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Ambor Hans
© Privatbesitz

Hans Ambor * 1906

Hammer Berg 34 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

1942 von Drancy nach Auschwitz

Hans Ambor, born 29 Dec. 1906, deported to Auschwitz 10 Aug. 1942

Hans Ambor was born in Hamburg, the fourth of six children of the Jewish couple Jacob Ambor (born 1869 in Zarzece in the western Beskids, in what is today the Polish-Slovakian border region) and Josepha Nathan Ambor, (born 1875 in Hamburg).

His father owned a small company on Spaldingstraße. It sold, developed, and manufactured sprinkler systems. Hans grew up in Rotherbaum (where he and his three older siblings were born) and Dockenhuden (where the two youngest children were born). As an adult, he moved several times within Hamburg. After his marriage to a non-Jewish woman from Holstein and the birth of a son, they moved into an apartment at Hammer Berg 34. Decades later, his wife still raved about the beauty of the apartment and its neighborhood, especially about the Hammer Park.

After his business training, Hans Ambor went to work at the family company, which he took over as his father’s heir and successor in 1935. The company was "Aryanized” in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogrom on 9 November 1938. He was on a business trip abroad at the time, and, for fear of being arrested, did not return to Hamburg. He set up a new business in Brussels, in order to provide for his family who were still in Hamburg, including his wife and child, whom the National Socialists had classified as a "Crossbreed (Mischling) of the first degree” (from the Jewish perspective he was non-Jewish). He and his wife remained in close written contact.

Hans Ambor and his youngest brother, who had joined him in Brussels in January 1939, were arrested and sent to Camp Gurs Concentration Camp in the south of France in October 1940. On 6 August 1942 he was transported to the Drancy internment camp near Paris.

The transport list and the bill of lading (p. 115) for Transport Number 17 from Drancy to Auschwitz on 10 August 1942 is the last document that mentions Hans Ambor. A ruling by the Hamburg district court (Dept. 54) on 13 February 1950 declared him dead. The date of death was given as 8 May 1945, the date of end of the war. This was the usual procedure in such cases.

His wife and son survived the war under difficult conditions – the apartment on Hammer Berg, along with all of their belongings and keepsakes, was destroyed in a bombing raid. His wife and son were never able to overcome Hans’ murder. His son later emigrated and died young.

Hans Ambor, as well as his sister with her entire family and his younger brother (see above), were all deported to ghettos or concentration camps and murdered.

One of the older brothers had left Germany long before the Nazi takeover, and only discovered the fate of his family after the war, after years of uncertainty. The second-eldest brother, with his wife and child, survived the war under difficult circumstances in hiding in occupied France. After the war, he could not face returning to Germany, even though he loved and missed his native city of Hamburg. The Nazi regime had (only) cost him his family and his home. It had cost too many others their lives.

Translator: Amy Lee
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Stéphanie Ambor

Quellen: 1; 2; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 390 Wählerliste 1930; Joods Museum van Deportatie en Verzet, Mechelen; ARCHIVES DU CENTRE DE DOCUMENTATION JUIVE CONTEMPORAINE, Paris.