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Caroline Mayer (née Lazarus) * 1872

Eulenstraße 72 (Altona, Ottensen)

HIER WOHNTE
CAROLINE MAYER
GEB. LAZARUS
JG. 1872
DEPORTIERT 1941
GHETTO MINSK
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Eulenstraße 72:
Hermine Mayer, Ruth Mayer

Caroline Mayer, née Lazarus, born July 25, 1872, in Altona, deported to Minsk Getto on November 18, 1941


Hermine Mayer, born July 21, 1914, in Altona, deported to Minsk Getto on November 18, 1941


Ruth Mayer, born February 9, 1907, in Hamburg, deported to Minsk Getto on November 18, 1941



Eulenstraße 72 (Ottensen)



The three Stolpersteine in front of the house at Eulenstraße 72 in Ottensen commemorate members of the Mayer family, who lived here for many years. The address at that time was Treskowplatz 8. A contemporary city map shows the historical layout of the square. The Wilhelminian-style complex has since been integrated into a car-friendly road system.

Caroline (Lina) Lazarus was the daughter of Hertz/Hersch, known as Hermann Lazarus (October 3, 1827 Bienenbüttel-August 3, 1909 Altona) and Sarah, née Möller (d. 1924 Altona). Her parents had married on May 21, 1863 Altona. Caroline was born there on July 25, 1872. She had at least two older siblings: Emma Esther (October 19, 1865 Altona) and Joseph (April 2, 1869 Altona). The family lived at Große Rainstraße 20 in Ottensen. Caroline's father was a merchant and ran a metal, rag, and product business on Große Rainstraße, not far from the family's home. The Jewish Cemetery Ottensen, which no longer exists, was also located on this street.



An entry in the Altona registration file lists Caroline Lazarus as a teacher. She lived with her parents until she moved from Altona to Hamburg in 1896. It has not been possible to find out which schools she worked at. Caroline Lazarus continued to work as a teacher until she got married.



At the age of 29, she married the stateless engineer Samuel Mayer (born May 16, 1875 Wiener Neustadt) on November 1, 1901. He had come to Hamburg for a job and was registered at Papendamm 1 in Rotherbaum, a district of Hamburg. His parents, the merchant Ignaz Mayer and Hanny, née Danzig, had already passed away. He had three siblings, but no further details about them are known.


The couple had six children: their only son was Ignatz Hans (October 29, 1902); Hannah (November 25, 1903, who died on September 15, 1929, at the age of 25 as a result of a streptococcal infection); Käthe (May 9, 1905); Ruth (February 9, 1907); Sofie, called Fifi (July 22, 1909 and Hermine (July 21, 1914). The children were born in Hamburg, except for Hermine, the youngest, who was born in Altona.



1914 was also the year in which the family was listed in the address book at Treskowplatz 8 Parterre in Ottensen. Before that, they had lived at Bismarckstraße 13 in Eimsbüttel, another district of Hamburg, since around 1905. Samuel Mayer had since been promoted to chief engineer. His business address was Große Brunnenstraße 48 in Ottensen. This suggests that he was self-employed. His occupation is unknown.



Under German nationality law, the father's statelessness was transferred to the entire family. This status apparently first had little influence on the family's personal or professional life. On September 13, 1919, the then independent city of Altona issued Samuel Mayer a passport, which he used to travel to Wiener Neustadt, where he stayed with a relative, Ad. Mayer Jr.

The son Ignaz Hans (in the following named Hans Mayer) attended a private school in Hamburg for a year and then transferred to the Oberrealschule Altona/Ottensen, where he took his exams in 1919. It can be assumed that the daughters attended private girls' schools and later Jewish schools.The family can be described as wealthy and probably also religious. The parents and later also the daughters were members of the Jewish community in Altona and paid religious taxes. 


Contributions paid by Hannah Mayer are documented from 1923 to 1928, one year before her death. Ruth Mayer had been a member of Jewish community Altona since 1928/29 and worked as a seamstress. Hermine Mayer became a member of the Altona community in 1934, at the age of about 20. She was employed as a commercial clerk and correspondent at the import and export company B. Luria & Co. on Jungfernstieg, a Jewish employer.

