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Rebecca Blogg (née Zinkower) * 1871

Großneumarkt 38 (vorm. Schlachterstraße) (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
REBECCA BLOGG
GEB. ZINKOWER
JG. 1871
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
1942 TREBLINKA
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Großneumarkt 38 (vorm. Schlachterstraße):
Hanna Aghitstein, Julie Baruch, Ludwig Louis Baruch, Julius Blogg, Kurt Cossmann, Mathilde Cossmann, Frieda Dannenberg, Alice Graff, Leopold Graff, Flora Halberstadt, Elsa Hamburger, Herbert Hamburger, Louis Hecker, Max Hecker, Marianne Minna Hecker, Lea Heymann, Alfred Heymann, Wilma Heymann, Paul Heymann, Jettchen Kahn, Adolf Kahn, Curt Koppel, Johanna Koppel, Hannchen Liepmann, Henriette Liepmann, Bernhard Liepmann, Johanna Löwe, Martin Moses, Beate Ruben, Flora Samuel, Karl Schack, Minna Schack, Werner Sochaczewski, Margot Sochazewski, verh. Darvill, Sophie Vogel, Sara Vogel

Julius Blogg, b. 4.3.1863 in Uchte, deported on 7.19.1942 to Theresienstadt, deported again on 9.21.1942 to Treblinka
Rebecca Blogg, née Zinkower, the widow of Gruber, b. 7.1.1871 in Brody, deported on 7.19.1942 to Theresienstadt, deported again on 9.21.1942 to Treblinka

Großneumarkt 38 (Schlachterstraße 40-42)

When Rebecca Gruber and Julius Blogg married in Hamburg on 26 May 1942, they were already 71 and 79 years old. Four months later, along with a further 2001 mostly old people, they were murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp; like the others, they had first been deported to the "Old People’s Ghetto” at Theresienstadt.

Julius Blogg was born on 3 April 1863 in Uchte, in the County of Nienburg/Weser. His older sister Emma was born on 11 February 1858. His younger brothers Georg, on 20 March 1865, and Siegmund on 8 November 1867. Their parents, the tradesman Moses David Blogg (b. 3.18.1830) and Sophia Sara, née Hecksher, moved a year later to the mother’s hometown, Hamburg. They lived at first in a so-called Bude (the ground floor apartment in a traditional half-timbered house was called a Bude; apartments above it, with a separate entrance, were called Sähle). It was located in the rear courtyard at Peterstrasse 27; later they lived in the Oppenheimer Foundation at Kraienkamp 18 (today, Krayenkamp). Sophia Sara Blogg died on 29 January 1890 at 60 years of age. In the same year, Julius’ father, Moses David Blogg, remarried, the Hamburg native Amalie Holländer (b. 4.20.1846, d. 10.12.1911). Moses David Blogg died on 25 February 1905.

At 24, Julius Blogg married for the first time. On 31 May 1887, he wedded the Jewish shoemaker’s daughter, Friederike Oppenheimer, born 12 August 1860. Friederike, also called Rieke, came from Liebenau near Hanover. Her parents were Salomon Oppenheimer and Sofie, née Stein. The young couple lived first at Marthastrasse 1, then, in 1911, at Rappstrasse 11. Julius worked as a cigar selector, also from time to time as a traveling salesman. In 1928, because of a lack of work in the C. F. G. Schmidt cigar factory, at Hochstrasse 4 in Altona, he was let go. The childless couple lived on a small annuity in very modest circumstances; from 1913, they lived in the Jewish Lazarus Gumpel Foundation at Schlachterstrasse 46-47, house 4, an also received public aid support. On 1 August 1938, Friederike Blogg died after a long illness. Following her death, Julius temporarily moved in with his niece Sophie Cohn, née Koppel (b. 12.25.1891). The daughter of his 1921 deceased sister Emma Koppel, née Blogg, lived at Glashüttenstrasse 36. He then found lodgings in the Nordheim Foundation, an old people’s home belonging to the Jewish Congregation, at Schlachterstrasse 40-42.

Julius Blogg’s second wife, the seamstress Rebecca Gruber, was born on 1 July 1871 as Rebecca Zinkower, in Brody, in the Crown Land of Galicia (today the Ukraine). She was an Austrian citizen, when she traveled to England in 1895. There she got to know the cap maker, Samuel Gruber, who also came from Galicia. On 15 July 1871, he had been born in the little town of Sokole.

Rebecca Zinkower and Samuel Gruber married on 14 February 1897 in Manchester. Although the Grubers became naturalized in England, after five years, they returned to Germany. The first entry in the Hamburg directory is for 1907 at Winsener Strasse 8 in Harburg, where the couple opened a drapery shop. They held on to British citizenship and, therefore, their application for Hamburg citizenship was rejected. In October 1922, they moved from Harburg to Hamburg. According to the Hamburg directory, they lived since 1924 in the Hertz Joseph Levy Foundation, at Grossneumarkt 56 and ran a laundry at Wexstrasse 17. They did not make a lot of money and were in the following years nearly exempt from the taxes owed to the Jewish Congregation, of which they were members. On their Communal Religion Tax Record, under the rubric "children” were registered: "Lotte Lobstein, 12 years old.” The significance of this entry remains unclear. Rebecca Gruber, according to entries in the Hamburg directory, was widowed since 1930 and ran her laundry until the end of the 1930s.

When Rebecca Gruber and Julius Blogg, early in 1942, fulfilled the formalities for their marriage at the responsible registry office, Rebecca, as a foreigner, was required to have a "certificate of no impediment.” Her request to be freed from the submission of the document was opposed by the registry official who harbored doubts; as he informed the Reich Ministry in Berlin, "the petitioner’s request only served to avoid her later expulsion as a burdensome foreigner or to hinder her separation from her fiancé.” The doubts of the registry official were not shared by Curth Rothenberger, State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice, who wrote in his answering letter: "that the implementation of the total evacuation of the Jews was to be reckoned with,” and on 9 May 1942 issued the requested exemption. Rebecca Gruber and Julius Blogg were able to wed seven days later, and with the marriage, Rebecca Blogg became a German subject. On 19 July 1942, she and her husband, along with his widowed niece Sophie Cohn, were deported from Schlachterstrasse to Theresienstadt. On 21 September 1942, the Bloggs were murdered at the Treblinka extermination camp. Sophie Cohn was deported to Auschwitz on 12 October 1944.

Ludwig Blogg (b. 10.24.1901), the son of Julius’ younger brother, Siegmund Blogg, had already been deported to the Lodz (Litzmannstadt) ghetto on 25 October 1941.

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 5; 7; 9; StaH 213-1 Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht 1211; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge 987 (Blogg, Julius); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2697 u 540/1886; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2712 u 680/1887; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2762 u 1061/1890; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2262 u 5233/1891; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2377 u 4077/1895; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13562 u 2873/1901; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 550 u 219/1905; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8064 u 72/1921; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1087 u 221/1938; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 5; www.ancestry.com (Heiratsregister Rebecca Zinkower und Samuel Gruber in Manchester England am 14.2.1897, Zugriff 6.11.2015); diverse Hamburger Adressbücher.
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