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Adele Hirsch, geb. Nussbaum
© Yad Vashem

Adele Hirsch (née Nussbaum) * 1875

Kielortallee 16 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
ADELE HIRSCH
GEB. NUSSBAUM
JG. 1875
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
1942 TREBLINKA
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Kielortallee 16:
Pincus Hirsch, Helene Rosenbaum

Pincus Hirsch, born in Hamburg on 7 July 1861, deported to Theresienstadt on 15 July 1942, deported again to Treblinka on 21 Sep. 1942
Adele Hirsch, née Nussbaum, born in Hamburg on 30 Aug. 1875, deported to Theresienstadt on 15 July 1942, deported again to Treblinka on 21 Sep. 1942

Kielortallee 16

Pincus Paul Hirsch was born in Hamburg in 1861 in a well-to-do, religiously observant Jewish family, which had been established in Hamburg for at least three generations.

Shortly before his eighteenth birthday, on 1 June 1879, he became an employee of the M. M. Warburg Bank. In family trees that were subsequently compiled by his son, the job titles business management assistant, banker, and authorized bank officer appear. The Jewish community tax records list him as a bookkeeper, and in the address directories of the 1930s he appears as a businessman. Pincus Hirsch spent his entire working life as an employee of the Warburg Bank, and he retained a connection with the bank even after retirement. On the occasion of the firm’s 125th anniversary in 1923, the bank honored him as its longest-serving employee, with a history of 44 years of employment with the Warburg Bank at that time. As late as 1928, he still had a desk of his own available to him in the Customer Credit Control Department. Pincus Hirsch had married on 1 Nov. 1903. Adele Nussbaum, who was born in Hamburg in 1875, came from a family of distinguished rabbis. Her maternal great-grandfather, Rabbi Jecheskel Joelson, who had settled in Altona, was for a short time one of the predecessors of Rabbi Ettlinger in Altona. Other ancestors of Adele Hirsch from Hesse had lived in Hamburg since the first half of the nineteenth century.

Pincus and Adele Hirsch had one son. Siegfried Süsskind Hirsch was born in Hamburg on 2 Sep. 1904. He attended the Talmud Torah School, where he was influenced by Joseph Carlebach, the principal of the school and later Rabbi of Altona and Chief Rabbi of Hamburg. Siegfried Hirsch belonged to the religious youth groups Hashomer Hadati and Ezra and the Bar Kochba Sports Club. He completed an apprenticeship in the metals trade and was employed by the firm of Tobias Feinstein at Gänsemarkt 33. He started his own business (in 1935/36), dealing in dental supplies, and provided dentists with equipment, medications, and other needs. His business address was Kielortallee 16. He and his parents, with whom he shared a home, had also lived at this address for years.

As the owner of a firm, Siegfried Hirsch was one of the Jewish men who were arrested by the Gestapo during the pogrom of 10 Nov. 1938 and placed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. On 24 Dec. 1938 he was released on condition that he leave the country as quickly as possible. He did so three months later, on 28 Mar. 1939. After a stopover with a cousin in Amsterdam, he arrived in London on 3 Apr. 1939 and stayed at first in the home of old friends from Hamburg.

Here he had to adapt to different – more modest – circumstances of life. His lack of comfortable surroundings, his scarce funds, and his poor command of the language affected him negatively, as did the status of refugee, which meant that he was not permitted to work for pay.

In addition, he suffered from the separation from his parents. His only remaining contact was through the post office, by means of letters and postcards – apart from a few brief telephone calls. The letters written by Adele and Pincus Hirsch to their son in England before the declaration of war have been preserved. The first letter is dated 31 Mar. 1939, the last 6 Sep. 1939. The correspondence from Siegfried’s parents consists of a total of 30 letters and 18 postcards. The letters are filled with love, concern, and solicitude. The parents sought to encourage their son and give him confidence, yet behind the lines there was inevitably anxiety about his future as well. They gave him advice and tried to arrange contacts to émigrés in London who had come from Hamburg. As the exchange of letters progressed, however, his parents, especially his mother, expressed grief over the separation. It became apparent that it was increasingly unlikely that the parents could follow their son, if possible even to the USA, where relatives were already living. The letter of 20 June 1939 made the situation clear. Adele Hirsch wrote: "In connection with the waiting-list number, I immediately telephoned Aunt Else, but thus far have not received any forms. Whenever I think about the fact that we are not to see each other again until you can send for us from America someday, I could fall into despair. I hope it can be managed in some other way.” Three days later, she wrote: "The form has been sent off to the consulate, the number will not be exactly a low one. I think they have already reached 19,000.” And one week later, she said: "By the way, I forgot to tell you in the previous letter than we [have] already had a reply from the American Consulate and have the numbers 17,333 and 34, and that our turn will come at some unforeseeable time, with G-d’s help, I hope we will not have to wait an incalculable length of time to see each other again.” Under these circumstances, the pressure on the son was enormous. Shortly before the war began, he was advised to make a personal appeal to Max Warburg, who was still in London but left for the USA soon thereafter. Adele Hirsch inquired on 31 Aug.: "Do you think it is appropriate for Papa, if everything remains calm, to write to M. W. himself at some point? Besides us, only a tiny number of people are still in question, as most of them are no longer here.”

