Hannoverscher Bahnhof

Between 1940 and 1945

around 6,700 Jews were deported in 17 collective transports and more than 1,300 Sinti and Roma in three collective transports, mainly from the Hannoverscher Bahnhof. Other members of both persecuted groups were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp from Hamburg as part of smaller transport operations. The names and dates of birth of the deported are mentioned on name plates at the Memorial Site. The site also commemorates those who elected to end their lives when they found out that deportations were imminent.

A number of those affected are presented here. Their biographical details are known thanks to the survivors and the relatives of the persecuted as well as many years of research work, including the Stolpersteine commemoration project in Hamburg.

Kurt Bielefeld

was born on 6 September 1913 and lived with his wife Marion and his daughters Hella and Mathel in the Hamburg district of Hoheluft. Despite the ever increasing persecution of the Jewish population, the family refused to emigrate as they felt they were German citizens. Following the Night of Broken Glass pogrom on 9 November 1938, Kurt Bielefeld was imprisoned at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In autumn 1941, Kurt Bielefeld, his wife and daughters as well as his parents were deported to the Minsk Ghetto, where they were murdered.

Cecilie Landau (later: Lucille Eichengreen)

was born in Hamburg on 1 February 1925. Her father was murdered at Dachau concentration camp in 1941. As a Jew, aged 16, she was deported to the Litzmannstadt (Lodz) ghetto in what was then occupied Poland, along with her mother and her sister. She survived the ghetto and the concentration and extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Neuengamme (Dessauer Ufer satellite camp) and Bergen-Belsen. Her mother and her sister were both murdered. It was only from 1991 onwards that Lucille Eichengreen occasionally returned to Hamburg for readings and lectures. As one of the few survivors of the deportations she spoke at the official inauguration of the ‘denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof’ memorial site in May 2017. She died in Oakland, USA, in 2020, just a few days after her 95th birthday.

Emil Weiss

was born in Seega in Thuringia on 27 February 1907. On 16 May 1940 he and his wife Alma Weiss and their seven children were arrested in their apartment in Altona and detained along with around 1,000 other Sinti and Roma at Fruit Warehouse C in the port of Hamburg. On 20 May 1940 the family was deported to the Belzec forced labour camp. Over the following years the family was torn apart. The only family members to survive were two of the daughters. Emil Weiss’s grandson Ricardo-Lenzi Laubinger, who campaigns for the rights of the minority in his capacity as president of the Sinti Union Wiesbaden e.V., has published the family’s history as a book.

Anita Ledermann

was born on 17 November 1921. The daughter of a wine merchant, she grew up in affluent circumstances in the Hamburg district of Winterhude. Efforts to emigrate and an attempt on her father’s part to be recognised as a ‘quarter Jew’ in order to protect his family in Hamburg were met with failure. On 4 March 1943, Anita was deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto along with her sister Margarita and her parents Leah May and Herbert Ledermann, and then to Auschwitz on 4 October 1944. Margarita Ledermann later emigrated to Palestine; she was the only member of her family to have survived several concentration and extermination camps.

Therese Rosenberg née Winterstein

was born in Felbecke in the Sauerland region on 14 March 1905. On 16 May 1940 she and her husband Hugo along with their nine children were arrested in their apartment and detained for four days at Fruit Warehouse C transit camp in the port of Hamburg. From there they were deported to the Belzec forced labour camp in occupied Poland on 20 May 1940 together with around 1,000 other Sinti and Roma. Therese Rosenberg was later deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which she survived. All her children except for two were murdered.

Dr. Leo Lippmann

was born in Hamburg on 26 May 1881. After studying law, he embarked on a career in the civil service. In 1920 he was appointed to the State Council [Staatsrat] of the fiscal authorities in the Hamburg Senate. In April 1933 he was dismissed from the civil service because of his Jewish origins. Thereafter Leo Lippmann was on the Board of Hamburg’s Jewish Community for several years. Faced with the prospect of the forced dissolution of the Jewish Community and deportation to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, he and his wife Anna Lippmann committed suicide on the night of 10 June 1943.

Gustav Wächter

was born in Hamburg on 24 October 1875. He worked as a senior tax inspector before being dismissed in 1933 because of his Jewish origins. His three sons managed to emigrate abroad in the 1930s. Gustav Wächter and his wife Minna Wächter née Sonnenberg were deported to Riga on 6 December 1941 and murdered. Their grandson, Torkel Wächter, lives in Stockholm, Sweden. As an author, he has spent many years keeping the memory of his grandparents alive.

Wolfgang Mirosch

was born in Celle on 23 November 1935. From 1936 he lived with foster parents in Adendorf near Lüneburg. On 9 March 1943 he was taken away from his family by force and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp along with more than 300 Sinti and Roma from Hamburg. He was murdered there, as were his three siblings who had been living in Hamburg prior to their deportation.

Irmgard Posner née Ditze

was born in Hamburg on 22 March 1904, the daughter of a Jewish mother and Catholic father. She gave birth to her son Michael from her first husband. On 8 November 1941 she was deported to the Minsk Ghetto with her second husband, Karl Posner, and was murdered there. Prior to her deportation she managed to speak to Michael’s school teacher and to the headmaster of the Kielortallee primary school; they both made sure that Michael was put on the evacuation programme for children in Germany, which ultimately saved his life.