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Ursula Salomon * 1934

Neuer Steinweg 6 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
URSULA SALOMON
JG. 1934
DEPORTIERT 1941
ERMORDET IN
MINSK

further stumbling stones in Neuer Steinweg 6:
Paula Lewald

Paula Lewald, née Salomon, born on 14 June 1904 in Hamburg, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk
Ursula Salomon, born on 22 July 1934 in Hamburg, deported on 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk

Neuer Steinweg 6 (Neuer Steinweg 92)

Paula Lewald was one of many children of the Jewish couple Max Salomon (born on 21 June 1863) and Auguste, née Josephsohn (born on 26 Feb. 1868). Her father had learned the bookbinding trade. Her mother was employed as a maid until her wedding on 3 May 1888. She brought a premarital daughter named Bertha Josephsohn into the marriage, who had been born on 11 Jan. 1886 in the maternity hospital at Pastorenstrasse 16. When Paula was born on 14 June 1904 in the former Gängeviertel of Hamburg-Neustadt, her parents resided at Paradieshof 9, where living conditions were less paradisiacal than the name suggests (Paradieshof was a former corridor that ran between today’s Michaelisstrasse and Alter Steinweg). At least six of their twelve children did not live to see adulthood. Paula’s older brother Hermann (born on 21 Apr. 1889) was killed on 7 Dec. 1917 as a soldier in the First World War.

Paula’s parents worked as itinerant traders and often moved within Hamburg-Neustadt until they were given a rent-free apartment in the Jewish Gumpel-Stift. Paula attended the Israelite girls’ school at Carolinenstrasse 35. It is not known whether she received additional training after her school years. She probably had to fend for herself at an early stage. Until Oct. 1931, she worked as a packer at the Reemtsma cigarette factory in Altona-Bahrenfeld.

Her mother Auguste had already died on 17 June 1921 at the age of 53; her father Max entered into further marriages in the following years. On 6 June 1935, the widow Sara Selma Strohmeier, née Meier, divorced name Pape (see Sara Selma Salomon), became Paula’s third stepmother.

Paula became engaged to the non-Jewish goldsmith Walter Flügel (born on 17 June 1907). Their daughter Ursula was born on 22 July 1934. Walter Flügel, who had been employed since 1930 as a messenger for the völkisch, anti-Semitic German National Association of Commercial Employees (Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfenverband; later taken over by the German Labor Front (DAF)), was dismissed without prior notice on 1 Jan. 1936 because of his Jewish fiancée. A colleague had denounced him to his employer. The couple then separated. According to the Hamburg directory, Paula lived at Alter Steinweg 49 in 1936. She received alimony for Ursula and later worked in the spice packing company of Alois Weiss at Alter Wall 60. Her last, unspecified employment was at the Jewish Community Center, "Hellmanns Gaststätten,” on Hartungstrasse.

Perhaps Paula met her later husband, the waiter Walter Lewald, there. Walter was one of eight children of the Jewish couple Ferdinand Lewald (born on 5 Mar. 1870 in Offenbach) and Johanna, née Os (born on 4 June 1873 in Lingen). When Walter was born on 1 Mar. 1906, his father was also working as a waiter. The Lewald family lived at Kurzestrasse 1 (today Kurze Strasse), later at Grabenstrasse 10 in today’s Karolinenviertel neighborhood.

On 14 June 1938, Walter Lewald was placed in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) as part of the "June Operation” ("Juni-Aktion”), which was aimed at "work-shy” males and Jews who had a previous conviction from some earlier point in their lives. In an application for restitution filed after the war, he estimated that there were 180 previously convicted Jews in Hamburg who were sentenced for minor offenses, such as traffic violations. "I remember Director Tietz, who had grazed a Nazi flag on the Autobahn in a traffic accident and was therefore arrested. The purpose of the detention was to persuade us to leave Germany.”

Walter Lewald was released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 4 Feb. 1939 because his parents, supported by the Relief Organization of German Jews (Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden), had made the necessary preparations toward their son’s emigration. Since Walter had to leave Germany as quickly as possible, only Shanghai was left as a place of refuge, where no visa was required. Paula and Walter married on 27 Mar. 1939 and shortly afterward, on 12 Apr. 1939, Walter left Hamburg for Shanghai, where his brother Kurt Lewald (born on 1 Sept. 1907) had already escaped on 22 Jan. 1939 on the steamer "Biancamano” via Genoa. Walter and Kurt’s older brother William (born on 7 Feb. 1902, died on 27 July 1958), who had operated an outfit renting launches and light sailing boats (Ewer), followed them in May. Her sister Elfriede Seligmann, née Lewald (born on 18 June 1903), was able to follow her brothers after she had been released from the Lichtenburg women’s concentration camp on 12 June 1939.

Paula was also supposed to follow with Ursula, but already in Sept. 1939, after the beginning of the war, it was too late for a legal departure. They stayed behind in Hamburg at Neuer Steinweg 92. Paula’s father died on 31 May 1940 at the age of 77. Max Salomon was buried next to his first wife Auguste at the Jewish Cemetery on Ilandkoppel in Ohlsdorf.