Although many things were openly stated in the letters, the parents are likely to have shown restraint in the wording of their letters: to keep from alarming their son unnecessarily and to avoid censorship of their correspondence by the Gestapo. Only between the lines of the letters does one find evidence of the increasing daily deprivation of rights that affected the Jewish population. On 9 May 1939, Adele wrote: "You’ve probably already heard that we may have to move out in the foreseeable future. You can imagine how terrible this thought is for me ... I hope that it will not happen so soon now.” Adele Hirsch was referring to the law that introduced new regulations for housing. From now on, Jewish inhabitants had to live in separate housing, concentrated in "Jews’ houses.”

In the summer, the parents spent a few weeks in a former children’s home, Wilhelminenhöhe, at Rissener Landstraße 127, now one of the Hachshara training centers for occupational retraining of young Jews who were preparing to immigrate to Palestine. They experienced the stay there as relative freedom, which they could enjoy. After returning to their own four walls, they became extremely aware of their limited range of motion: "We are now reliant solely on our own balcony; it was good that we could be outdoors so much at Wilhelminenhöhe,” Adele wrote in mid-July.

As the exchange of letters continued, the atmosphere became increasingly oppressive for the parents. In almost every letter, they mentioned relatives or acquaintances who were about to emigrate or whom they had already seen off. An unparalleled exodus left those who remained behind feeling increasingly lonely. Adele wrote about one relative: "Now she is probably aboard the ship, I just spoke to her on the telephone last night, saying goodbye again was painful for me, one dear person after another is leaving, and one stays behind alone.”

A few months later, Adele Hirsch wrote: "I’m very sorry that you were depressed about my letter, after all, you know me, often I can’t do anything about my mood, and to whom should I voice my feelings if not to you. You can probably empathize with me for being sad when, after you, my siblings and all my good friends … are leaving, one gets so lonely and has too much time for reflection. But I want to pull myself together and always remember to stay healthy and ask the Almighty to help us and reunite us again quite soon, in joy.”

Pincus Hirsch’s daily routine was structured around religious commandments and visits to the synagogue. In addition, he worked as a volunteer at the United Old and New Klaus Synagogue, located on the Rutschbahn, and could presumably draw on his work experience at the Warburg Bank. The congregation awarded him the honorary title chaver (friend, fellow, partner, associate), which his father had held before him.

While reuniting with her son had priority for Adele Hirsch, Pincus Hirsch was thinking about a way to force their son to pursue social integration in England. To his thanks for the birthday presents sent to him, he added: "Now I would have liked, in addition, to count a nice, devout daughter-in-law among the gifts, but I suppose I will have to be patient about that a while longer, not too long, I hope. Given the difficulty of obtaining a work permit in England, marrying into an existing business may be the only way to accomplish this more rapidly.” He did not relinquish the idea of a marriage, and a few weeks later he counseled his son: "I would place an ad in the Jewish Chronicle at some point too, concerning marriage into a business, and it may be your turn to be lucky. If one can place the ad here, perhaps it can work out.”

Now and then Siegfried Hirsch was reminded of his previous, successful life in Hamburg and simultaneously of his situation as an outcast. His mother wrote on 27 June: "A very nice gentleman from the commercial police authority (Gewerbepolizei) was here in person, wanted to see your office to determine whether something else is in there. When he saw it arranged as a bedroom, he laughed and was reassured ... By the way, your company was also mentioned in the newspaper, in an official notice of closure.”

