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Else Rauch Weihnachten 1939
© Werner Brügmann

Else Rauch (née Meyer) * 1888

Grindelallee 152 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
ELSE RAUCH
GEB. MEYER
JG. 1888
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ
1942 CHELMNO
ERMORDET

Else Rauch, née Meyer, born on 28 June 1888 in Lüneburg, deported on 26 Oct. 1941 to Lodz, murdered on 10 May 1942

Grindelallee 152

Else Rauch’s parents were businesspeople in Lüneburg. The father, Gustav Meyer, born on 12 Sept. 1860, worked as a produce trader ("Produktenhändler”) in his family’s shop. He was married to Emma Rosenbaum, born on 26 Feb. 1865. They had four children. In 1890, Else’s parents moved with her to Hamburg, where Gustav Meyer ran a store selling electrical goods. Else’s brother Erich Gustav was born in the year of the relocation, on 6 Dec. 1890. The second brother, Ludwig Walter, was born in Hamburg ten years later, on 16 Nov. 1900, and the youngest child of the family was Käthe Frieda, born on 12 Oct. 1904, also in Hamburg.

The family had long been closer to Christianity than to the Jewish religion. Else Meyer was baptized in 1903 together with her parents and her brother and confirmed on 13 Apr. 1904. She always saw herself as a devout Protestant, which was also shown by the fact that she later gave Protestant religious class as a teacher. In 1904, the Meyer family applied for Hamburg civic rights and left the Jewish Community. They moved twice to larger apartments in Hamburg, which suggests the growing economic success of her father. After initially living on Hoheluftchaussee 14, they moved to Hansaplatz in 1900 and then to Lenaustrasse in Hohenfelde, a quiet residential area, in 1904.

Else attended a girls’ high school (Lyzeum), which she left after obtaining the intermediate secondary school certificate (mittlere Reife). Her brother Erich graduated from high school (Abitur) and studied medicine in Strasbourg, Kiel, and Bonn.

In 1911, Else moved into an apartment or room at Wartenau 7 and attended the teacher training college in Altona. In Apr. 1913, she began her teaching career. Later, the parents also moved to Wartenau and from there to Gosslerstrasse (today Kielmannseggstrasse) in Wandsbek, where Else subsequently lived as well. Her father Gustav Meyer died in May 1918, and her mother Emma opened a store for millinery articles on Hamburger Strasse called "Meyers Putzmodehaus.”

Starting in 1918/19, Else Meyer worked as a teacher at the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) on Humboldtstrasse, and since 1921, she resided on Wagnerstrasse. In the same year, she married the engineer Gustav Heinrich Philipp Rauch. The church wedding took place on 1 Apr. 1922 in Wandsbek. Afterward, the couple lived at Stadthausbrücke 3. According to her biographer and former student Arthur Riegel, Else Rauch seems to have been a teacher by vocation. Arthur Riegel owed her a great deal, he wrote – both as far as his knowledge was concerned, the knowledge of the stories of the Bible, and the then so called Heimatkunde (local history).

In 1923, Else Rauch left the school service. It is unclear whether she did so voluntarily or based the provisions, already in force at the time, pertaining to so-called double earning, which particularly affected female civil servants. In accordance with these regulations, a married woman had to leave working life if her spouse was in an employment relationship. Else Rauch resumed her activities at the school on Luttherothstrasse in 1926. In 1928, she was again registered with the authorities as residing at a new address: Grindelallee 152, where she lived until she was deported. The childless marriage was presumably divorced in 1928; afterward, she had herself addressed as "Miss Rauch” ("Fräulein Rauch”). Else Rauch was forced to retire in 1933. From 1937 to 1941, she lived again with her husband in her two-room apartment. From 1939, she paid Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) to the Jewish Community.

In Oct. 1941, she received the news that on the 24th of the month, she had to report to the [former] Masonic Lodge on Moorweide. "The train departs Hamburg, Hannoverscher Bahnhof, at 10.10 a.m. on 25 Oct. 1941 and is scheduled to arrive in Litzmannstadt [Lodz] at 11.00 a.m. on 26 Oct. 1941,” the order stated. "She left the house all by herself and went unaccompanied first to the police station to hand over the keys and then to the Masonic Lodge on Moorweidenstrasse. After a night in the Masonic Lodge, all the victims were taken to the Hannoversche Bahnhof railway station and transported by train to Lodz,” Arthur Riegel described Else Rauch’s last day in Hamburg. Her apartment was later taken over by the Nazi party’s local group leader (NSDAP-Ortsgruppenleiter).

Else Rauch’s stay in the Litzmannstadt/Lodz Ghetto is documented from 26 Oct. to 10 May 1942. She was quartered with two other Hamburg teachers, Bella Spanier and Rosa Hella. We do not know whether this was a coincidence or had some other reason. Overall, more than ten people were accommodated in the apartment.

On 10 May, Else Rauch was forced to leave the ghetto and was transported in a freight car to Wartbrücken/Warthbrücken (today Kolo in Poland). After an arduous walk, the deportees were loaded into trucks, taken to Chelmno/Ner and killed with the exhaust fumes of the truck. Else Rauch was probably one of them.

Arthur Riegel later tried to reconstruct Else Rauch’s life story. The information about her time in the ghetto is sparse; the last reference to her by name can be found in the list of the above-mentioned Saturday transport.

Else’s brother Erich Meyer became a physician. After his conscription in 1916, he took part in the First World War in this capacity. Seriously wounded in action, he later wrote a book about his frontline experiences. With his mother Emma Meyer and sister Käthe, he subsequently emigrated to Cuba via Italy, where he lived from 1936 to Jan. 1939. Why Else and her brother Ludwig did not emigrate with their mother and Erich is not known.

At the age of 17, Ludwig had taken up the profession of a merchant. We do not know how long he was able to pursue that line of work. On 10 Oct. 1941, he was committed to the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Rutschbahn 25a. His "Aryan” wife divorced him, so that he lost the protection of the "mixed marriage” ("Mischehe”) status. He was deported to Auschwitz in Feb. 1943 and murdered.

Arthur Riegel succeeded in naming after Else Rauch a place in Eimsbüttel near the school where she had taught. In 2015, the commemorative plaque at Else-Rauch-Platz became the target of vandalism and was made almost unrecognizable with black paint.

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

© Charlotte Wilken

Quellen: 1; Riegel: Else; Berufsoberschulklasse BOS 12/2: Geschwärzt, S. 38.
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