Nothing could be found out about Sofie Mayer's professional career. According to a note, she had been exempt from paying taxes to the Jewish community since 1930, but paid a large sum in 1934.


Hans Mayer attended a business course at the Rüsch Institute in Hamburg after school, completed two months of military service in the volunteer corps in Bahrenfeld, and began a two-year apprenticeship at a grain trading company in 1920. After completing his apprenticeship, he continued to work for the company as office manager and stock exchange representative. He then moved to the (Jewish) company Salo Back as a grain inspector. Here, too, he served as office manager, stock exchange representative, and sampler sworn in by the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce.


On July 11, 1929, Hans Mayer married Martha Levy (October 9, 1905 Altona). Her parents were Leo Levy (Nov. 30, 1865 Neustadt b. Kassel-June 16, 1934 Altona) and Jeanette, geb. Hirsch (Nov. 9, 1870 Frankfurt/Main - Feb. 4, 1946 Wilmington, DEL/USA). The couple initially lived in Altona, at Kl. Papagoyenstraße 1b, at Leo Levy's, presumably in Hans' parents-in-law's apartment.


In 1930, Hans Mayer received an offer from the Großeinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Konsumvereine m.b.H. (GEG) Hamburg, where he was hired as a grain inspector and buyer with the prospect of becoming operations manager. He was working at the Magdeburg mill when his daughter Hannelore was born there on March 7, 1931. However, in the course of 1933, Hans Mayer was dismissed because of his Jewish heritage. Even the formerly left-wing, progressive consumer associations had bowed to pressure from the Nazi regime, as Aryan employers could not employ Jews and thus Jews could only work for fellow Jews. Hans Mayer now took over as owner of the Jewish company Salo Back, Getreidekontrolle (Salo Back, Grain Inspection) at Wrangelstraße 16 in distrikt Eimsbüttel, which had become the family's home address.


In 1934, they joined the German-Israeli Community (DIG). On December 14 of that year, their son Leo Lutz was born. When Lutz was still a baby, police officers visited the family's home and demanded to see him. They left a document (encased in metal when Lutz's wife Pamela saw it many years later) for him with the diagonal stamp "stateless”. This satisfied the bureaucracy and registered the youngest offspring as stateless.


Due to the boycott of Jewish companies and the Chamber of Commerce's refusal to re-certify him as a wheat sampler, Hans Mayer was forced to give up the business. The proceeds from the sale, RM 1,500, were to be paid in installments to Hans Mayer's parents by the buyer, but the buyer did not comply with this agreement. Hans then took a Berlitz English course for businessman.

Hans Mayer deregistered from Hamburg on June 10, 1937, and left Germany six days later. He traveled to New York City, on the SS Washington arriving on June 24, 1937, without his family. The United States would not allow the family to join him until Hans proved he had a full-time job in order to support his family. In Wilmington, DEL, he tried to find work, obtained two part time jobs which were deemed sufficient, and an apartment. Leo Levy's sister Sara Levy Baer had come to Wilmington in 1893 and her husband Louis I. Baer was mentioned as the contact in the United States in the ship’s manifest and naturalization document.

Hans' wife Martha Levy Mayer had worked as a stenographer in three languages: German, French and English from the end of March 1937. She and her children, Hannelore (Lora) and Lutz, left Germany on the SS Washington; they arrived in NYC in June 24,1938, one year to the day after Hans had arrived.


Caroline Lazarus Mayer's daughter Käthe had married (Nov. 16, 1934) Bernhard Levisohn (May 5, 1898 Wandsbek), a self-employed upholsterer and decorator in 1934. The marriage failed, and they divorced shortly before the birth of their son Heinrich (June 21, 1937) (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de). In 1939, Käthe Levisohn was registered as subtenant at Loogestieg 10 II. with Mendel, and her young son was registered at Eppendorfer Landstraße 12, where Caroline Mayer, the child's grandmother, also lived, apparently a stopgap solution for childcare. In 1940, Heinrich was placed in the Paulinenstift on Laufgraben Street, the orphanage for girls run by the Jewish Religious Association (as the Jewish community of Hamburg was now required to call itself. Accimmodation in the Papendamm orphanage was not possivle due to lack of space).

