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Rosa Emanuel * 1911

Heußweg 17 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

1941 Ravensbrück
am 07.02.1942 ermordet in Bernburg/Saale

further stumbling stones in Heußweg 17:
Marion Emanuel, Wolfgang Emanuel, Frieda Franziska Emanuel

Iwan (Ivan) Emanuel, born 30 Mar. 1876 in Hamburg, deported 8 Nov. 1941 to Minsk, died of starvation on 18 July 1942

Henriettenstraße 32

Frieda Franziska Emanuel, born 8 Oct. 1913 in Hamburg, imprisoned in various concentration camps, committed to the Bernberg Euthanasia Center Feb. 1942, murdered there 21 Feb. 1942
Marion Emanuel, born 25 Dec. 1935 in Hamburg, imprisoned in various concentration camps, deported 19 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, 6 Oct. 1944 to Auschwitz
Rosa Emanuel, born 22 April 1911 in Hamburg, imprisoned in various concentration camps, committed 1942 to the Bernberg Euthanasia Center, murdered there 7 Feb. 1942
Wolfgang Emaunel, born 29 Dec. 1935 in Hamburg, deported 19 July 1942 to Theresienstade, 6 Oct. 1944 to Auschwitz

Heußweg 17

The Jewish Emanuel family of Hamburg was large. Iwan Emanuel was married twice and had seven children: Bertha (*1902), Renata Rahel (*1903), Hertha (*1913), Paul (*1909), Rosa (*1911), Frieda (*1913), and Irmgard (*1916). In Eimsbüttel and Hoheluft-West there are a total of seven Stolpersteine for Iwan Emanuel, four of his six daughters, and two of his grandchildren. The Stolpersteine for Hertha (married name Parnass) and Rena Rahel (married name Drehmel) are at Methfesselstraße 13 and Gärtnerstraße 117 (for the family history see the biographies of Renata Rahel Drehmel and the Parnass family).

Iwan’s father was Philipp Emanuel, a Jewish engineer. His mother was Bertha, née Kreiner or Kreinder. When he was born, in 1876, the family lived on Marktstraße. When Iwan married Franziska Horwitz, also Jewish, in 1901, his mother had already passed away and his father lived at Hellkamp 18. Iwan and Franziska divorced in 1909. Bertha, Rena, and Hertha are the children of this marriage. Iwan married Lea Ella Andrade (Jewish, born 1879) in December 1909, immediately after his divorce. Iwan and Lea’s children were Paul, Rosa, Frieda, and Irmi. Iwan’s first wife, Franziska, married Lea’s brother, the auctioneer Joseph Andrade. Lea Emanuel died in May 1939.

Ivan Emanuel was a watchmaker, and worked for the waterfront authority at the Port of Hamburg. He lost his job in July 1933 under the "Law for the Reconstitution of the Civil Service.” In the years around 1920 he had a shop at Margaretenstraße 15 where he bought and sold furniture and other goods. In the Hamburg Address Book his name is listed at this address, and his profession is listed as appraiser. His political stance, like many German Jews, was German-Nationalistic. He fought in the First World War, and was outraged in the November Revolution in 1919 by the "red mob,” the workers’ and soldiers’ councils and their adherents.

Iwan Emanuel had lived at Henriettenstraße 32 since 1930. He was deported to Minsk on 8 November 1941, where he died on 18 July 1942. In the restitution proceedings, his daughter stated that a survivor of Minsk told her that he had died of malnourishment. His last address in Hamburg was Bundesstraße 40 II. The apartment on Henriettenstraße had been confiscated, and the family was forced to live in one room. On the day before he was deported, Iwan Emanuel married Margarethe Heimann Levor, who was also Jewish.

