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Berthold Höxter * 1877
Beim Andreasbrunnen 2 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)
HIER WOHNTE
BERTHOLD HÖXTER
JG. 1877
DEPORTIERT 1941
MINSK
ERMORDET
further stumbling stones in Beim Andreasbrunnen 2:
Annie Höxter, Jacoba Meyer, Ludwig Meyer
Berthold Höxter, born on 4 June 1877 in Zimmersrode/Hessen-Nassau, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Annie Höxter, née Bos, born on 7 July 1892 in Veendamm/Netherlands, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Beim Andreasbrunnen 2
Berthold Höxter was the son of Moses Höxter and Karoline, née Speier. Berthold’s wife Annie was the daughter of Jacob Nathanael Bos and Helene, née Hirschel.
Until the spring of 1936, the Höxters lived with their children Gertie (born on 12 May 1921) and Fritz Norbert (born on 31 Mar. 1925) in Elze near Hannover. There, Berthold was employed with the Gebrüder [Bros.] Wolfes Company, which specialized in trading grain and fertilizers. For many years, Berthold worked for this enterprise as a traveling salesman, though increasingly taking on management tasks. He was obviously very capable and considered the "soul of the enterprise,” as the Elze city hall officially confirmed later. Nevertheless: The racial policies of the Nazis caused Berthold Höxter to lose his job: The company owners, the brothers Dagobert and Julius Wolfes, themselves under pressure as Jews, dismissed the man who had worked for them so successfully for years on 1 Apr. 1936. He was 58 years old by then.
Hoping for better opportunities, the family moved to seemingly more secure Hamburg, initially to Beim Andreasbrunnen 2. The expectations were largely dashed, as Berthold Höxter did not find a new job and continued to have no income.
The children were unable to continue the educational career they had commenced. No [public] school would admit them. Fritz then went to the Talmud Tora School. Fifteen-year-old Gertie, who had attended the district middle school [Mittelschule – a practice-oriented secondary school up to grade 10] in Gronau and would have liked to become a dental assistant, had to forego the intermediate secondary school certificate (mittlere Reife) and be content with attending the Jewish home economics school on Johnsallee.
The family kept afloat with a guesthouse the mother opened at Lenhartzstrasse 3, subsequently relocating it to the somewhat more spacious premises at Curschmannstrasse 2. Five rooms, well-appointed with furnishings from Elze, were rented out, and the family lived together in a single room.
These were living conditions meant as a provisional arrangement: The children managed to escape to Britain on one of the children transports (Kindertransporte) in Feb. 1939. Fourteen-year-old Fritz found a family. Gertie, 17 years old at the time of the escape, at first made ends meet as an unskilled seamstress in a stocking plant. She got married and in late 1939/early 1940 moved with her husband via the Netherlands to Sweden, where they settled in Stockholm. The brother followed later.
The parents in Hamburg soon fell victim to the National Socialist policy of persecution. In Mar. 1941, they were forced to give up the guesthouse and home on Curschmannstrasse and to move to Haynstrasse 10, ground floor. There they were left with eight more months to stay.
On 8 Nov. 1941, Berthold Höxter (deportation number 391) and Annie Höxter (number 390) were deported to the Minsk Ghetto. This first deportation train comprised of Jewish men and women who were citizens of the German Reich arrived there on 11 Nov. While the train was still on its way, the SS shot 12,000 Belarusian Jewish men and women crammed into the ghetto in order to make room for the new victims from the "Old Reich” [Altreich, i.e., Germany within the 1937 borders].
Of the 968 persons in the transport, 952 were murdered. Annie and Berthold Höxter were among them.
Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.
Stand: October 2016
© Johannes Grossmann
Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 5; 8; StaH 314-15 OFP, Fvg 3156; StaH 351-11 AfW, 3346; StaH 522-1, 992e2 Band 2; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen A 51 Höxter, Berthold; Adressbuch Hildesheim Stadt und Land, 1927, Elze.
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