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Friederike Schlesinger * 1927

Durchschnitt 1 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
FRIEDERIKE SCHLESINGER
JG. 1927
DEPORTIERT 1941
RIGA-JUNGFERNHOF
ERMORDET 26.3.1942

further stumbling stones in Durchschnitt 1:
Hans Borchardt, Martha Borchardt, Raphael Friedländer, Jeanette Friedländer, Sarah Heimann, Julius Levi, Lea Schlesinger, Gottschalk Schlesinger, Michael Schlesinger, David Schlesinger

Lea Schlesinger, née Lange, born 20.4.1896 in Frankfurt/Main, deported to the Jungfernhof camp, a subsidiary camp of the Riga ghetto on 6.12.1941, murdered on 26.3.1942

Gottschalk Getsch Schlesinger, born 21.9.1921 in Hamburg, deported to the Jungfernhof camp, a subsidiary camp of the Riga ghetto on 6.12.1941

Friederike Schlesinger, born 6.3.1927 in Hamburg, deported to the Jungfernhof camp, a subsidiary camp of the Riga ghetto on 6.12.1941, murdered on 26.3.1942

Michael Schlesinger, born 6.3.1927 in Hamburg, deported to the Jungfernhof camp, a subsidiary camp of the Riga ghetto on 6.12.1941, murdered on 26.3.1942

David Schlesinger, born 9.1.1930 in Hamburg, deported to the Jungfernhof camp, a subsidiary camp of the Riga ghetto on 6.12.1941, murdered on 26.3.1942

Durchschnitt 1

Lea Lange and Israel Schlesinger (born 9 January 1893), son of the merchant Michel Schlesinger (1856–1930) and his wife Golde, née Gabriellewicz (1860–1898), were married on 9 August 1920 in Hamburg. Their fathers served as witnesses to the marriage. Lea's parents were Ester, née Auerbach (1868–1942), and the merchant Max Lange (1863–1924). Both had several siblings. Israel traded in skins and furs, while Lea`s profession is listed as an office clerk.

The couple moved into an apartment at Bismarckstraße 31. Over the next few years, they had eight children: Gottschalk Getsch, born on 21 September 1921; Golde Hanna, born on 20 November 1922; Isak, born on 10 March 1924; Betty, born on 31 October 1925; the twins Friederike and Michael, born on 6 March 1927; Röschen Shoshana, born on 28 August 1928; and finally David Dan, born on 9 January 1930.

Three months after the birth of his youngest child, Israel Schlesinger died on 14 May 1930 in the Jewish Hospital (Israelitisches Krankenhaus). His grave can be found in the Langenfelde Jewish Cemetery.

Having been ill for some time before his death, he no longer generated income to provide for the family. As there were no financial reserves, Lea had to apply for welfare assistance. The welfare records provide insight into her living situation until the end of 1938.

For financial reasons, the apartment on Bismarckstraße could probably no longer be maintained and, in the spring of 1931, Lea moved with her children to the first floor of the building at 1, Durchschnitt ("Durchschnitt” = name of the street).

The house belonged to the Louis Levy Foundation, which provided housing for Jewish families in need. Applicants had to provide proof of membership of a Jewish congregation and were required to live according to Orthodox customs. Like her husband, Lea had grown up in an Orthodox family and ran a household according to Orthodox practices.

The rent for the Schlesinger family's five-and-a-half-room flat was met by the German-Jewish community (Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde).

Her children being between one and nine years old, Lea was unable to pursue her career. In addition, as her file states, the young widow was in poor health due to the death of her husband and the many childbirths. She was unable to run the large household on her own. Distant relatives helped with financial support. To ensure the children were cared for, they paid for a domestic helper on condition that Lea regularly visited her blind mother, Esther Lange, who lived on Hansastrasse, took her for walks and read to her aloud (A stumbling block there commemorates her there). Lea’s father had died in 1924, and Lea's brothers provided for Esther's livelihood.
What do we know about the eight children's upbringing?
Here are excerpts from the records of the welfare authority, which conducted regular home visits:
In 1931, the younger children Betty, Friedel, Michael and Röschen attended the Agudas Yisroel Kindergarten, a strictly Orthodox establishment, at nearby Bornstraße 2. Lea had lived in this house with her parents until her marriage. (Since 1972, the building’s ground floor houses a daycare centre run by the Hamburg Student Union.)
In 1932, Michael was ‘bedridden and in need of care for a long time’ due to extensive burns. At that time, people still often cooked on coal stoves and fired their ovens with wood or coal, which was a source of danger, not only for children.

