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Karl Muszinski * 1915

Wexstraße 7 (ehemals Wexstraße 9) (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
KARL MUSZINSKI
JG. 1915
VERHAFTET 1938
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
15.10.1938
IN DER HAFT

Karl Muszinski, born on 6 Apr. 1915 in Hamburg, imprisoned on 10 Oct. 1938, found hanged in the police prison Fuhlsbüttel on 15 Oct. 1938

Wexstrasse 7 (Wexstrasse 9)

The electric machine builder Karl Muszinski resided as a subtenant with the widow Auguste Kalle at Wexstrasse 9, in the immediate vicinity of his workplace, the Gebrüder Fabke company located at Alter Steinweg 42/43. Karl’s father, Anton Muszinski (born on 3 June 1881), who came from the West Prussian town of Käthnerdorf (today Wielki Komorsk in Poland), worked as a longshoreman in the port of Hamburg. His mother Elsa Muszinski, née Finke (born on 19 Feb. 1885), had given birth to two older daughters besides Karl, Luise (born on 8 Apr. 1907) and Elsa (born on 10 Aug. 1912). After the early death of her husband on 14 Jan. 1935, she was dependent on financial support from her only son.

Notwithstanding the Nuremberg Laws [on race], which since 15 Sept. 1935 punished, among other things, extramarital relationships between women and men of Jewish and non-Jewish descent, Karl Muszinski got engaged to the 17-year-old domestic servant Lotte Neumann. Lotte, actually Lieselotte, was born on 22 Oct. 1921 in a Jewish working-class family in Hamburg-Neustadt. She was the third oldest of six children. Her parents Siegfried and Fanny Neumann (see corresponding entry) lived at Grossneumarkt 56, in Karl Muszinski’s neighborhood. On 4 Oct. 1938, Lieselotte Neumann was arrested on suspicion of "racial defilement” ("Rassenschande”). Her mother Fanny Neumann and two of her brothers were arrested along with her. Possibly, the young couple was denounced, because at this time Lieselotte was pregnant. It is quite possible that her family was also under police observation, because her father Siegfried Neumann had already been arrested by the Gestapo and had been detained in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp since 23 June 1938 as a "protective custody prisoner” ("Schutzhäftling”).

Karl Muszinski was arrested six days after Lieselotte’s arrest. There was no indictment or conviction. After five days in prison, Karl Muszinski was found hanged in his cell at the Fuhlsbüttel police prison at ten o’clock in the morning. The official version of the "Kriminalpolizeistelle Hamburg, 3. Kommissariat” (headquarters of the Hamburg criminal investigation department, 3rd office) dated 18 Oct. 1938, reads: "The protective custody prisoner Karl Muszinski, born on 6 Apr. 1915 in Hamburg, [...] committed suicide by hanging in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison on 15 Oct. 1938. The effects and money amounting to 13.46 RM [reichsmark] have been handed over to the mother, the widow Elsa Muszinski, residing at Peterstrasse 44.” The death certificate issued noted "death by hanging (suicide).”

Criminal proceedings against Lieselotte’s parents on the grounds of "aiding and abetting racial defilement” and "aggravated procuration” ("schwere Kuppelei”), justified by the accusation that they had tolerated their daughter’s relationship, were also discontinued. As the investigation file indicated, the most important witness for the prosecution was no longer alive. Lieselotte, well advanced in her pregnancy, was taken from the "Hütten prison” to the Oberaltenallee public care home. Her daughter Bela was born on 23 Feb. 1939 at the Finkenau Women’s Hospital. After the childbirth, Lieselotte and her child were returned to the care home and remained in "protective custody” in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison until 23 June 1939. After her release, she returned to her parents’ home.

In Mar. 1941, Lieselotte Neumann was again arrested by the Gestapo on charges of "racial defilement” and – less than 20 years old – transferred, without a trial, to the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. Lieselotte is said to have died there on 8 May 1942 from a purulent pleurisy infection after suffering from influenza. However, a list of the Jewish Cemetery in Ohlsdorf does not document her urn burial until 12 May 1943. According to information from the Ravensbrück Memorial, though, Lieselotte Neumann was "examined” by the physician Friedrich Mennecke as part of the "Operation 14 f 13” ("Aktion 14 f 13”) which was part of the Nazis’ "euthanasia” program, along with other concentration camp prisoners who were no longer fit for work. She was then selected and, sometime in the spring of 1942, murdered in the gas chamber of the Bernburg/Saale killing center. Her daughter Bela was deported at the age of two, on 25 Oct. 1941, together with her Jewish grandmother Fanny Neumann to the "Litzmannstadt” Ghetto in Lodz, where they died at an unknown time.

Elsa Muszinski believed, as she explained in a restitution proceeding after the war, that her son’s girlfriend had probably ended up in Poland with her child, and that she had never heard from them again.

For Lieselotte and Bela Neumann, Stolpersteine are located in front of the building at Grossneumarkt 56.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 351-11 AfW 8087 (Muszinski, Elsa); StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde - Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 1834/38; StaH 351-11 AfW 42086 (Neumann, Kurt); StaH 351-11 AfW 23901 (Neumann, Siegfried); StaH 213-11 Amtsgericht Hamburg 7311/41; StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung 1125; StaH 242-1II Abl. 13, jüngere Gefangenenkarteikarte Frauen (Neumann, Lieselotte); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3076 u 357/1906; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1033 u 98/1935; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 98944 u 211/1938; Diercks: Gedenkbuch Kola-Fu, S. 33; Auskunft aus der Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, E-Mail vom 16.5.2011.