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Malka Goldberg * 1869

Rutschbahn 11 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

1942 Auschwitz
ermordet

further stumbling stones in Rutschbahn 11:
Ilse Dotsch, Hanna Heimann, Gerson Jacobsen, Regine Jacobsen, Ludwig Jacobsen, Klara (Clara) Jacobsen, Beer Lambig, Pescha Lambig, Senta Lambig, Samuel Lambig, Leo Lambig, Manuel Staub, Gerson Stoppelman, Augusta Szpigiel

Malka Goldberg, born on 25 Apr. 1869 in Trzebinia/Galicia, expelled on 28 Oct. 1938 to Bentschen (Zbaszyn), murdered in 1942 in Auschwitz

Rutschbahn 11

Malka Goldberg was born on 26 Apr. 1869 in the small Polish town of Trzebinia, 35 km (some 21 miles) west of Cracow. We know nothing about her childhood and youth. She married Jakob Goldberg, born on 20 Mar. 1864 in Rozwolow (Poland), who worked as a merchant. On 20 Apr. 1891, their first daughter Pescha (Paula) was born in Trzebinia, and one year later, on 18 Dec. 1892, the second child, Ides, in Mieler near Tarnow.

In May 1893, the family left their homeland, emigrating on the "SS Dania” from Hamburg to New York, living there in the borough of Brooklyn for eight years. The couple and their children became naturalized and citizens of the USA. In 1902, however, they left New York for Hannover. They were registered with the local authorities at Langestrasse 4 on 6 Mar. 1902, and then lived at Burgstrasse 18. Pescha’s and Ides’ four siblings, Esther (born on 30 Mar. 1903), Berta (born on 11 Nov. 1904), Moses Pinkas (born on 1 Oct. 1907), and Osias (born on 27 Jan. 1910) were born in Hannover in the years following. All of them had US citizenship as well.

The oldest daughter, Pescha, moved to Dortmund on 10 Aug. 1910. The rest of the family informed the authorities on 15 Mar. 1911 of moving to Herne. In 1903, Jakob Goldberg applied for US passports for him, Malka, and the children in order to be able to return to the USA within the following three years. We do not know whether the family actually emigrated to the USA a second time.

After the early death of Jakob Goldberg on 25 Jan. 1916 (possibly in the First World War), the family left Herne and moved to Altona in Dec. 1917. There Malka and the children initially lived at Neuburg 27 on the second floor. At their new place of residence, she supported her family by operating a cork trade. Probably Pescha, too, moved from Dortmund to her mother.

Pescha Goldberg got married to Beer Lambig, who owned a Hebrew bookstore at Rutschbahn 11. He had come to Germany on 17 Jan. 1907, since then residing in Hamburg. The wedding with Pescha, marking his second marriage, took place in Hamburg in 1921. Beer Lambig’s first wife, Cypra Akselrad, had died shortly before or after the end of the First World War. In the Grindel quarter, Beer Lambig was also known as a Torah scribe [sofer] and his family was considered very religious. From his first marriage, he had five children, Samuel, Leo Lipa, Herta, Isaak, and Moritz. Issak and Moritz died early on in an accident in Hamburg. Samuel and Leo, both sons from Beer Lambig’s first marriage, lived with him at Rutschbahn 11. With the birth of their daughter Senta on 16 June 1921, Pescha and Beer Lambig got another addition to the family.

Malka’s daughters Esther and Berta moved from Altona to Berlin in 1928. By then, Esther earned her money as an office employee. Berta worked as a stenographer before emigrating to the USA on 15 Sept. 1936. She probably married there and changed her last name to Rotschild.

Moses Pinkas, who earned his living as a sailor and tailor, moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1928. Two years later, he came to Altona once more to see his mother and then eventually emigrated to New York on 16 Aug. 1930.
The youngest son, Osias, worked as a merchant and farm hand, moving to Bärenklau-Velten north of Berlin.

After her four children had moved out, Malka initially relocated her domicile to Rutschbahn 39 on 9 June 1931. Later, she moved to Rutschbahn 11, which in the backyard accommodated the "Vereinigte Alte und Neue Klaus” synagogue. (Its classicistic exterior as well as the Art Nouveau decorative art in the interior made it a center of Jewish life in the Grindel quarter worth seeing. It was destroyed only partially during the pogroms of Nov. 1938).

