurt am Main. The couple had a daughter named Goldie.

Isaak Stimler also lived at General-Litzmann-Straße 108. He was married to Klara (Chaja), née Engländer, born on October 27, 1915 in Cologne.

On October 28, 1938, around 17,000 Jews of Polish origin were forcibly expelled from the German Reich across the Polish border as part of the so-called Poland Action. The Polish government had previously threatened to confiscate the passports of Poles living abroad. This would have rendered them stateless. The Nazi government therefore feared that thousands of "Eastern Jews" would remain permanently on German territory. Without warning and without regard to their identity, men, women and children were picked up from their workplaces or homes throughout the German Reich, rounded up at various locations and deported the same day by train across the Polish border near Zbąszyń (Bentschen), Chojnice (Konitz) in Pomerania and Bytom (Beuthen) in Upper Silesia. The costs of the deportation operation were to be borne by the Reich budget, "insofar as they […] cannot be collected from the deported foreigners".

From Hamburg, which since April 1938 also included Altona, about a thousand people were forcibly transported to Neu Bentschen (today Zbąszynek) and from there forcibly driven across the Polish border to Zbąszyń, about 10 km away.
Among those expelled were the couple Pinkus Majer and Breindel Tzirel Stimler with their children: Max, Eddy, Siegfried, Samuel Semi and Isaak Stimler with his wife Klara (Chaja) and Charlotte with her husband Lemel Landau and their three daughters Toby (Tony), Cäcilie (Polly) and Sara (Sari) as well as Frieda's husband Jacob Wendum and Zheni Stimler.
Siegfried Stimler was the only one allowed to return to Hamburg for a few weeks in June 1939 to settle personal affairs. When he found no way to leave Germany legally, he fled to Belgium in July 1939 together with Jacob Wendum, who had been smuggled out of Zbąszyń, and then to the Free Zone of France in 1940. There he married a woman with the first name Sofie. In September 1943, the Gestapo arrested him in Nice, and on November 20, he was transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp via the Drancy transit camp. He remained a prisoner in the Monowitz concentration camp (Buna camp) until his liberation on January 27, 1945. He owed his survival to his school friend Leo Ziegel from Altona, who hid the almost starving Siegfried Stimler in an unused chimney and fed him until Siegfried recovered. Siegfried Stimler contracted a severe kidney and heart condition as a result of forced labour, hunger and poor treatment, as well as a severe foot condition due to infection and frostbite of the foot. He arrived with a transport for liberated prisoners of war, prisoners and French workers back to France. There he found his wife, who had been interned as a British citizen but not deported. In July 1946 they emigrated to the USA. Here Siegfried Stimler took the first name Jack.

The other forcibly expelled members of the Stimler family remained in Zbąszyń until the camp was dissolved in August/September 1939. They were allowed to enter Poland with all the other refugees. Each family had been instructed to go to the father's birthplace, usually to the small shtetls. So the Stimlers initially stayed in Pinkus Majer Stimler's birthplace of Brzesko with his sister Rivke Zimet. Pinkus Majer Stimler wrote to his son Hermann in London in August 1939 that his sons Max, Samuel Semi and Eddy worked in a luggage factory in Tarnow not far from Brzesko and were paid eight zloty a week. They were later used for forced labor.
The surviving members of the Stimler family are said to have been in the Bochnia forced labour camp near Krakow since 1940, where 3,000 to 4,000 prisoners had to toil for the "Deutsche Werkstätte ZFH" (Central Office for Craft Supplies). Almost all of the prisoners in this camp were transferred to the Szebnie forced labor camp southeast of Krakow in September 1943. About 250 prisoners initially remained in Bochnia. They were supposed to have been transferred to the Plaszow concentration camp near Krakow in February 1944.