From August 1941, Käthe Levisohn was registered at Gräber's address at Große Prinzenstraße 28 in Altona.



Samuel Mayer had already died on October 5, 1937, at the age of 62. He was buried in district Bahrenfeld at the Jewish cemetery on Bornkampsweg, where a grave site had also been reserved for Caroline Mayer and where their daughter Hannah was burried.


Due to anti-Jewish legislation, Samuel Mayer's surviving dependents had to leave their apartment in the "Aryan” residential building at Tresckowplatz 8. In early 1938, the widowed Caroline Mayer moved with her daughters into an apartment at Eppendorfer Landstraße 12. They also changed from the Altona Jewish community to the Jewish community of Hamburg. It was officially noted that Caroline Mayer had the forced name "Sara” registered at the registry office on April 28, 1939. This probably also applied to her daughters.



In early 1939, the Foreign Exchange Office of the Hamburg Regional Finance Authority began "security measures” against Caroline Mayer and her daughters, which meant nothing less than confiscating their assets and documents. As a stateless person, Caroline Mayer possessed an alien passport (Fremdenpass) issued in 1935. 


The sale of the property (a house with several apartments) Humboldstraße 27 in Altona (now Willebrandstraße) yielded RM 18,000 in cash. The family also owned securities at Dresdner Bank. A "security order” was provisionally waived, but was then issued in March of that year. This meant that the family could no longer freely dispose of their assets.


Caroline Mayer now had to obtain approval for her regular living expenses and any additional expenditures. In April 1939 she applied to the Foreign Exchange Office for 500 RM for her daughter Sofie's emigration to England, which was approved. Further payments were added, including a sum of 300 RM, which included a farewell gift for her mother in the amount of 100 RM. Sofie traveled on the steamship Hamburg to Southampton, England, where she arrived on June 15, 1939. The Mayer family recalls that Sofie had previously lived in England as an au pair. If that was the case, she must have returned to Hamburg in the meantime.

Correspondence with the Foreign Exchange Office shows that Caroline Mayer also provided financial support to her late husband's three siblings, as an officer remarked in a document. She also arranged for the proceeds from the sale of the property to be released and divided between her daughters' savings accounts. This took place in October 1939, with the foreign exchange office informing Dresdner Bank, upon request, that the daughters were free to dispose of the savings. She also arranged for the proceeds from the sale of the property to be released and divided between her daughters' savings accounts. This took place in October 1939, with the Foreign Exchange Office informing Dresdner Bank, upon request, that the daughters were free to dispose of the savings. In October, they also moved to Klosterallee 11 in district Harvestehude.


In December 1939, Caroline Mayer reported to the Foreign Exchange Office that she had lost her purse, containing 215 RM and some small change. The authorities then released 50 RM.
Then another move had to be made, presumably to a smaller apartment or a so-called "Judenhaus” (Jewish house) at Lenhartzstraße 3, district Eppendorf, Caroline Mayer's and her daughters Hermine and Ruth last address in Hamburg.


In November 1941 they received the deportation orders. The transport went to Minsk.


On November 8, 1941, nearly 1,000 Hamburg people were deported there. Minsk, the capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Republic, was occupied by the Wehrmacht. In July 1941 the authorities started installing the ghetto area. The arrival in the ghetto must have been traumatic for the Hamburg residents. The new arrivals had to remove the bodies of the former ghetto residents who had been shot by the SS in order to move into the accommodations and make them habitable.