East European Jews ("Ostjuden”) in particular served the Nazis as an enemy stereotype. Owing to this circumstance, one may assume that the widowed Malka, too, was increasingly subjected to anti-Semitic propaganda. The bookstore of Malka’s son-in-law also suffered from the anti-Jewish regulations. The year 1938 turned out to be not only a fateful year for the synagogue in the backyard of Rutschbahn 11. The lives of Malka Goldberg and her family were affected as well: On 28 Oct. 1938, she had to leave her apartment in the front part of the house at Rutschbahn 11 and was expelled to the Polish border near Bentschen (Zbaszyn) in connection with the so-called "Polenaktion.” Pescha, her son-in-law Beer Lambig, as well as the children Samuel, Senta, and Leo also had to leave. With the "Polenaktion,” the Nazi regime reacted to a Polish law dated 31 Mar. 1938, which provided for withdrawing Polish citizenship from all Poles that had lived abroad for more than five years. This law aimed at preventing a returning stream of Jewish emigrants. In Hamburg, the operation affected approx. 1,000 persons.

Some of the expellees were able to enter Poland; some were interned in the no man’s land on the border. For the most part, living conditions were dreadful and unfit for human beings. Those among the expelled persons who had not secretly brought along any money had to camp out in barns and dilapidated military buildings. The small Jewish community settled in Bentschen (Zbaszyn) until then did not have the means to support the new arrivals. Nevertheless, the community helped as well as possible, providing food, medicine, and clothing. After four days, external assistance arrived at the camp: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which had an office in Warsaw, attempted to alleviate the situation of the expelled Jews. Malka Goldberg, too, was supported by the JDC. The JDC also organized opportunities for a rudimentary cultural and religious life. For instance, the community came together in the rifle clubhouse to celebrate Hanukkah with festive songs and customs, or the JDC would stage concerts.

Malka Goldberg was among those who had to persevere under these difficult living conditions until the camp was closed in the summer of 1939. She lived there at the address of ul. Wigury 13. After the stay in Bentschen (Zbaszyn), the traces of Malka Goldberg disappear. It is unclear whether she managed to return with her daughter Pescha to Germany once more or whether she was ghettoized and murdered there after the invasion of German troops.
The Memorial Book of the German Federal Archives indicates that she died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.

Emigration to the USA saved Moses Pinkas and Berta from the Holocaust.

No information is available to us about the fate of Esther and Osias, who had moved to Berlin.

Status as of Nov. 2014

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Nikolas Odinius

Quellen: StaHH, 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992b, Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde Hamburg, Kultussteuerkarte Malka Goldberg, Berta Goldberg, Esther Goldberg, Moses Pinkas Goldberg, Beer Lambig; StaHH 351-11 900, Wiedergutmachungsakte Beer Lambig; StaHH Melderegister Altona Film Nr. A34 K4434; Adressbuch Altona http://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de (Zugriff 27.6.2014); Stadtarchiv Hannover Geburtsurkunde Esther Goldberg Nr. 6693_1616 aus 1903; JDC http://74.127.32.5/multimedia/Documents%5CNames%20Databank%5CZbaszyn%5CZbaszyn_AR33-44_00879_00804.pdf (Zugriff 30.7.2014); www.rutschbahn.org (Zugriff, 29.7.2014); Reisepassantrag Jacob Goldberg vom 20.10.1903 www.ancestry.com/JacobGoldberg (Zugriff 12.8.2014); Bonny M. Harris, ‘From German Jews to Polish Refugees: Germany’s Polenaktion and the Zbaszyn Deportations of October 1938’, Jewish History Quarterly, 2009/2, S. 175–205; Meyer, Beate ‘Ausweisung polnischer Juden (1938)’. In Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.) Handbuch des Antisemitismus: Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin 2010, S. 29–32.; Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945. Detroit 1981; Ursula Wamser/Wilfried Weinke, Ehemals in Hamburg zu Hause: Jüdisches Leben am Grindel. Hamburg 1991.