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Jenny Drucker * 1889

Bornstraße 22 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
JENNY DRUCKER
JG. 1889
DEPORTIERT 1941
MINSK
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Bornstraße 22:
Emma Cohen, Minna Drucker, Ursula Geistlich, Selma Isenberg, Alfred Pein, Emmy Pein, Abraham Schwarzschild, Betty Schwarzschild, Sara Schwarzschild, Ignatz Schwarzschild, Rachel Süss, Clara Weil, Rosa Wolff, Bella Wolff

Jenny Drucker, born 28.8.1889 in Hamburg, deported 18.11.1941 to Minsk
Minna Drucker, born 18.10.1895 in Hamburg, deported 18.11.1941 to Minsk

Bornstraße 22

Long before the residential building at Bornstraße 22 became a so-called Judenhaus, the Drucker family had lived there and had already left it. The building had been erected at the beginning of the 20th century as an apartment house and named after its benefactor Louis Levy-Stift. As indigents belonging to the Jewish community, Nathan Drucker's family moved into an apartment on the third floor in 1924.

Nathan Drucker, born July 21, 1859 in Hamburg, and his wife Anna, née Herzfeld, born December 26, 1861 in Brüel/Mecklenburg, both came from families of small merchants. They lived in the densely populated Neustadt district of Hamburg when they married on May 11, 1887. When their first child, Jenny, was born in 1889, they moved to Marienstraße 21. Jenny was followed by another daughter in 1891, but she died when she was two and a half months old. The family moved to Peterstraße 7a, where Nathan Drucker settled as a bread merchant. There the first son, Siegfried, was born on December 14, 1893, followed by Minna in 1895 and finally Leopold in 1899. When the Grindelviertel was redeveloped, Nathan Drucker and his family moved to Rutschbahn 38 in 1909 and ran a boarding house there.

Little is known about the childhood and youth of Jenny, Siegfried, Minna and Leopold. According to tradition, the sons attended the Talmud Torah School, the girls presumably the school on Carolinenstraße for Jewish girls. Except for Minna, the children received an education, Jenny as a clerk, Siegfried and Leopold as merchants. Minna probably did the housework in her own household as well as in the boarding house together with her mother.

On July 19, 1918, the first of the children, Siegfried, married Martha Wolff, born Aug. 24, 1893, in Hamburg, who was of the same age. Their first child, born the following year, was daughter Ruth, followed by Heinz in 1920 and Hannelore in 1924. Anna Drucker did not live to see Hannelore's birth; she died on May 18, 1923, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Ilandkoppel in Ohlsdorf.

Nathan Drucker, by now 65 years old, gave up the boarding house and found a new home for himself and the still single children Jenny, Minna and Leopold in the Louis Levy-Stift. As of 1924 he was no longer required to pay taxes to the Jewish community, i.e. he no longer had any significant income. Apparently he was maintained by his daughter Jenny, who had a regular income until the Great Depression. Regarding religious affiliation with one of the religious associations, it is only known that Siegfried Nathan adhered to the orthodox Synagogue Association, but then switched to the conservative New Dammtor Synagogue.

Leopold married a non-Jewish woman, Johanna Heumann. They lived for a time in Düren in the Rhineland before returning to Hamburg and moving into an apartment at Bismarckstraße 60 in Eimsbüttel. On Jan. 28, 1926, their daughter Ellen was born.

Nathan Drucker died on Feb. 7, 1930, and was buried next to his wife Anna in the Jewish cemetery in Ohlsdorf. Jenny and Minna Drucker remained single and initially continued to live at the old address.

Around 1933, Jenny used her savings to purchase a simply equipped paper and stationery store. It was located in the basement of the house at Bismarckstraße 60, where Franz Pohlmann had opened it 30 years earlier. In addition to stationery, Jenny sold magazines and fashion magazines and operated a public telephone. Minna managed their joint household as best she could.

With the handover of power to the National Socialists and the repression against Jews that now began, the income from the business dropped and fell below, so they would not have to pay taxes to the Jewish community in 1934. Already in October 1933, Jenny Drucker's telephone booth had been taken away, and she received fewer and fewer magazines and fashion issues delivered. The two sisters turned to the Jewish community for assistance, but it refused them on the grounds that there were too many requests for help at the moment. In her distress, Minna Drucker applied for welfare assistance in November 1933 and was admitted to the welfare office on December 15, 1933.

After ten years on the third floor in the Louis Levy-Stift, Jenny and Minna Drucker moved in with her brother Leopold at Bismarckstraße 60 on January 11, 1934, and Siegfried Drucker moved into an apartment on the second floor in the Louis Levy-Stift with his family at the same time.

