Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Paula Knopf (née Rosenbaum) * 1909

Hegestraße 1 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)

1941 Lodz
ermordet am 12.1.1942

further stumbling stones in Hegestraße 1:
Anni Dettmann, Paul Sternberg

Paula Knopf, née Rosenbaum, born 21 Dec.1909, deported to Lodz 25 Oct. 1941, died there 12 Jan. 1942

Hegestrasse 1

Paula Knopf was a daughter of the Jewish Hamburg couple Julius Rosenbaum (1879 to 1939), an auctioneer by trade, and his wife von Therese Rosenbaum, née Italiener (1878 to 1937). She had an elder sister, Jeanette, born 1907.

Paula was married to Rudolf Emanuel Knopf (born December 15th, 1900), a painter. Both of them seem to have had little contact with the Jewish Community. He had only registered in 1936, she in 1940, when Nazi laws compelled Jews to become members of "Reich Association of Jews”.

Paula and Rudolf, still young at the beginning of the Nazi era, led a rather meager life. He was unemployed for several periods, and she, too, was exempt from the culture tax. There are differing reports about her occupation. Once, she worked as a salesgirl, another time as a nanny.

Their marriage remained childless. They separated at the latest in the mid 1930s, he living at Isestrasse 36, with Maschke, she at first with her parents at Wexstrasse 3 I, and from July, 1940 at Hegestrasse 1, mezzanine, with Anni Dettmann, also a Jew (q.v.).

Rudolf Knopf succeeded in fleeing from Germany in May, 1938. There are indications that he arrived in China in April, 1939, presumably in Shanghai.
Paula Knopf was deported to the Lodz Ghetto on October 25th, 1942, together with her landlady Anni Dettmann and her daughters Helga and Sigrid Dettmann. Paula Knopf died in the Lodz Ghetto eleven weeks later, on January 12th, 1942, barely 33 years old.

Translated by Peter Hubschmid

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Johannes Grossmann

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen, A 51/1 (Paula Knopf und Rudolf Emanuel Knopf); StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden, 992e2 Band 1; Archiwum Panstwowe, Lodz (Getto-Archiv), Melderegister, PL39-278-1011-24891 und 24892.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Recherche und Quellen.