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Ernst Selig * 1922

Bornstraße 20 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

1941 Minsk
ermordet am 22.1.1945 im KZ Flossenbrück

further stumbling stones in Bornstraße 20:
Isidor Selig, Lina Selig, Werner Selig

Ernst Selig, born on 29 Nov. 1922, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk, date of death on 22 Jan. 1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp
Werner Selig, born on 30 Aug. 1921, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Isidor Selig, born on 28 Jan. 1890, imprisoned in 1938 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Lina Selig, born on 15 Mar. 1895, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk

Isidor Selig came from an orthodox-Jewish family in Friedrichstadt. He had completed a commercial apprenticeship and in 1920, he married the East Frisian woman Lina, née Schönthal, in Oldenburg. The sons Werner and Ernst were born in Friedrichstadt.

In the 1930s, the family resided on Eimsbüttler Sillemstrasse, then on Grindelallee, before moving to Bornstrasse. From 1920 until 1927, Isidor Selig was active as an independent businessman, then, until 1930, as a commission agent, and afterward he temporarily worked for the security corps and as a foreman. Subsequently, he operated a newsstand, which he was forced to sell in June 1935.

After that, he did not find a permanent job anymore. He tried his hand, not very successfully, as a canvasser, though eventually he was forced to apply for welfare assistance and enlisted for "compulsory labor duties” ("Pflichtarbeit”).

During the Pogrom of November 1938, he was detained in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He did not have to assume the compulsory added name of "Israel,” because according to the rulers, "Isidor” was among the names labeling a person as Jewish in the first place. In 1939, he made efforts toward his and his family’s emigration to Bolivia, where he hoped to work as a road builder and garden designer. The passage of the family of four would have been paid by the Relief Organization of Jews (Jüdischer Hilfsverein). In Mar. 1939, Isidor Selig submitted the list of moving goods. After it had been clarified that only the wedding rings and a silver wristwatch qualified as "valuable” jewelry, whereas a cigarette case was made of Bakelite and two glasses were horn-rimmed, the reservations of the foreign currency office were considered dispelled.

The luggage, too, passed the inspection without complaints, as it included only old, worn items. However, the visa was a long time coming. Thus, Selig informed the Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) on 1 May 1939 "that I have not yet asked for the passports because the visa issue of which I had been notified on 2 March for 15 March is not in my possession to this day, as a result of which I do not know where to emigrate.” Then, in July, he requested permission to pack as soon as possible, "allowing me to travel before this week is out.” However, by that time, the authorization to receive the passports had expired. The Selig family had become entangled in the maze of regulations and their emigration failed.

Isidor Selig took on employment on a ship, and a note dated 25 Sept. 1939 in his file reads, "belongs to the crew of the whaler ‘Windhund,’ departure from the country impossible for the time being.” It would not become possible anymore either. When Isidor Selig had returned to Hamburg and lived with his family as subtenants at Bornstrasse 20, the deportation order to Minsk for all four arrived at that address. Isidor Selig had two brothers who had departed for the USA in time. However, he and his family as well as his sister Flora and his 97-year-old (!) father, who in 1939 had moved to Bornstrasse 7a after the "Aryanization” of their real estate in Friedrichstadt, were transported off: Flora and her husband to Minsk on 8 Nov. 1941; the father, Jacob, on 9 June 1943 to Theresienstadt, where he died on 12 Sept. 1943.

In contrast to his parents and his brother, the office worker Werner Selig, son Ernst Selig, whose occupation was indicated on the deportation list as that of a textiles merchant, survived the dreadful working and living conditions and the repeated mass shootings in Minsk. On 1 Sept. 1943, shortly before the ghetto was dissolved, he was transferred with his Hamburg fellow sufferers Erwin Vogel and Heinz Rosenberg from the ghetto to the Minsk concentration camp. From there, they were deported to the Budzyn forced labor camp, where the inmates had to slave for the Heinkel Works. Subsequently, they were taken to the Rzeszow ("Reichshof”) camp located about 150 kilometers (approx. 93 miles) east of Cracow, where they were committed to Camp A, the "Jewish forced laborer camp.” From there, they arrived in the Plaszow concentration camp in a suburb of Cracow. The camp was commanded by the notorious Amon Goeth, whose atrocities Steven Spielberg depicted in his movie Schindler’s List.

Eventually, on 4 Aug. 1944, Ernst Selig and his fellow sufferers arrived in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria. Receiving prisoner number 16,054, he was registered in the prisoner category of "J.Rd.” (=jüdischer Reichsdeutscher, i.e., Jewish Reich citizen). From the Flossenbürg main concentration camp he was transferred to the Hersbruck subcamp, where several thousand prisoners were forced to build galleries for an underground aircraft engine plant of the BMW Company. On 24 Dec. 1944, Ernst Selig was "transferred back” with other emaciated and ill prisoners unfit for work to the Flossenbürg main concentration camp. He perished there on 22 Jan. 1945.


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

Stand: January 2019
© Beate Meyer

Quellen: StaH, 522-1, Jüdische Gemeinden, 992b, Kultussteuerkartei der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde Hamburgs; ebd., 314-15, Oberfinanzpräsident, FVG 5900; 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 992e; Heinz Rosenberg, Jahre des Schreckens. ... und ich blieb übrig, dass ich Dir’s ansage, Göttingen 1985; Hamburger jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Gedenkbuch, Hamburg 1995; Auskunft U. Fritz, KZ Gedenkstätte Flossenburg v. 17.11.2005; Amt f. Wiedergutmachung 2801 90.