The fate of Pinkus Majer and Breindel Tzirel Stimler, as well as that of the other family members, is not known for certain. According to a statement by the witness Yitzack Landau, a nephew of Pinkus Majer, Pinkus Majer died of cancer in the Brzesko ghetto and was buried in the presence of very few people. Breindel Tzirel Stimler was last seen in Bochnia at the beginning of 1943, when she was taken away together with other elderly people. There was never another sign of life from them and no one returned. It is therefore safe to assume that in addition to Breindel Stimler, Max, Eddy, Samuel Semi and Isaak Stimler and his wife Klara (Chaja), née England, were also deported and murdered. Zheni Stimler is said to have perished in a ghetto, according to the above-mentioned Page of Testimony.

When Jakob Wendum was arrested along with the others on October 28, 1938, his wife Frieda Wendum, née Stimler, was given a short reprieve. She had to pack the essentials for her one-year-old child Goldie and then go with her straight to Altona railway station. However, she did not show up there. She managed to sell the warehouse of the haberdashery wholesaler and in December 1938, she fled Hamburg with Goldie. Both initially stayed in Cologne with relatives for three days, then illegally crossed the border, initially heading for Brussels. Shortly afterwards they headed for Antwerp. Jacob Wendum, who had fled Zbąszyń with Siegfried Stimler, found his family again in Antwerp shortly before the outbreak of war. In September 1939, Frieda and Jacob Wendum escaped to the Free Zone in the south of France with their daughter Goldie. After two months of wandering around, they returned to Antwerp, Van Imenelstraat 3. When the Germans occupied Belgium in May 1940, Frieda Wendum took off her wig and dyed her hair blonde. Disguised as a "non-Jew" with a headscarf, she risked shopping outside the house. Her husband, whose appearance seemed too "Jewish" to them, never left the apartment. The small family was in danger of being discovered because of the constant crying of one-and-a-half-year-old Goldie. In her desperation, Frieda Wendum gave her daughter into the care of a Belgian couple.
Jakob and Frieda Wendum were sent to the Diepenbeek forced labor camp in the province of Limburg on January 2, 1941, apparently pursuant to the German "Ordinance on Police Measures in Certain Areas of Belgium and Northern France of 12 November 1940". From November 1940 onwards, several hundred Jews from Antwerp were taken to the Limburg area. The prisoners stayed there for several months under precarious conditions. During 1941, they were allowed either to return to Antwerp or to settle in certain municipalities of the Kingdom (those belonging to Brussels and Liége). Information from the local authorities shows that they were housed either in unoccupied houses, in schools or in barracks. They were allowed to move freely within the municipality but were not allowed to leave it under any circumstances and had to report regularly to the municipality hall.
After their release from Diepenbeek, the Wendums moved to Brussels because they believed they could go into hiding more easily there. Jakob and Frieda Wendum lived in an empty house in unheated rooms with a damaged roof at 66 Rue Richard van der Veldestraat. The rooms were constantly damp and cold. Frieda Wendum would venture out into the street at night, risking her life, to get something to eat. This was only enough for one meal a day. Frieda Wendum weighed only 80 pounds at the time.
In October 1944, the Gestapo entered the couple's hideout and took them out of the house at three in the morning, during which Frieda Wendum was also beaten. They were taken to the Brussels Gestapo building on Avenue Louise. After about two days, they were transferred to the Kazerne Dossin camp in Mechelen. Both remained there for about three to four weeks.

The Arolsen Archives later reported that an envelope bearing Frieda Wendum's name and the inscription ‘239/XXVII’ had been found, suggesting that Frieda Wendum had been assigned to transport no. 27 to Auschwitz, which, however, did not depart after the liberation of Belgium on 25 October 1944.
Goldie Wendum's foster parents initially refused to give up the child, who no longer knew her mother, after almost five years, until the child finally wanted to go to her parents. The Wendums remained in Brussels until 1949 and then went to the USA.