Minna Drucker was tested for her ability to work with the result that she was only employable for light housework due to her illness. At one time she was said to suffer from dropsy, at another time it was obesity. With a height of 154 cm, she weighed over 130 kg. From March 9, 1934, she received subsistence support of RM 3 per week for two months, then RM 5, and this remained until September 1937. In addition, her health needs were taken care of, e.g., for sturdy higher boots so that she could walk safely.

Jenny Drucker also turned to the Welfare Office for support for her stationery business. In May 1935, the Welfare Office requested an expert opinion from the "Detaillistenkammer. The retail experts concluded that the store's turnover and profit were too low to secure the existence of its owner and that this would not change in the future due to its location and small size. Therefore, support from public funds was not possible.

Leopold Drucker left Hamburg at the end of October 1935, and Jenny and Minna could only afford a basement apartment at Bismarckstraße 46 from the summer of 1936. Their brother Siegfried helped them with applications to the welfare office. After only six weeks, possibly later, here the documents are unclear, they were able to move into a mezzanine apartment in the Oppenheimer-Stift at Kielortallee 22.

The Welfare Office was looking for ways to release Minna Drucker from welfare support. Until now, the Jewish community had only provided "winter assistance" and there were no other dependents who were liable to pay. Minna could not accept "support work” (forced labor for people who get welfare support), this failed due to her health restrictions, as confirmed by both the family doctor and the medical officer. Nevertheless, from September 1936 on, Minna performed such "support work”, i.e. light work in the household, which was remunerated with 2.25 RM per week, with interruptions due to her health. Possibly this was her work in the household and in her sister's business, since no more scrubwoman came now. In September 1937, the support was discontinued.

Jenny Drucker was in the hospital for 17 weeks due to a fracture of her lower leg and could only walk with difficulty afterwards, and was also "disturbed" nervously. Who was in charge of the store during this time is not known.

Leopold Drucker emigrated with his family to Peru in the fall of 1938, Heinz emigrated to Australia at the end of 1938. Siegfried Drucker was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp after the November pogrom in 1938, released on December 17 and immediately taken to the Israelite hospital. He suffered from diabetes, which had not been treated during his imprisonment, and died on January 28, 1939. In the same month, Hannelore arrived in Sweden with a Kindertransport, leaving Martha Drucker alone with daughter Ruth. They received widows' and orphans' pensions.

On December 31, 1938, Jenny Drucker had to close her business as a "non-Aryan" business. She and Minna had last just kept their heads above water by selling the already small inventory and lending library books. Attempts to sell the inventory failed because of its age and because of an oversupply on the market: there were too many small stores that were giving up.

At the beginning of 1939 there were further changes in Jenny and Minna Drucker's lives, as for Jews still living in the German Reich in general. They had to wear identification cards with a J clearly stamped on them and, as women, had to add a "Sara" to their first name if it was not recognizable as a Jewish name. For them as Jewish women, a special department, Service Office B, became responsible at the Welfare Office. There it was recorded on Feb. 21, 1939: "Minna and Jenny Drucker are to be regarded as destitute in the same way. Up to now the rent could be maintained, since one room is rented for 18 RM and also the proceeds from the sale of the stock of goods served to pay the rent. Cancellation of the shelter as of 1.3.1939. They are now both looking for a cheap and suitable shelter and hope to find by the date through the posted shelters at the Jüd. Gemeinde to find a small modest apartment."

At the same time, the sisters applied for reimbursement of the costs of the identification cards with the "J" à 3 RM.
Martha Drucker died on December 5, 1939, ten months after her husband. The daughter Ruth completed a commercial apprenticeship and was expecting her first child. On January 1, she was the last of the Drucker family to move from Bornstraße 22 to Kielortallee 22, where both aunts were living in the meantime. After the birth of daughter Mathel, who miraculously survived the Nazi rule, she moved to Sillemstraße 3b in Eimsbüttel (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de, biography Ruth Drucker).

When the deportations in the East began in the fall of 1941, the first of Ruth's family to be taken to the ghetto of "Litzmannstadt"/Lodz was Paula Wolff, the unmarried sister of her mother Martha, on October 25. She was 49 years old.

On November 18, 1941, Jenny and Minna Drucker were deported with their niece Ruth to the Minsk ghetto, where their traces are lost, Jenny at the age of 52, Minna at the age of 46 and Ruth at the age of 22.

That Mathel survived was thanks to the courageous intervention of her grandmother Gottlieb. She was adopted by her grandparents and made it to Australia with her adoptive parents as Mathilde Gottlieb, where she lived in Melbourne as the married Mathilde Rivenell.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 9; AB; StaH 332-5 (Standesämter); 351-11 (AfW), 14143 Paula Wolff, 15619 Siegfried Drucker, 43844 Heinz Drucker, 46526 Hannelore Tobias; 351-14 (Fürsorge), 1103; Birgit Gewehr, Ruth Drucker, in: Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Altona, Hamburg, 2015.
Zur Nummerierung häugi genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".