The Mayer family was intended for the second deportation to Minsk on November 18. According to information from grandson Lutz Mayer, Caroline Mayer was originally supposed to be deferred, but she resisted the Gestapo's order and insisted on leaving Hamburg with her daughters. Käthe Levisohn also joined her family with her son Heinrich. They thought they were going to work in Minsk, not to be killed: The National Socialists succeeded in concealing the true background to the first deportations, and the murders took place far from home.

The day before, on November 17, someone of the family Mayer as all Jews affected had to bring their key to the police station. Then they took their luggage with the help of two cousins, Günter and Horst Thieme, and left the apartment.


At the collecting point at Logenhaus, Moorweidenstraße 36, Gestapo controlled the luggage and stored it. Their names were registered. Hermine and Ruth were listed as seamstresses.They had to leave their identification cards, wallets, money and letters, also last pieces of gold, silver and jewels.
The Jewish community was involved into the organization and had equipped the big room with bunk beds to make the upcoming last night in Hamburg more bearable. This is where an incident occurred: Caroline fell during the night and sustained facial injuries.


Next morning, November 18, they were brought to the train station Sternschanze, guarded by police. They had to check in on the train; it was an old passenger train with windows and doors. A transportmanager was appointed and also one manager for each wagon. Then the train went to Hannöverscher Bahnhof (now the HafenCity memorial site), from where the trip started at 12.30 pm. In addition to the 409 Hamburg residents, there were also Jews from Bremen approximately the same number on the train.


Descendants of the Mayer family remember a letter that Hermine Mayer is said to have written during the journey to Minsk. Only after lengthy research was this letter found in an archive in Hamburg, a rare document, as follows, that gives concrete form to our vague ideas about these inhuman transports to death.


"Schneidemühl, November 19, 1941 (Schneidemühl, a station, now Pila, Poland)


My dear Else!
Here we are, 23 hours into our journey in a rattling old Czech train carriage, with no running water and completely filthy – just a little taste of what's to come. With 10 people per compartment (on a passenger train, of course), sleep is out of the question; this is now our third night. But despite this, the mood isn't bad; we're not letting it get us down.
We get on very well with our caretaker, having worked together on previous transports. The children under the age of 6 are accommodated with their families in extra carriages with small hammocks. The accompanying personnel (state police) are not as grim as they first appear with their rifles at the ready.
The train conductor is also good, but the further east we go, the more we notice the rising anti-Semitism at the stations. The community has organized everything fabulously. As an example, I would like to tell you that the last transport of 1,000 men cost 70,000 to finance.
The journey will take five days, which is very pleasant, especially since Ruthi and I don't have permanent seats and are camping out in the corridor with our luggage. Washing is a luxury due to the lack of water, which we are allowed to carry on board at some stations.
... Incidentally, I already collapsed in tears in Hamburg under the weight of my monstrous backpack. If only we could be picked up in M. Otherwise, I'll have to throw half of it away. Hopefully our men (!) will be allowed to pick us up. Well, it'll be alright. It's just the nights I dread so much.
If possible, I'll write to you, but for now this letter will probably be the last."


The letter was addressed to Hermine's friend Else van Cleef, who was able to emigrate to Uruguay in 1938. (See www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) It can be assumed that Hermine sent the letter to Else's relatives in Hamburg and that it was then forwarded to Else in Uruguay. 
The reference to "our men” presumably refers to the transport on November 8, in which mainly male Hamburg residents were deported to Minsk.


By this time, the once vibrant Jewish community there had already been largely ghettoized or wiped out by the German occupying forces.
The train reached the Minsk freight station four days later, expected by SS, in minus 25 degrees weather. Under German occupation the once vibrant Jewish community there was wiped out or forced into the Ghetto.


When the Mayer family arrived in the Minsk ghetto, there were already two special ghettos in the bis ghetto, surrounded by barbed wire. They found accommodation in the Special Ghetto No. II. There was a joint Jewish Council under the Hamburg transport manager Dr. Edgar Franck, who set up a communal kitchen and a temporary infirmary and were forced to coordinate the labor force.
Around 1,400 of the Jews deported to Minsk were assigned to forced labor in repair workshops, Wehrmacht supply depots, the Nazi construction organization Todt, and the Reichsbahn. Resistance against the occupiers also organized itself in the ghetto. The aim was to rescue as many people as possible from the camp so that they could find shelter in the surrounding forests. However, only six people from Hamburg survived the deportation on November 18, 1941. None of the five members of the Mayer family were among them.