In June 1933, after a home visit, the social worker wrote: ‘Mrs Sch. herself is, as always, quite down and quite nervous.’ To relieve Lea, Röschen, Isak and Michael were sent to Bad Segeberg, where the Jewish social policy advocate Sidonie Werner had opened a convalescent home for needy Jewish children in 1908. In 1918, the Israelitisch-Humanitärer Frauenverein Hamburg (Jewish Humanitarian Women's Association of Hamburg) bought the villa and in 1920 named it the "Sidonie Werner House”. The building today houses the "Kunsthalle Flath” (Otto Flath Gallery).

Golde Hanna attended the Jewish Higher School for Girls (Israelitische Höhere Töchterschule) from devout families in Bieberstraße until 1931. When the school had to close due to financial difficulties, she and her classmates transferred to the German-Jewish Girls' School in Carolinenstraße. Friederike and Betty also started school there in 1933, Betty, being weak and sickly, a year later than usual. Röschen joined her sisters in 1935.

The older boys, Gottschalk Getsch and Isak, were pupils at the Talmud Torah School in Grindelhof, where Michael and David were later also enrolled.
The then ten-year-old Isak spent the year 1934/1935 with relatives in Unterfranken (Lower Franconia). When they were no longer able to care for him, because the economic situation for Jews was deteriorating due to persecution measures, he returned to Hamburg.

Gottschalk was one of the best pupils at the Talmud Torah School and had an assisted place, meaning that no school fees had to be paid for him. He received temporary financial assistance from the school to purchase books. In an essay competition he won a four-week group trip to the then British Mandate of Palestine. At the end of February 1936, he travelled from Trieste to Haifa on the steamship ‘Tel Aviv’. The subsequent tour of the country must have made a great impression on the young participants.

In 1937, Gottschalk Getsch helped at a summer camp for Jewish children during the holidays and thus earned a little money. In July 1938, he worked as an assistant at the Marienhöhe day camp in Blankenese. The Jewish businessman Julius Asch had had a daycare centre and huts built on his estate, which could be used by Jewish children in need. Marienhöhe must have been ‘a paradise far away from the city [...], with chickens, ducks and other animals, as well as the implements used on a farm’ as it says in a report. Julius Asch was forced to sell Marienhöhe in November 1938. In January 1939 he took his own life (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de).

Golde Hanna finished school in May 1937 and stayed with relatives in Bavaria until Easter 1938 to ease the financial strain on the family budget. She then attended the Jewish domestic science school at Heimhuder Straße 70. The school offered courses in home economics, health education and domestic accounting to young girls who had left school. Modern Hebrew was also taught along with sewing and dressmaking courses. Since young Jewish people no longer had the opportunity to complete an apprenticeship at that time, this was the only training option available. It also served as preparation for possible emigration to the British Mandate of Palestine.

At Easter 1939, Golde began a traineeship in dietary cuisine at the Jewish Hospital on Eckernförder Straße with the aim of starting training as a nurse when she turned 18.

The antisemitic excesses of November 1938 marked a turning point in the lives of German Jews. Those who had no opportunity to flee abroad now tried to at least bring their children to safety. Lea Schlesinger was one of them.

Her eldest son, Gottschalk Getsch, was the first to leave Hamburg. After the November pogroms of 1938, despite his good grades, he dropped out of school to prepare for emigration to Palestine. He lived and worked with other young people at the Neuendorf im Sande Hachshara centre near Fürstenwalde, a Jewish training centre. However, as a Jew, he was unable to complete his training as a gardener by passing the necessary final examination, as his sister Röschen wrote after the war.

The archives of the Israeli Shoah memorial Yad Vashem contain a handwritten letter from Getsch, which he wrote on behalf of his Chewra (group) of the ‘Noar Agudati Israel’ on 15 April 1939 to his Neuendorf Madrich (youth group leader) Josef Schwarz. This group was the youth organisation of the Orthodox religious association ‘Agudas Yisroel’.