Iwan’s daughters Rosa and Frieda both gave birth shortly after the Nuremberg Race Laws were issued in 1935. The fathers of both children were non-Jewish, therefore marriage was not possible. Rosa’s child was Marion Ella Emanuel; Frieda’s was Wolfgang Emanuel. Both mothers were charged with "racial defilement.” As Jewish women they were not given a trial, but simply locked up by the Gestapo. Frieda lived with her parents until she was sent to the Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp in 1938. In November of that year she was transferred to the Lichtenburg Concentration Camp, where she was registered with the prisoner number 1113 on 11 November 1938. In mid-May 1939, all of the women from the Lichtenburg camp were transferred to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. She retained the same prisoner number there.

A document from the Fuhlsbüttel Women’s Prison shows that Rosa served a one-day prison sentence in January 1934 for a "misdemeanor.” The charge was from October 1933, when Rosa still lived with her parents on the ground floor at Henriettenstraße 32. The "personal description” on the registration form states that she was 148 cm (4’10”) tall. She was slim, had black hair and brown eyes.

Later Rosa lived at Amandastraße 28. In April 1939 she had a second child, a son named Uri. Uri survived the Holocaust. Neighbors hid him, and he later lived in Israel. Rosa was sent to the Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp in 1941, and was later transferred to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, where her prisoner number was 5999. The registration list with this number no longer exists, but it can be assumed that she arrived there after March 1941.

In 1942, both sisters were murdered at the Bernburg Euthanasia Center in "Operation 14f13,” the extension of the Nazi "euthanasia” program, which systematically exterminated those deemed "unworthy of living.” Patients in mental institutions were the first victims of this program, later concentration camp prisoners were randomly "culled” and sent to the "Euthanasia Centers” Hartheim, Bernburg and Sonnenstein to be murdered. The number of victims of "Special Treatment 14f13” alone is estimated at twenty thousand, including 1,400 women and men, most of them of Jewish heritage, from the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. There Dr. Friedrich Mennecke, who had already served as an evaluating physician for Operation T-4, the original euthanasia program, was assigned to select prisoners for the Operation. It is estimated that on the first three Ravensbrück transports alone, at least 1,200 healthy prisoners and 400 sick ones were sent to Bernburg and gassed. No documents have survived.

In March 1942 the urn with Rosa’s ashes was transferred from the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp to the Jewish cemetery at Ilandkoppel. It was registered as Number 2813. The Memorial Book lists dates of death for both sisters, since there were official lists of deaths, but the dates on these lists are often false, since the Nazis attempted to cover up the gas chamber deaths in Bernburg.

Both of the children of the Emanuel sisters lived temporarily in the Isrealite Childrens’ Home. Their Aunt Bertha (married name Kahl), who was married to a non-Jew, took them to live with her and an "Aryan” neighbor named Mettke at Heußweg 17. The Mettkes even wanted to adopt Marion, but she was deported before the adoption could take place. The Mettkes were friends of Bertha Kahl. Both foster mothers packed little rucksacks for the children and took them to the collection point. A last letter from the children to their parents, which was sent to the Jewish Community for lack of an address and which was dictated to an adult, survives: "Everyone here says that we’re getting bigger and fatter and perkier (…).

Translator: Amy Lee
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.


© Susanne Lohmeyer

Quellen: 3; 4; 5; StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht - Verwaltung, Ablieferung 2, 451 a E 1, 1 c; StaH 242-1II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferung 13, Gefangenenkartei für Frauen (Ältere Kartei); StaH 332-5 Standesämter, 1881 und 1591/1876; StaH 332-5, 690 und 521/1913; StaH 332-5, 2968 und 1285/1901; StaH 332-5, 1952 und 1360/1879; StaH 332-5, 8667 und 936/1909; StaH 332-5, 8671 und 371/1910; StaH 332-5, 1150 und 267/1942; StaH 351-11 AfW, 300376; StaH 522-1, 992e2, Bd. 5 (Deportationslisten); HAB IV 1920, 1926, 1930; Auf den Spuren jüdischer Geschichte – Stadtteilrundgänge in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel, S. 24f.; Linde Apel, Jüdische Frauen im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück,S. 296ff.; Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück Archiv, Auskunft vom 9.3.2011; Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Lichtenburg Archiv, Auskunft vom 12.3.2011.
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