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Betty Jacobson * 1868

Brahmsallee 16 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
BETTY JACOBSON
JG. 1868
DEPORTIERT 1941
MINSK
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Brahmsallee 16:
Charlotte Bravo, Ruth Isaak, Hanna Isaak, Michael Isaak, Pauline Isaak, Daniel Isaak, Recha Nathan, Helene Rabi, Max Warisch

Betty Jacobson, b. 8.4.1868 in Hamburg, deported to Minsk on 11.18.1941

Brahmsallee 16

Betty Jacobson was part of a large family. She herself remained unmarried and had no direct descendents. Her father, Bernhard Moses Jacobson, was married to Minna, née Dreyfuss, from Weinheim. The couple’s son was known in the Jewish public sphere; their two daughters left nothing but their names to posterity. Their biographies stood in the shadows of their brother’s interesting life. What training Betty Jacobson had, what profession or important family function she performed, is not documented. As a member of the congregation, she presumably belonged to the Synagogue Association. She paid her communal religion tax regularly up to 1941. She sublet at Grindelberg 70 with Bauer and since 1935 with Swobowitz on the ground floor at Brahmsallee 16. Like almost all the Jewish residents of the house, the 73-year old Betty Jacobson received her deportation order on 18 November 1941, although, because of her age, she did not have to be included in this transport. Her eight-year older sister, Sophie, died a natural death in 1940, her brother, Robert Moses, almost ten years earlier. Betty stayed alive until the autumn of 1940, a life of humiliations, anxieties, and sufferings, which on her arrival in the desolate Minsk ghetto lost all meaning. Concerning her death, nothing is to be learned.

On the other hand, Betty’s fifteen-year old brother Moses Jacobson, the son of Bernhard Moses and Minna Jacobson, born in 1853, is frequently mentioned in the research about the rabbinate. In Hamburg, he attended the public preparatory school, studied at the universities of Würzburg, Berlin, and Halle, and received his Ph.D. with the work, The Psychology of the Talmud.” He completed rabbinic training in Brataslava. He was appointed rabbi in Schrimm, in the Province of Posen. In 1887, in Prague, he married Regina Hirsch, the daughter of Rabbi Mordechai Amram Hirsch. In 1889, Moses Jacobson became the rabbi in in Gnesen, east of Posen, where, as a strictly Orthodox theologian, he strove successfully for understanding within the congregation. When the city became Polish in 1922, he, a German patriot, returned to his natal city of Hamburg; he taught there at the newly established "Yeshiva” until his death in 1930.

Moses’ son, Jacob Jacobson, born in 1888, became especially significant in the history of German Jews, because until 1939, he led the comprehensive archive that had the task of collecting the documentary materials of the Jewish congregations, associations, and foundations. The National Socialist Office of Genealogy confiscated the comprehensive archive and its collected documents, registries of births, marriages, and deaths, and genealogical tables; Jacob Jacobson was ordered to Berlin as an expert on Jewish genealogy. In 1943, he had, as a so-called Prominent in Theresienstadt, to process further sources for the "Central Office of Jewish Registries.” After his liberation in 1945, Jacobson emigrated to England and became a member of the Leo Baeck Institute. He died in Bad Neuenahr in 1968.


Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.


Stand: September 2019
© Inge Grolle

Quellen: 1; 4; 6; The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem: Sammlung Rabbiner Markus Mordechai Amram Hirsch und Familien der Rabbiner Moses, Jacob und Bernhard Jacobson und ihre Angehörigen – P136; Adressbücher Hamburg – online – Brahmsallee 1935–1941 (Zugriff am 8.7.2014)
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