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Jenny Schiff und Ehemann Martin Schiff
© Privat

Jenny Schiff (née Zadich) * 1860

Oberstraße 5 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1942 Theresienstadt
Tot 27.07.1942

further stumbling stones in Oberstraße 5:
Rosa Hirsch, Julius Kobler

Jenny Schiff, née Zadich, born on 14.1.1860 in Hamburg, deported to Theresienstadt 15.7.1942, died there 27.7.1942.

Oberstraße 5

Jenny Schiff was the daughter of the Hamburg Jewess Hanchen Zadich, née Moses (1818 - 1897) and the Jewish merchant Eduard Zadich, who was born in Moisling (now Lübeck). The two were married in 1836 by Rabbi Isaak Bernays. Hanchen was 18 years old, Eduard, whose occupation is listed in the register of the German-Israelite community as "Manufacturwarenhändler" (merchant of manufactured goods), was 32 years old. Their son Martin was born on 11 March 1856, 20 years after the wedding. It can be assumed that the couple already had other children; so far we only know of an older son named John. Four years after Martin's birth, when Jenny was born, her mother was already 42, her father 56 years old.


All we know about Jenny's childhood and youth is that her father died in 1873 and the two siblings, because they were still minors, were given two guardians in addition to their mother. According to the guardianship protocol, Hanchen proposed the local citizens Isaac Joseph and Simon Kalman who were ready to take on this responsibility. She stated that neither she nor her children had assets from which they could live and that she therefore wanted to continue her husband's engros business. This business was not very important, but still yielded enough "so that she and the children could make a contribution to their living from it." Her adult son John Zadich, who is an expert, would obtain proxy.

In May 1885, Jenny married the merchant Martin Schiff, also born in Hamburg, on 12 October 1855. The couple had three children: Martha, born on 29 June 1886, Hermann, born on 18 May 1888, and six years later another girl, Frieda, born on 20 November 1894. Frieda died as an infant, on 12 June 1895. The family first lived at Wexstraße 19, later at Fröbelstraße 10, and until about 1909 at Bundesstraße 16, after which they moved into an apartment building at Oberstraße 5, where Jenny's brother and sister-in-law already lived. Martin Schiff worked as an accountant and later as an authorised representative, Jenny probably took care of the household and the children. Her brother had married Gella Ida Levien in 1886. The couple had no children. Like his father, Martin Zadich was a merchant by profession. He died in 1904, only 47 years old. Gella Ida remained in their apartment until her death.

Jenny's daughter Martha married Martin Julius Daniel (born 5 January 1881), owner of a "glass agency", in 1908. Ten months later, Gustav, the couple's first child, was born and Jenny was now a grandmother. Six more grandchildren followed in the next few years. Martha's husband was economically successful, owning several houses, securities and shares. The eldest son Gustav moved to the USA in 1929. During the Nazi era, he was able to bring his three brothers one by one to safety to the USA.

In May 1935, Jenny and Martin Schiff celebrated their golden wedding anniversary and donated to the old people's home and the Jewish orphanages of the community, which was noted in the community newspaper of the German-Israelite community.

Jenny's son Hermann, a merchant by profession, fled to the USA with his family in 1936. His professional career began in 1911 at the company "Weco" (= Willers, Engel & Co.) in London. His knowledge of English, acquired or deepened there, was to benefit him later. "Weco" imported paraffin and various types of waxes and resins. In the same year, Hermann was transferred back to Hamburg to set up a branch office there. During the First World War, he fought as a soldier and was taken prisoner. After the end of the war, he opened his own company, but returned to "Weco" in 1924 and remained there until 1936. In addition, he ran his own business. He owned shares in the import of dyed and undyed silk from Asia, and the Hamburg address book of 1925 listed him as a "chemicals broker".

When he married in 1924, he lived with his parents at Oberstraße 5. His wife Helene (Leni), born on 4 June 1900 in Hamburg, was the daughter of Salomon Benzion David, born on 7 July 1861 in Hamburg, and of Sara David, née Cohen, born on 2 February 1867 in Altona. Hermann and Leni had two daughters. Hildegard and Ellen were born in 1925 and 1928 and later attended the Israelitische Höhere Töchterschule in Karolinenstraße. When the new apartment buildings of the "Baugenossenschaft innerhalb des Mietervereins Groß-Hamburg von 1890" were completed around 1926, the family moved into a ground floor flat at Bogenstraße 51. Ellen later particularly remembered the garden in front of the house. Both sets of grandparents, the Schiffs at Oberstraße 5 and the Davids at Rappstraße 12, were within walking distance.

Hermann Schiff left Germany as early as 1935 and travelled to the USA because "he saw what was coming". He wanted to gain an economic foothold there by opening a branch of his company. When he returned to Hamburg, he had already rented a flat for his family in New York. Immediately, the family began making preparations to leave the country. His younger daughter Ellen recalled that the girls had new clothes made in order to put at least part of the family fortune (which was not allowed to be taken with them) to good use. The furniture was shipped in a container called a "lift". Hermann had to say goodbye to his parents, knowing full well that he would never see them again. The family travelled from Bremen on the "S.S. Columbus" and arrived in New York on 15 August 1936. When Japan declared war on the USA, Hermann lost his company and had to struggle hard for many years to earn a living. Conditions only improved when he finally got a job as an accountant. He died in 1962.