Lemel, Charlotte, Toby, Cecilia and Sara Landau
Charlotte, née Stimler, and her husband Lemel Landau were also forcefully expelled to Zbąszyń together with their three daughters Toby, Cäcilie and Sara. They left Zbąszyń in August 1939 and travelled to Sanok in the Carpathian foothills, the birthplace of Lemel Landau. There they initially stayed with one of Lemel Landau's cousins. A week after their arrival, World War II began. After a short period of wandering, the family, who spoke little Yiddish and no Polish, returned to Sanok. The Gestapo forced all Jews to work in their forced labor camps. Around the spring of 1940, deportations from Sanok and other places to concentration camps began. The Landau family hid in the woods. They crossed the River San, a tributary of the Vistula, the opposite side of which belonged to the Soviet-occupied part of Poland. Partly on foot and partly by train, they reached the home of Dr. Leib Landau in the Lviv area, a cousin of Lemel Landau. He let them have a summer house where they could live for a while. In Lviv (Lemberg), the two sisters Toby and Cäcilie tried to sell socks at a market to earn money. They only escaped arrest for illegal trade by the Russian police with the help of other Jews.

In the summer of 1940, the Soviet government deported all Jewish refugees who had fled from the German-occupied western part of Poland to the Soviet-occupied eastern part of Poland to the Siberian taiga, including the Landau family. After a seven-week train journey with about 50 or 60 people in a cattle car, the people arrived in the Krasnoyarsk administrative district on the Yenisei River, about 3300 km east of Moscow. A barge transported them to their final destination, a dense forest area. The Jewish refugees were housed in barracks for 50 to 60 people each. In the harsh climate, the men had to fell trees while the women and girls removed the branches from the trees. Lemel Landau fell ill with a heart condition, Charlotte Landau had a serious kidney stone problem. They stayed in the barracks with Sara, the youngest daughter. Cäcilie and Toby had to work outside. They were told that they had to get used to the hard work, otherwise they would not survive. For the work in temperatures of minus 40 to 50 degrees Celsius, they were given warm clothing and boots, but each only one slice of bread per day. During the mild season, which only lasted three months in the area, the three sisters collected mushrooms, berries and other edible things whenever they could.

After Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the Polish government leader in exile, Sikorski, concluded an agreement with the Soviet government on 30 July on the Formation of a Polish army in the East (Sikorski-Maisky Agreement). The Soviet government then issued an amnesty for Poles who had fled from Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland between 1939 and 1941 and had been deported to the Soviet Union.
The Landau family was given the opportunity to go to Minusinsk, a city in the Krasnoyarsk region where many Russian Jews lived and secretly followed their faith. The office of the local Jewish Social Agency helped the Landaus find accommodation and, like other Jews in Minusinsk, provided them with fuel and food for the first few days. The family members soon learned to speak Russian and Yiddish. Depending on the season, everyone worked on farms and in the fields until the harvest.

The time in Minusinsk turned out to be a relatively problem-free phase of exile. Lemel Landau, along with other Jews in the city, carried out his religious duties, albeit secretly. Cecilia, who had received as a child a manicure set from her uncle Siegfried, gradually learned hand care and earned money as a manicurist.

After the end of the war, it took until the end of April 1946 for the Landau family to leave Minusinsk and reach Krakow seven weeks later. There, the Jewish Joint and the UNRRA (United Relief and Rehabilitation Agency) supplied the people with food. Toby met a religious young man named Naftali Trencher and married him soon after.

After a shocking short visit to the completely destroyed Altona, the family initially settled in Bad Nauheim. Charlotte and her husband Lemel Landau as well as their daughters Toby with her husband Naphtali Trencher and Sarah with her husband Mendel Hamer emigrated to New York around 1949/1950.
Charlotte Landau died in Brooklyn in 1984. Hermann Stimler's "Chavruta" (partner student), Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam from Bobov (1907-2000), who re-established the Hasidic dynasty in the United States after the Second World War, attended Charlotte Landau's funeral together with his congregation as a sign of closeness and loyalty.

Cäcilie Landau married Baruch Mehl, who was also Jewish and born near Lublin in 1922. He had survived the Nazi persecution by hiding with his family in underground caves. He survived, but had to witness the death of his parents and his youngest brother. Cäcilie and Baruch Mehl's marriage produced their son Leon in Frankfurt in 1950 and their son Norbert in Zurich in 1952. The family settled in Buenos Aires in 1952/1953. Between 1983 and 1993, they moved to New York.

