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Will(y)i Krügel * 1907

Steinwegpassage 1 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
WILLY KRÜGEL
JG. 1907
VERHAFTET 1938
SACHSENHAUSEN
GEDEMÜTIGT / ENTRECHTET
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
20.6.1942

further stumbling stones in Steinwegpassage 1:
Mary Mengers, Erna Strüßmann

Willi Krügel, born on 9 Aug. 1907 in Hamburg, died on 20 June 1942 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (allegedly suicide)

Steinwegpassage 1

Willi Krügel was born on 9 Aug. 1907 in Hamburg. He had several siblings, the older of whom were born in Leipzig and Cologne. His mother Helene (Chenia Slota), née Michlowitsch (other spellings Mischlowitz and Mitchlowitsch, born on 22 June 1867, died on 17 Nov. 1932), came from Neu-Minsk near Warsaw and was a Jewish woman of Russian origin. The father Julius Ludwig Krügel (born on 29 July 1869) had converted in 1894 upon getting married in Leipzig. He was born in Beneckenstein and a tailor by trade.

The Krügel family lived in Hamburg-Neustadt, for the most extended period at Marienstrasse 17 (from 1940 onward, Jan-Valkenburg-Strasse), where Julius Krügel worked as a coachman and later as a dockworker.
Willi Krügel’s older brother Marcus (born on 12 Nov. 1899) is known to have attended the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) on Holstenwall, located near his parents’ home. Willi might well have spent his school days there also. He then became a shipbuilding assistant at the Blohm & Voss shipyard. On 21 Dec. 1928, he married Lisbeth Rosa Auguste Fenz (born on 18 Aug. 1908). Lisbeth was the daughter of the ship’s cook Friedrich Wilhelm Emil Fenz from Hamburg (born on 3 June 1882) and the worker Mathilde Rosalie, née Sommer (born on 3 Mar. 1882 in Danzig [today Gdansk in Poland]). Brought up in the Catholic faith, she had been working as a packer since age15. Her parents, who had married on 30 Mar. 1907 in Hamburg, lived separately; her father in Bremerhaven, her mother at Mühlenstrasse 29 in Hamburg (today part of Gerstäckerstrasse).

Willi and Lisbeth Krügel had six children, four daughters and two sons, between 1928 and 1937. They lived in orderly but economically precarious circumstances, as Willi Krügel did not have a regular income at the port during the world economic crisis, despite good references. One son had also contracted polio. In the meantime, the family received welfare benefits and an allowance for "people with many children” ("Kinderreiche”). Their children were described as "neat and well-behaved.”

After two successive accidents at work in 1937, Willi Krügel was unable to work for several weeks. Sick pay benefits of 17.80 RM (reichsmark) initially paid and "port assistance” amounting to 9 RM were not sufficient to support the eight-member household. In order not to get further into rent arrears – with the landlord having already threatened action for eviction – the married Krügel couple tried to pawn a sewing machine purchased shortly before by installment payments. Since in their dire need the couple issued themselves a certificate indicating that the sewing machine was already paid off, the pawnbroker reported the matter to police.

On 16 Nov. 1937, the Hamburg District Court (Amtsgericht) sentenced Willi Krügel to six weeks in prison for fraud. Lisbeth was able to avoid her two-week prison sentence by submitting a plea for clemency. The rental agreement for their apartment at Marienstrasse 17 (from 1940, Jan-Valkenburg-Strasse) was terminated before the end of the year. They moved to the third floor of Steinwegpassage 1 (see Mary Mengers).

On 14 Jan. 1938, Willi Krügel began serving his prison sentence. Lisbeth Krügel, described as very delicate just like her children, took up a job as a packer again in order to secure a livelihood for herself and her family. Her oldest daughter, then ten-year-old Ingeborg (born on 4 July 1928), ran the household and cared for the younger siblings. Like her uncle Leopold Krügel (born on 24 May 1902), who had been active as a Kammersänger [a title awarded to a singer of exceptional quality] and conductor in Rostock until he was banned from the profession in 1934, she had musical talent, which she could no longer develop through training though.

