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Wilhelm Fraenkel * 1885

Isestraße 30 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
WILHELM FRAENKEL
JG. 1885
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ
ERMORDET 18.11.1941

further stumbling stones in Isestraße 30:
Hedwig Fraenkel

Wilhelm Fraenkel, born 22 May 1885 in Groß Strehlitz in Upper Silesia, deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz
Hedwig Fraenkel, née Kretschmer, born 4 Oct. 1885 in Breslau (Wroclaw), deported 25 Oct. 1941 to Lodz

Wilhelm and Hedwig Fraenkel had two children. Frida, who was born in 1910, died in 1930. Their son Ernst Albert was born in 1916. Wilhelm Fraenkel was a pharmacist. In 1931 he was working for the inspection committee. It was his task to inspect the dispensaries and retail and hospital pharmacies every two years on behalf of the Health Department. He was also the secretary of the Association of German Pharmacists. For the association’s 25th anniversary in 1930, Wilhelm Fraenkel directed members in a performance of Haydn’s opera "The Apothecary.” The Pharmazeutische Zeitung wrote an article about the performance.

Wilhelm Fraenkel lost his job when "Aryanization measures” were put in place in the pharmacy profession. He was arrested during the November Pogrom of 1938 and held in prison for four weeks. He became the director of the medical department at the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg.

On 25 October 1941 Fraenkel and his wife Hedwig, together with Paula Lisser, who rented rooms with them, were deported from their apartment at Isestraße 30 to Lodz. The couple and Paula Lisser, who was registered as Wilhelm Fraenkel’s "sister-in-law,” were assigned to accommodations at Hohensteiner Straße 43. Surviving documents from Lodz show that Wilhelm Fraenkel worked in one of the five pharmacies in the ghetto beginning on 11 December 1942. He was thus able to provide at least basic medications to the people there.

In May 1942 a second deportation from Lodz to an uncertain destination loomed. Today we know that the transports were destined for the extermination camp at Chelmno. Wilhelm Fraenkel submitted a request to rescind the order for himself, his wife, and his "sister-in-law” on the grounds that he worked in the pharmacy at Hospital II. He included a certificate from the ghetto’s "Health Department.” The request was approved.

Wilhelm Fraenkel continued to work in the hospital pharmacy until his death on 18 November 1943. We were not able to determine Paula Lisser’s date of death, nor whether she actually was Fraenkel’s sister-in-law, or if he said she was in order to offer her protection as a family member. She is considered missing.

Hedwig Fraenkel survived the Lodz Ghetto despite the horrific conditions until 7 July 1944 when she was deported to the Chelmno Extermination Camp. She was probably murdered immediately upon arrival.

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Maike Grünwaldt

Quellen: 1; 4; 8; USHMM, RG 15083, M 301/728-731; Esther Hell, Jüdische Apotheker im Fadenkreuz, Hamburg 2008, S. 53f.
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