In the meantime, the prospect of a family reunion had further dimmed. The last letter, dated 6 Sep. 1939, reflects the depressing situation. Adele Hirsch wrote: "So I have the feeling … that you lack the courage to write, or am I mistaken, it would naturally be wrong of you, you must keep your chin up and trust in G-d, he surely will not deny you his help. You know that my thoughts are always with you and how glad we are when we can share in everything that concerns you, but that is possible only if you always write to us in detail.”

But at the moment that was not to be possible. As a result of the outbreak of war and England’s declaration of war on Germany, correspondence between the two countries had to be suspended.

In May 1940 Siegfried Hirsch – like many other immigrants from Germany – was interned in England as a so-called enemy alien and deported to Australia. During this time, he kept up a correspondence with a cousin who had immigrated to the USA. The cousin, in turn, received letters from Siegfried’s parents in Hamburg and summarized their contents for him or forwarded the letters to him. A number of letters were thus preserved. Siegfried Hirsch wrote the last letter to his parents on 26 June 1942. This letter and two others were returned to the sender, marked undeliverable, by the Hamburg postal authorities in Oct. 1942.

Meanwhile, Pincus and Adele Hirsch had been ordered by the Gestapo to vacate their apartment on Kielortallee and were living at Sedanstraße 23. There, in the former home for the elderly of the German Israelite Community, which now functioned as a "Jews’ house,” they received deportation orders. On 15 July 1942 they were deported to Theresienstadt, along with many other family members from Hamburg. On Yom Kippur, 21 Sep. 1942, they were forced to board the train headed for Treblinka, where they were murdered.

Around one month later, in Oct. 1942, Siegfried Hirsch was allowed to return from Australia to England.

At first he resumed his previous activities at Adath Yisroel Synagogue in London, where he engaged in youth and cultural work. After receiving a work permit, he found employment in the metals trade. His employer was an immigrant from Hungary. Siegfried Hirsch was employed by this firm until about 1970, when he retired.

In 1947 he had married Rosalind Landau, the daughter of a prominent Jewish family in London. She was a granddaughter of Rabbi David Hanover of Wandsbek. The couple had a daughter, whom they named Adele in memory of her grandmother. In the meantime, Siegfried Hirsch, together with the family of his cousin Erna Sussman, née Hirsch, had purchased a house in the London suburb of Hendon and had joined the synagogue there. When the Hendon congregation was planning the construction of a new synagogue, he joined the building committee and later became a member of the synagogue’s board. He formed a friendship with Rabbi Mordechai Knoblowicz, who at one time had been brought to Hamburg by Joseph Carlebach and was familiar with the tradition of the Hamburg community. Siegfried Hirsch remained involved with Judaism throughout his life and served on numerous community committees. Upon the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, he became interested in the Mizrachi movement, a form of Zionism infused with a religious spirit.

Siegfried Hirsch was for many years a deputy in the main organizational body of British Jewry, among other things as a member of the Ritual Slaughter Committee. He devoted himself to the Adath Yisroel Congregation in Hendon, and over a period of 40 years held virtually every office at least once.

In 1985 the congregation awarded him the honorary title hechaver (friend, fellow, partner, associate), and he thus followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who had held this title in Hamburg in earlier days.

Siegfried Hirsch suffered throughout his life as a result of his failure to enable his parents to leave Germany. They had been declared dead in 1951, as of 8 May 1945. Siegfried Hirsch died on 13 Feb. 1990.

(This text is based on the [English] manuscript by Prof. Max Sussman, a second cousin of Siegfried Hirsch.)

Translator: Kathleen Luft

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Max Sussman / Astrid Louven

Quellen: 1; AB 1932 IV S. 295 und 490; AB 1936 II, S. 320 und 493; AB 1936 III, S. 1586; AB 1936 IV, S. 486; Adele und Pincus Hirsch, Briefe an Siegfried Hirsch vom 31.3.–6.9.1939; Max Sussman, Genealogische Aufzeichnungen über Pincus, Adele und Siegfried Hirsch (unveröffentlichtes englischsprachiges Manuskript 2012, übersetzt von Astrid Louven); Eduard Duckesz, Chachme AHW, Hamburg, 1908, S. 48–49; Wilhelm Mosel, Wegweiser zu ehemaligen jüdischen Stätten Hamburgs, Heft 2, S. 72–77.