Willi Krügel was released from prison on 25 Feb. 1938 and in June of the same year, he ended as a "non-Aryan convict” in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) together with about 200 Jewish men, among them his brother Marcus Krügel and his brother-in-law Siegfried Neumann (see corresponding entry), in connection with the so-called "June Action” ("Juni-Aktion”). Assigned prisoner number 006195, Willi Krügel was transferred to Block 16 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 23 June 1938. On his prison card, an entry noted, "work-shy Jew” ("arbeitsscheuer Jude”) and "without creed, formerly Mosaic.”

In May 1937, Willi Krügel, like his father and two of his brothers, had declared his withdrawal from the Jewish Community. However, according to the implementing ordinances of the Nuremberg Laws [on race], the brothers were considered "Jews by definition” ("Geltungsjuden”) and were not treated like "crossbreeds” ("Mischlinge”). Only his brother Hermann Krügel was recognized as a "crossbreed of the first degree” ("Mischling 1. Grades”) in 1941.

Willi Krügel was not to be released from Sachsenhausen until he emigrated. In order to obtain his release, the Jewish Community assumed the costs of a possible emigration to Shanghai, where no entry visa was required. According to Lisbeth Krügel, however, her application for release was rejected by Reich Governor (Reichsstatthalter) Karl Kaufmann in Jan. 1939. In June, they were put under pressure to file for divorce. The "child allowance” had already been cancelled for her and in addition, she had been forced to leave the apartment on Steinwegpassage. In order to avoid the threatened deprivation of custody and the placement of her children in a home, she signed a "marriage annulment declaration.” Willi Krügel gave his consent from prison in a letter dated 1 Aug. 1939 to the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht): "I would like to give my wife complete free rein with regard to my children, because I would like to preserve for the children their mother or avoid a possible separation of the siblings.” When the marriage was annulled on 17 Aug. 1939, Willi Krügel was no longer protected by a "mixed marriage” ("Mischehe”).

On 14 Jan. 1941, Willi Krügel was in the "infirmary” of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and he was then, at an unknown time, transferred to one of the subcamps of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, to the clinker brick factory between Grabowsee and Lehnitzsee. There the prisoners worked on the construction of a brick factory for the SS business called "Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH.” Willi Krügel died there on 20 June 1942. Lisbeth Krügel was informed by a Gestapo official, who called on her one day, that her divorced husband had hanged himself in Sachsenhausen.

She lived with her children in "inhumane and very poor conditions.” Neighborly help was denied them as "persons interrelated with Jews” ("jüdisch Versippte”). On 25 July 1943, Lisbeth Krügel was bombed out at Mühlenstrasse 23 (today part of Gerstäckerstrasse). Her mother died of a heart attack in an air-raid shelter at Neuer Steinweg 12 during the series of air raids called "Operation Gomorrah.” Lisbeth Krügel and her children were evacuated to Bavaria, where they were again persecuted by a teacher who had also been evacuated from Hamburg.

After the war, Lisbeth Krügel wished for the following: "Even though I am alone with my children, that all six of them should be educated to become decent people and make it through their apprenticeship years. So I might have the pleasure of having done things right. That, I am sure would have been in keeping with my husband’s intentions as well.”

Lisbeth Krügel died, seriously ill, on 8 May 1958 in Hamburg.

Willi Krügel’s sister, Fanny Neumann (see corresponding entry), was deported and murdered with her family. Protected by their "mixed marriages,” the other siblings survived the Nazi regime despite imprisonment, forced labor, as well as, shortly before the end of the war, impending deportation to Theresienstadt.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 8; StaH 351-11 AfW 35859 (Krügel, Hermann); StaH 351-11 AfW 22236 (Krügel, Marcus); StaH 351-11 AfW 32178 (Krügel, Willy); StaH 351-11 AfW 33753 (Krügel, Lisbeth Auguste Rosa); StaH 351-11 AfW 26369 (Krügel, Leopold); StaH 351-11 AfW 42086 (Neumann, Kurt); StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 8 Akte F 603; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht-Strafakten 00594/38; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht-Strafakten 5676/41; StaH 332-4 Aufsicht über die Standesämter 612; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9860 u 1233/1932; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6457 u 111/1907; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1202 u 172/1943; Auskünfte von Herbert Diercks, Archiv der KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, Bestände der VVN; Auskunft aus der Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen von Monika Liebscher, E-Mail vom 2.8.2013; diverse Hamburger Adressbücher; Totenbuch KZ Sachsenhausen 1936–1945, http://www.stiftung-bg.de/totenbuch/main.php (Zugriff am 15.10.2014).
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