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Gustav Jordan * 1869

Horstlooge 35 (Wandsbek, Volksdorf)

1942 Theresienstadt
1942 Treblinka
ermordet

further stumbling stones in Horstlooge 35:
Gella Streim, Clara Tuch, Dr. Theodor Tuch

Gustav Jordan, born on 13 Aug. 1869 in Hechingen, deported on 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, deported further on 21 Sept. 1942 to Treblinka, murdered there

Horstlooge 35 (Wandsbek, Volksdorf)

Gustav Jordan owned a coffee wholesale company at Kattrepelbrücke 1 in Hamburg-Altstadt. When he was banned from continuing to operate his business after 1933, he was already in his mid-60s and withdrew to the Volksdorf quarter, where he resided in a house with a large garden at the end of the street called Horstlooge. There, the widower Jordan lived by himself and probably rather inconspicuously, until 1939 when the teacher Gella Streim and the married couple Clara and Dr. Theodor Tuch were quartered with him. In Volksdorf, people spoke of the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) when referring to Horstlooge 35, even though after the war the house was not on the list of "Jews’ houses” recognized for restitution.

The four occupants of the house fought together against hunger and the cold – though in the compulsory coexistence often also against each other. Both sides are documented in Theodor Tuch’s notes in the style of a diary entitled "An meine Tochter Edith Blumenfeld” ("To my daughter Edith Blumenfeld”). For instance, the entry on 7 Mar. 1942 reads: "This morning, 17 degrees Celsius below zero. Since December, we have been living like polar explorers, who, frozen solid with their ship to the ice, hear nothing, see nothing, and would really like to eat each other.”

From his forced subtenants’ perspective, the "landlord” [in English], as Theodor Tuch called the proprietor Jordan, had two sides to him. "An obliging person who has psychological inhibitions when he is supposed to throw nice coals, the expensive ones, into the fire.” (22 Jan. 1942)

None of the house community of four survived. On 19 July 1942, nearly 73-year-old Gustav Jordan had to leave Horstlooge with the Tuch couple, surrender the key to his house to the police station at am Rockenhof, and board the deportation train to Theresienstadt at the Hannoversche Bahnhof train station. On 21 Sept. 1942, he was deported further to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered there.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Ursula Pietsch

Quellen: 1; 7; Theodor Tuch, An meine Tochter, Aufzeichnungen eines Hamburger Juden 1941/42, hrsg. von Ursula Randt, in: Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts, Jerusalem, 1985, S. 6–32; Yael Seligmann, Brief vom 22.8. an den Hrsg. des Leo Baeck Instituts.