At the end of 1938, the remaining members of Jenny's daughter's family also managed to escape from Hamburg to the USA. As can be seen from a document from 1939, her son-in-law Martin Daniel supported Jenny and Martin Schiff after his departure with 300 Reichsmark per month from his Hamburg rental income. They were probably already dependent on his financial help beforehand.

Jenny's daughter-in-law Leni had a brother named Adolf (born 1906), who had settled in Italy as a merchant in 1928. Her father Salomon Benzion David, a butcher by trade, owned the company "Gebrüder David & A. Silberberg" at Grindelallee 170/172. It produced kosher meat products (sausages, meat and preserves) and was the largest of its kind in Hamburg. Besides various shipping lines, it also supplied the Israelite Hospital and the Jewish Old People's Home. After the ban on ritual slaughter in 1933, Leni's father's sales fell dramatically. Adolf (Addi) supported his parents financially. When he could no longer send money, Salomon and Sara moved to Italy in 1934. A short time later, Addi and his wife emigrated to what was then the British Protectorate of Palestine. Salomon died of stomach cancer in Milan in 1942, Sara survived in hiding in an Italian convent. After her liberation, she moved to the USA to join Leni and Hermann's family. She died in New York in 1956.

Leni also had a younger sister, Meta, born on 13 December 1902, who became a teacher and taught at the Israelitische Höhere Töchterschule in Karolinenstraße. Meta married Erich Klibansky, born on 28 November 1900, and their first son, Hans Rafael, was born in Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) in 1928. A year later, the family moved to Cologne, where Erich became headmaster of the "Jawne" secondary school, the first and only Jewish secondary school in the Rhineland, at a very young age. Meta taught English there. Two more sons, Alexander and Michael, born in 1931 and 1935, completed the family.

In the face of increasing persecution of the Jews, Erich and Meta tried to move the "Jawne" to England. Erich accompanied several of his students' Kindertransports, and so about 130 children reached safety. After each journey he returned to Cologne, and at some point the time to save his own family had passed. They were deported to Minsk in July 1942. When the square where the "Jawne" was located was named Erich-Klibansky-Platz in honour of the former school headmaster in 1990, Jenny's granddaughter Ellen and family travelled from the USA to attend the ceremony.

After their daughter Martha had also left Hamburg with her family in 1938, Jenny and Martin Schiff were left by themselves. Jenny's sister-in-law Gella Ida lived at Oberstraße 5 on the same floor, perhaps even in the same flat. She died in April 1941. Her death was reported by the nurse Rosa Hirsch (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de Rosa Hirsch) at the relevant registry office. Five months later, she also had to register the death of Martin Schiff. He died on 22 September 1941 and is buried in the Ilandkoppel Jewish Cemetery. Rosa Hirsch probably cared for both of them - Gella Ida had reached the age of 80, Martin 85. A short time later, on 21 October 1941, Rosa was deported to the "Litzmannstadt" ghetto in German occupied Poland. So within five months, 81-year-old Jenny lost both her sister-in-law and husband, and only weeks later her nurse. We do not know how she managed her life alone afterwards. After the war, her granddaughter wrote that Jenny's son Hermann had tried to get his mother out of Germany and send her to Cuba, but in December 1941 the USA entered the war and that option was no longer available.

In 1942, Jenny was forced to sign a "home purchase contract", which probably deprived her of the last of her money. This "contract" provided for the transfer of her entire savings to the Reich Association of Jews in Germany; the fictitious consideration was the lifelong use of a "home place" in the Theresienstadt ghetto. In the end, the money collected by the Reich Association was confiscated by the Gestapo. 

In July 1942, Jenny Schiff received the deportation order and had to report to the assembly point Volksschule Altonaer Straße/Schanzenstraße.
 On 15 July 1942 she was deported to Theresienstadt, where she died twelve days later.

Stand: September 2023
© Sabine Brunotte

Quellen: 1; 3; 5; 8; The History Of The Rumeld And Schiff Families, Prepared for our children and grandchildren by Rudy and Ellen Rumeld, May 2003; StaH 522-1_702 B; StaH 232-1 Serie II 4987; StaH 332-5_2682; StaH 332-5_410; StaH 332-5_ 2129; StaH 332-5_2176; StaH 332-5_9100; StaH 332-5_7893; StaH 332-5_2700; StaH 332-5_7972; StaH 332-5_8173; StaH 332-5_13404; StaH 332-5_ 8173; StaH 351-11_10547; StaH 351-11_1135; StaH 351-11-727; StaH 314-15 F 340; StaH 213-13_13863; agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de: Adressbücher Hamburg 1896, 1898, 1900,1904, 1908, 1909, 1910 und 1911, Zugriff 30.6.2018; United States of America, Declaration of intention Nr. 93523 Martha Daniels, 31. July 1939; ancestry.de, eingesehen 22.6.2018: www.Jawne.de, eingesehen 30.6.2018; https://de.wikipedia.org zu Erich Klibansky, eingesehen 30.6.2018; Gemeindeblatt der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde zu Hamburg, Nr. 7/1935, S. 6, online eingesehen am 5.5.2020 unter http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/cm/periodical/titleinfo/5445051.
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