Josef Schwarz had lost his mother, and Getsch, who had to grow up without a father, wrote: "Dear Josef, you have suffered a great loss, and I do not know how to express my sympathy. You know that I am not very good at talking about my feelings. So, you will have to be satisfied with me simply saying that I feel for you, perhaps more than anyone else."

In February 1939, Lea sent the twins Friederike and Michael to Belgium on a Kindertransport. Her daughter Betty arrived in England on 12/13 June 1939 on a Kindertransport. Together with 178 children from across the "Reich”, including eleven others from Hamburg, she travelled on the passenger ship "Europa” from Bremen to Southampton. Also on board were Alfred Baumwollspinner (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg, Sigmund and Amalie Baumwollspinner) and Margot Alsberg (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg, Ernst and Gertrud Alsberg).

Röschen escaped Nazi persecution too in 1939 on a Kindertransport to England. We do not know the exact date.

Golde managed to immigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine in November 1939, two months after the war began. Her brother Isak was saved by a certificate from the Aliyat Hano'ar. This organisation placed children and young people, who were not counted towards the immigration quota by the British authorities, in kibbutzim. There they were taught modern Hebrew and worked in agriculture.

Back to Lea. Her mother, Esther Lange, moved to Amsterdam in February 1939 to live with Lea's sister Toni Abrahams, who was married there.

After her children also gradually left Hamburg, Lea’s life became increasingly tranquil, but her financial difficulties did not ease. She had not received any welfare payments since December 1938. At that time, the National Socialist authorities stopped supporting welfare for Jewish people. These costs now had to be covered entirely by the Jewish community (then "Jüdischer Religionsverband”).

The family says that Lea worked as a secretary for the chief rabbi Joseph Carlebach. This was probably the case at the latest after her mother had moved away so that she no longer had to take care of her. The deportation list also has ‘secretary’ as her occupation.

On 10 May 1940, the German Wehrmacht invaded neutral Belgium. Friederike and Michael, who lived in a Jewish children's home near Antwerp, were thus in grave danger. Lea somehow managed to bring the 13 year-old-twins back to Hamburg. She now lived with three of her children in the flat in ‘Durchschnitt’. In addition to the twins and her youngest son David Dan, at least one relative also lived there temporarily (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg, Sarah Heimann).

Gottschalk Getsch, who, at the Neuendorf agricultural cooperative, wanted to prepare for his long-awaited emigration, experienced that, following the November pogroms, the facility was now controlled by the Gestapo and the Nazi Farmers' Association (NS Bauernschaft) and had become a "logistical centre for "work assignments” in the surrounding area. […] From then on, retraining meant exploitation of labour and no longer served the purpose of self-administered Jewish vocational training. Life and work at the farm rapidly took on a coercive character”.

Despite the persecution conditions, the young people understood this forced labour as ‘their Hachshara’ and experienced an intense sense of community, as described in a survivor's report: She "remembered the Friday evenings and holidays, which were celebrated with prayer, singing and special meals, and even music and dance evenings. Friendships were formed, some for life”.

Getsch left Neuendorf in 1941 at a time unknown to us and subsequently stayed in Berlin. His address there is given as Rosenthaler Strasse 26. When his mother and siblings received the deportation order to Riga in German occupied Latvia for 6 December 1941, he ‘voluntarily’ joined the transport.

Since the SS was carrying out a large-scale shooting operation in the overcrowded Riga ghetto, the people were housed in the dilapidated former Jungfernhof estate. Despite freezing winter conditions, no preparations had been made to accommodate the deportees. They were forced to live in unheated barns and stables, setting up a makeshift kitchen and latrines. Furthermore, the SS camp commander shot prisoners at the slightest provocation.

Hundreds had already died in these conditions during the winter. In March 1942, it was announced that only a small group would remain at the Jungfernhof, whilst the rest were to be taken to Dünamünde. They were told they would be given better accommodation and would work in a fish factory. This was a lie: the people were driven to the nearby forest of Bikernieki and shot dead.

Lea, Friederike, Michael and David Dan Schlesinger also fell victim to ‘Aktion Dünamünde’.

We do not know when and where Gottschalk Getsch died.