Zippora Stimler, one of the Stimler couple's children born in Galicia, married the merchant Chaskel Weiss, born on January 19, 1899 in Kolbuszowa/Galicia, on August 23, 1928 in Wiesbaden. The couple had four sons: Hermann (Zvi Asher), born in 1929, Oscar, born in 1930, Jacob, born in 1932, and Max (Moshe Yechiel), born in 1939. The family lived in Frankfurt am Main. They were able to leave Germany shortly after the "Poland Action" and reached New York via Havana in January 1941.

Sarah Stimler married Herschel Zvie Keller who was born on December 23, 1896 in Padomysl. The couple lived in Cologne with their four children: Freide (Frieda) born on August 21, 1925, Malka (Mali, Maly), born June 18, 1927, Perel (Paula), born on February 2, 1933 and Chaim (Joachim), born on April 7, 1937. Sarah Keller fled to Belgium with her husband and children in 1938. After the occupation, they were placed in a ghetto. When Sarah Keller fell ill with a high fever, her husband smuggled her into a nunnery. By the time she recovered, her family had been deported from the Mechelen transit camp to Auschwitz on January 15, 1943. All of Sarah Keller's family members were murdered.

Hermann Stimler also lived in Frankfurt am Main with his wife Regina Stimler and their sons Wolfgang (Volli), born in 1928, Jacob (Jacki), born in 1932, and Chaim. The three brothers travelled to Zurich in 1938. Hermann Stimler fled to Antwerp in 1938. In 1941, after the German occupation of Belgium, he was on the run with several relatives. He was arrested at the border between France and Switzerland and was to be deported to Auschwitz, but managed to escape with a cousin. The family in Switzerland learnt of their plight and sent money to the Resistance in France, who bribed the French gendarmerie and smuggled them out in 1942. They then hid on a farm until the liberation of France in 1944.

Thanks to Norbert Mehl
This report on the Stimler family, which also includes the branches of the family that were added through marriage, was only possible after the authors made contact with Norbert Mehl, a son of Cäcilie Mehl, born Landau, via geni.com. He gave us the previously unpublished family memoir of his mother Cäcilie (Polly) Mehl, born Landau, which was over 500 pages long, and allowed us to include it in this biography.

Without Cäcilie (Polly) Mehl's records, the family biography, which was otherwise based only on official documents, would inevitably have remained fragmentary. Only this report gave us a direct insight into the many years of persecution of the Stimler family.

We thank Norbert Mehl for allowing us to use his family history and for the trust he has placed in us.

Translation: Norbert Mehl
Stand: January 2025
© Ingo Wille/Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: Adressbuch Altona (diverse Jahrgänge ab 1910); StaH 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident FVg 3582 (Stimler); 332-5 Standesämter 113593 Geburtsregister Nr. 1371/1909 (Salomon Leb Stimler), 114056 Geburtsregister Nr. 2467/1910 (Frieda Jette Stimler), 115810 Geburtsregister Nr. 966/1912 (Markus Jakob Stimler); 213-13 Landgericht Hamburg – Wiedergutmachung 9982 (Pinkas Stimler); 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 2909 (Erbengemeinschaft Stimmler), 2647 (Breindel Stimler), 34355 (Siegfried Stimler), 35732 (Frieda Wendum geb. Stimler), 48590 (Sarah Hamer geb. Landau); 522-01 Jüdische Gemeinden 0992b (diverse Steuerkarten). Bundesarchiv - Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933 – 1945, diverse Einträge von Mitgliedern der Familie Stimler. Yad Vashem diverse Pages of Testimony. Arolsen Archives, Sign. 631200005 (Herschel Zwie Keller). Alina Bothe, Gertrud Pickhan (Hrsg.). Ausgewiesen! Berlin, 28.10.1938. Die Geschichte der "Polenaktion", Berlin 2018. Ina Lorenz und Jörg Berkemann. Die Hamburger Juden im NS-Staat 1933 bis 1938/39, Band II, S. 1096-1107, Göttingen 2016. Jerzey Tomaszewski, Auftakt zur Vernichtung, Warschau 1998, S. 15 ff. The lives of Baruch und Tzipora Mehl, Tzipora (Polly) Mehl, unveröffentlichtes Manuskript, 2011.