On 8 Nov. 1941, Paula’s seven-year-old daughter Ursula Salomon, assigned transport number 732, was put on the deportation list to Minsk. Under no. 733, William Salomon (see corresponding entry) was listed there, who according to the house registration file lived with them since the beginning of 1940.
Paula Lewald was then put on the supplementary list for the same transport that reached the ghetto in German-occupied Belarus on 10 Nov. 1941. All three were killed there.

What fate did the other family members suffer?
Walter Lewald entered into a second marriage in Shanghai with Jenny Cohn (born on 29 Dec. 1901 in Berlin), also a Jewish emigrant. Their son Eddie was born there on 22 Mar. 1941. After the war, they lived in Israel for a while. Walter Lewald returned to Hamburg in 1951, got married there in his third union, and died on 30 June 1965.
His parents Ferdinand and Johanna Lewald had been deported on 15 July 1942 from Bundesstrasse 35 to Theresienstadt, where his father died on 30 Apr. 1943; his mother was murdered in Auschwitz on 15 May 1944. His sister Elfriede Seligmann submitted Pages of Testimony for her parents, two other brothers, and one sister at the Yad Vashem memorial site in Israel in 1955. Margot Gerson, née Lewald (born on 3 Nov. 1909), was deported to Auschwitz with her husband Hans Gerson (born on 24 June 1905) and their son Uri (born on 14 Mar. 1942), who was not yet four months old, on 11 July 1942 (Stolpersteine at Bundesstrasse 35). Alfred Lewald (born on 19 Aug. 1886) was also murdered in Auschwitz, on 15 Nov. 1942. Hans Lewald (born on 17 June 1912) was deported to Minsk on 8 Nov. 1941. He died on 19 May 1945, after his liberation from a freight car by American troops in the Upper Bavarian town of Seeshaupt (Lake Starnberg).

Paula’s sister, Regina Bluhm, née Salomon (born on 23 Jan. 1899, subsequent married name Scheele), who had still lived with Paula in Oct. 1941, survived the persecution as well as the heavy air raids on Hamburg, in which she was seriously injured by a bomb splinter. The air-raid protection wardens by the name of Bartels and Hoppe had "brutally and rigorously” denied her access to the public air-raid shelter at Neuer Steinweg 1. "For fear of further action against me as a full Jewess, I did not go to any more bunkers and had to stay in the apartment.” This was also the case during the series of air raids in July/Aug. 1943 called "Operation Gomorrah.” In a post-war application for restitution, it was insinuated that not the ban but her laziness had caused her to go to an air-raid shelter. The claim to a disability pension was rejected "because it is not sufficiently probable that the loss of the right lower leg resulted from National Socialist persecution.”

Another sister, Elsa Horn, née Salomon (born on 6 Aug. 1897), had lived with her family in the Wilhelmsburg quarter when the Jews living in a "privileged mixed marriage” ("privilegierte Mischehe”) were included in the deportations on 14 Feb. 1945, shortly before the end of the war. Elsa Horn was liberated by Soviet troops in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on 8 May 1945.

Her half-sister Bertha Grünenklee, née Josephsohn, and her family, who were deported to Riga on 13 Dec. 1941 and murdered, have been commemorated by Stolpersteine in the Volmerdingen district of Bad Oeynhausen since Nov. 2012. From there another sister, Minna Salomon, had been able to emigrate to Britain in May 1939.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 5; 9; StaH 351-11 AfW 28497 (Lewald, Paula); StaH 351-11 AfW 28498 (Lewald, Walter); StaH 351-11 AfW 22508 (Scheele, Regina); StaH 351-11 AfW 16512 (Horn, Elsa); StaH 351-11 AfW 11291 (Haase, Caroline); StaH 351-11 AfW 25627 (William, Lewald); StaH 351-11 AfW 23655 (Helene, Börm); StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge 1800 (Seligmann, Elfriede); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1889 u 5769/1876; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2094 u 3118/1885; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2123 u 208/1886; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2726 u 457/1888; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 14230 u 1357/1904; StaH 322-5 Standesämter 799 u 71/1917; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3400 u 629/1921; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 840 u 295/1921; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13432 u 840/1930; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1005 u 743/1933; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1023 u 292/1934; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1122 u 239/1940; StaH 314-15 Abl. 1998 L919; StaH 522-1, Jüdische Gemeinden, 391 Mitgliederliste 1935; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 2 (Liste 2); StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 4; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 5; StaH 314-15 Abl. 1998 L 861; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen (Hauskartei Neuer Steinweg 92); AB Hamburg; Yad Vashem, Zentrale Datenbank der Namen der Holocaustopfer Alfred Lewald (Gedenkblatt); Yad Vashem, Zentrale Datenbank der Namen der Holocaustopfer Hans Lewald (Gedenkblatt); Yad Vashem, Zentrale Datenbank der Namen der Holocaustopfer Margot Gerson (Gedenkblatt); Yad Vashem, Zentrale Datenbank der Namen der Holocaustopfer Ferdinand Lewald (Gedenkblatt); Yad Vashem, Zentrale Datenbank der Namen der Holocaustopfer Hannchen Lewald (Gedenkblatt); Pabel: Straßennamen, S. 183; http://www.stolpersteine-badoeynhausen.de/html/grunenklee.html (Zugriff 4.12.2013).
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