The fate of the rest of the family:
Both Israel and Lea had several siblings. Lea was the eldest of six children; her brother Isaak was born a year after her (10 March 1897 in Frankfurt am Main). He was followed by a sister Toni (born 22 October 1898 in Frankfurt am Main), and brothers Marcus Mordechai (born 24 June 1901 in Seligenstadt) and Josef (born 6 January 1910 in Hamburg) and another sister, Gertrud (born 17 October 1910 in Hamburg). A pair of twins had died four weeks after birth.

Marcus and his wife Senta, née Hesse (born 16 January 1910), and Josef were able to emigrate to Palestine, while Gertrud in 1933 moved to Romania and survived. Isaak Lange fled to the Netherlands in 1939 with his wife Martha, née Cohn (born 16 September 1909 in Hamburg) and their young son Michael (born 25 January 1937). In 1944, the family was interned in the Dutch transit camp Westerbork and deported from there to the Theresienstadt ghetto. They perished in Auschwitz.

As already mentioned, Lea's mother Esther Lange lived with her daughter Toni in the Netherlands. Toni had married the merchant Emil Abrahams (born 8 June 1895) in Amsterdam in 1925. In 1943, Esther was interned in the Westerbork transit camp and deported to Auschwitz. Her date of death is given as 17 September 1943. A Stolperstein in Hansastraße 27 commemorates her. Toni suffered the same fate, her husband and three children survived.

Israel had five sisters: Friederike (2 January 1889–12 July 1922); the twins Edel and Hadassa (born 4 January 1891); Hanne (31 December 1894–11 April 1919); and Chawa Eva (born 31 January 1898). Hadassa was deported from Hamburg to the Litzmannstadt/Lodz ghetto in German occupied Poland on 25 October 1941 and did not return. We know that in the 1950s Edel and Chawa lived in Israel.

Stand: May 2026
© Sabine Brunotte

Quellen: 1; 5; 6; StaH 332-5_2310; StaH 332-5_8742; StaH 332-5_966; StaH Sterberegister Standesamt Hmb. 02A, Urkunde Nr. 466; Sterberegister Standesamt Hmb. 02, Urkunde Nr. 1588; StaH 332-5_2195, Sterberegister Standesamt Hmb. 03, Urkunde Nr. 455;
StaH 332-5_2252; StaH 332-5_2369, Sterberegister Standesamt Hmb 03, Urkunde 260; StaH 332-5_2455; StaH 351-11_18596; StaH 351-11_44825; StaH 351-11_46518; StaH 351-11_45524; StaH 362-6 Oberschulbehörde 10 Talmud Tora Schule 22; Michael Studemund-Halévy, Anna Menny (Hrsg.) Ort und Erinnerung, ein historischer Streifzug durch das Jüdische Hamburg von 1930, Hamburg 2013, S.57; https://taz.de/Schwieriges-Erbe/!5032194/ Artikel zur Villa Flath vom 29.9.2014, Zugriff 21.11.2025; Gemeindeblatt der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde zu Hamburg, Nr.1 1937, S.15, online eingesehen unter https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/cm/periodical/titleinfo/5445087 Zugriff 21.11.2025;
Friedemann Hellwig, Frauke Steinhäuser, Alan Kramer, Petra Bopp (Hrsg.), Menschen, die plötzlich nicht mehr da waren, Jüdisches Leben in Hamburg-Blankenese, Hamburg 2024,S. 205 ff;
https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/source_view.php?SourceId=40228 16. England-Transport der garantierten Kinder am 12/13. Juni 1939 via Bremen mit dem Dampfer "Europa" (ID: 40228), Zugriff 21.11.2025; https://collecties.kampwesterbork.nl/persoon/https%3A%2F%2Fkampwesterbork.nl%2Fdata%2Fperson%2F12827845 Zugriff 21.11.2025;
Pilarczyk, Ulrike/Ashkenazi, Ofer/Homann, Arne (Hg.), Hachschara und Jugend-Alija, Wege jüdischer Jugend nach Palästina 1918-1941, Gifhorn 2020, S. 155 f,online unter https://leopard.tu-braunschweig.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/dbbs_derivate_00048176/Pilarczyk_Ashkenazi_Homann%20Hachschara%20und%20Jugend-Alija.pdf Zugriff 17.1.2026; https://spurenimvest.de/2024/09/08/schlesinger-gottschalk/, Zugriff 17.1.2026;
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/179265/toni-abrahams-lange Zugriff 17.1.2026.
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geprüft, nicht redigiert, Beate Meyer 24.3.2026