In an attempt to find his nephew Heinrich after the end of the war, Hans Mayer wrote to an archive in Minsk, who responded, "There are no Jewish boys here.” Hans subsequently had a nervous breakdown, from which it took him quite a while to recover.


Caroline Mayer's sister was also a victim of the Holocaust. Erna Emma Eichwald, née Lazarus, lived in Kiel and was deported to Theresienstadt on July 19, 1942, and from there to Treblinka on September 21, 1942.

The aforementioned sale of the property on Humboldtstraße was the subject of correspondence between the Regional Finance Office and the Foreign Exchange Office in May 1948. From this correspondence, we learn that Caroline Mayer's assets – like those of all deportees – were confiscated in November 1941 for the benefit of the Reich. Seven years after the expropriation and deportation of the Jewish victims, the same authorities were now concerned with reconstructing the measures they had ordered under Nazi legislation. Before the heirs could take action, the testator had to be declared dead. In 1955, the date was backdated to May 8, 1945, following a decision by the Hamburg District Court on the calculation of compensation for imprisonment (for 41 months), a total of the months of Caroline and her daughters and grandson.


The heirs were Caroline's emigrated children Hans Mayer and Sofie Barry, née Mayer.
Hans Mayer was living in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA at the time and was employed in a chemical factory. He had given a cousin living in Hamburg power of attorney to act on his behalf in matters relating to compensation. However, all of Caroline's and her daughters accounts and deposits at Dresdner Bank had been closed and transferred to the Nazi state.


Hans Mayer's sister Sofie lived now in London, where she worked as a seamstress. In July 1943, she married Christopher Barry (Dec. 25, 1913 Dangarvan, Ireland-Dec. 1992 Westminister, Greater London). Conditions must have been precarious. In 1950, Sofie was unable to pay the fee to obtain her birth certificate. In 1957, the local authorities had her personal and financial circumstances checked by the German Embassy in London in order to decide whether she was eligible for assistance under the Federal Compensation Act (BEG). At that time, Sofie Barry was not working and her husband was receiving only a small amount of unemployment benefit.The couple had no children and lived below the poverty line. The money from the reparations’ proceedings, "Wiedergutmachung" probably brought them some relief. Sofie Barry received compensation for periods of imprisonment experienced by her deported relatives as well as for the Jewish property taxes and Reich flight taxes that her murdered relatives had paid. It was not until the end of 1962 that the parties agreed on a restitution amount for the property on Humboldtstraße. A bitter aftertaste remains: the expropriations were carried out under Nazi legislation in a short period between 1939 and 1941, but the restitution or reparations took decades. In this case, until the 1960s.

Sofie Barry, who had been widowed since 1992, died in the Greater London area in January of 1998.


Among other things, Hans Mayer also sought compensation for the damage to his career, because after arriving in the US, he had tried to reestablish himself in the grain industry, which proved unrealistic after two months. He would have had to start again as an apprentice, in his mid-30s. He could not afford to do so, as he wanted to bring his family over. So, in August 1937, he took a job as an unskilled worker in the warehouse of Allied Kid Co. in Wilmington, Delaware, in the state of North Carolina, where he scraped leather, as a grainer. He had no gloves for this hard labor and a BLACK man gave him his gloves. Sometime later, at a company picnic, he was told not to associate with the BLACK families. A year later, he was able to work for the company as a skilled worker on a piecework basis, which lasted until 1944. Due to the heavy physical labor, he moved to Synvar Corporation, Allied Chemical – Plastics and Coal – Chemicals Division, which manufactured synthetic binders. Hans Mayer now worked as a foreman over the chemists.
The family lived in Wilmington, Delaware, a city on the Atlantic coast, together with Martha's mother, Jeanette Levy, née Hirsch. She was a grand daughter of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the author of many books on the Torah. She died in Wilmington on February 2, 1946.


