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Anna Daus * 1879

Behnstraße 34 (Altona, Altona-Altstadt)

1943 Theresienstadt
1944 Auschwitz
ermordet

Anna Rosa Daus, born 6/22/1879, deported to Theresienstadt on 6/23/1943, deported to Auschwitz on 5/15/1944, murdered

Behnstrasse 34

When Julius Daus reported the birth of his daughter Anna Rosa at the Altona Registrar’s Office on June 22nd, 1879, it was recorded that both parents belonged to the Mosaic faith. Her parents were the Counselor of Justice, attorney and notary public Julius Daus and his wife Margarete Daus, née Steinthal. Anna Daus converted to the Christian Lutheran religion. She remained single and worked as a welfare nurse. Up to her deportation, she lived in the house of her parents at Behnstrasse 34 in the old town of Altona, where her father had had his attorney’s office next door in house no. 36. After his death in 1914, her mother, who now owned the house, lived on the ground floor. According to the Altona address book, her brother Ernst Daus, born 1877, temporarily also lived there again in 1925. Besides his activity as a philosophical private scholar, he was, from 1923, a barrister at the district and higher court of Altona and notary public until his license was revoked on June 2nd, 1936. He finally moved to an apartment at .Präsident-Krahn-Strasse 10 in Altona. Margarethe Daus died on March 5th, 1938. In August, 1938, Anna Daus and her brother signed a notarial agreement that the unmortgaged property Behnstrasse 34 was to be passed on to Anna, who already lived there. From 1939, "Miss Anna Daus” was listed in the Hamburg address with her residence at Behnstrasse 34. The former state-employed social worker now received a pension.

The office of the Chief Finance Administrator blocked her accounts with a "security order”, under which she could only dispose of her real estate assets and her securities at the Altona branches of the Deutsche Bank and the Vereinsbank with special permission from the currency office. At the end of November of 1938, she had to make the "atonement payment” pursuant to the order of the Nazi government dictating that all Jews who owned more than 5,000 RM were to account for the damages Nazi hooligans had inflicted on Jewish property in the pogrom of November 9th/10th by paying high installments. On June 23rd, 1943, one day after her 64th birthday, Anna Daus was deported to Theresienstadt. On this transport, 108 persons were taken from Hamburg to the Ghetto in the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” On the Ghetto’s arrival list of June 25th, Anna Daus is entered under no. 22 of the transport. On May 15th, 1944, she was transported on from Theresienstadt to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland on a transport of 2,500 men and women who were murdered.

Her brother Ernst Daus, who was restored to the bar after the war, began to investigate what had happened to his sister, who was officially classified as "missing.” Finally, he received a letter written on January 20th, 1946 by Miss Rosi Sandner from Oldenburg (in Oldenburg), a survivor of the Theresienstadt Ghetto.”Dear Dr. Dauss”, she wrote, "you would like to hear something about your sister. Unfortunately, there is only little I can tell you. From June of ’43 to the end of December of that year, we dwelled on the floor together in Berggasse 13. You couldn’t call it living. Miss Dauss in that time was often ill due to malnutrition. Like me, who also never received parcels, she suffered miserably from hunger. Miss Dauss then improved somewhat. She was given a room with only 5 persons. That was something very special. In May 44 Miss Dauss was then unfortunately sent on the transport with so many others – and we never heard of her again. Unfortunately, I don’t have more to tell. She often spoke fondly about you, so that I guess I can give you kind regards from Miss. Dauss, Yours sincerely, Rosi Sander.”

Pastor Walter Auerbach from Behnstrasse 28, a neighbor of the Daus family, on June 16th, 1947 testified that that the now deceased judge Oberlandesgerichtsrat Dr. Goldschmidt after his return from Theresienstadt told him that "Miss Daus left Theresienstadt in the beginning of 1944 on a transport that was probably bound for Auschwitz.” In the end, Ernst Daus had his sister declared dead by the Altona District Court.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2018
© Birgit Gewehr

Quellen: 1; 2 (R 1938/1757 Daus, Ernst); 3; 4; 5; 7; 8; StaH 424-111 Amtsgericht Altona 5749 (Aufgebot zur Todeserklärung des Fräulein Anna Daus); StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 m 1 Band 3 (Ankunftslisten der von Hamburg in das KZ Theresienstadt deportierten Juden, Ankunft 25.6.1943); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6207 (Eintrag Nr. 1727/1879); StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden, 992 e 2 Band 5 (Deportationsliste Theresienstadt, 23.6.1943); Morisse, Ausgrenzung, Bd.1, S. 182.
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