In 1951, Hans Mayer became deputy plant manager at Synvar's new branch in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was still working there in 1955, as he stated in a résumé addressed to his lawyer in Hamburg. The letter concludes: "Unfortunately, it is completely out of the question that I will ever find a position here at my age that corresponds to the one I could have worked my way up to at GEG in Germany."


But it wasn't just the precarious working conditions that prevented him from looking optimistically to the future. When he learned of the death of his mother, sisters and nephew after the end of the war, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to work for a long time.
Hans Mayer died on April 20, 1983, in Daytona Beach, Florida, and his wife Martha died on January 21, 1995, in the Clemmons Jewish Retirement Home in Forsyth, North Carolina.


Lora Mayer was married to Irving Samuel Silver (30 Aug, 1930-2 Feb, 1981) since June 8, 1952. The couple had three sons: Jeffrey, Eric, and Philip Silver. Lora Mayer Silver was involved in the Humane Society of the Piedmont, worked for Mediation Services of Greensboro and Founder & Principal teacher of "The Create Learner Center" for preschool children. She loved singing, especially German Lieder. She died on April 14, 2007, in Greensboro.


Lutz Leo Mayer earned his degrees in violin and composition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel, the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana (studying with the famous violin teacher, Hungarian Jewish refugee, Paul Roland) and was a professor at the State University of New York. Lutz was married to professional clarinetist, soprano soloist and Oxford University Press author on J. S. Bach, Pamela L. Poulin, for more than 40 years. Pamela earned her degrees at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester and is a professor emerita at the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University and was a Visiting Professor at UNC Chapel Hill.


Lutz’s son David Louis Mayer also earned his degree at UNC-Chapel Hill, and is employed by Microsoft in Seattle. All lived in Preble, New York, where Lutz died on November 18, 2020.

Stand: March 2026
© Astrid Louven

Quellen: StaHH 314-15_R1939_0713_0064; StaHH 213-13_13111 + 3725 + 3726 + 3727; StaHH 351-11_3755 + 3756 + 1955 + 1956; StaHH Jüdische Gemeinden 522-01_0992_b_38159 + 38298 + 32573; StaHH 332-8 A 24 Bd. 390; StaHH 741.4 Fotoarchiv K7332; Adressbuch Altona 1895; Adressbuch Altona + Hamburg 1905-1914-1938; Adressbuch HH 1935; Deportationsliste Minsk 18.11.41; Patentplan Hamburg, Falk-Verlag o.J. Meldezettel 1919 und Mail vom 17.7.2025 von Sabine Schmitner-Laszakovits, Stadtarchiv Wiener Neustadt;
 https://ofb2.genealogy.net/famreport.php?ofb=juden_nw&ID=I136854&lang=dk
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto_Minsk; https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/86384172 1945; Wegweiser zu ehemaligen jüdischen Leidensstätten der Deportationen von Hamburg nach Minsk. Hrsg. v. der Deutsch-Jüdischen Gesellschaft, Bearb. Wilhelm Mosel, Hamburg 1995, S. 10, 18, 22, 40, 78 Anmerkg. 23;
 Archiv FZH 6262 Judenverfolgung; Mails von Pamela Poulin 13.8., 13.9., 19.9., 25.9., 26.9.2023, 13.6., 17.6., 19.6.24, 3.11. + 19.11.2025; 15.-17.12.2025; 30.1.2026; February 13, 2026;

https://nashvilleholocaustmemorial.org/memorial-wall-profiles/ruth-and-hermine-mayer/; https://www.hartwellfuneralhome.net/obituary/lutz-mayer
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/lora-silver-obituary?id=27867759.
Mail von Hannen Beith, GB, vom 22.2.2026: Auskunft aus Lloyds Shipping Lists.