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Joseph Zlotnik * 1938

Markusstraße 10 / vor dem Eingang "Kita-Markusstraße" (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
JOSEPH ZLOTNIK
JG. 1938
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ / LITZMANNSTADT
ERMORDET IN
CHELMNO / KULMHOF

further stumbling stones in Markusstraße 10 / vor dem Eingang "Kita-Markusstraße":
Moses Hirsch Korzuch, Anna Zlotnik

Anna/Nochama Zlotnik, b. 2.10.1902 in Nowogródek, deported on 10.25.1941 to Lodz, murdered in the Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp on 3.30.1942
Josef Moses Zlotnik, b. 8.27.1938 in Hamburg, deported on 10.25.1941 to Lodz, murdered in the Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp on 3.30.1942
Moses Hirsch Korzuch, b. 6.28.1901 in Będzin, Poland, imprisoned from November 1939 in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps; murdered on 3.25.1942 at the killing center Bernburg on the Saale River

Markusstraße 10 (Marcusstraße 38)

Anna/Nochama Zlotnik was 17 years old when she came a housemaid to Hamburg. Her birthplace Nowogródek, Russia belonged to the newly founded Polish Republic after World War I. Nothing is known about her parents Josel Zlotnik and Lilia Chana, née Nigerowicz. It is also uncertain when Anna met her fiancé, Moses Korzuch, who was also Jewish.

Moses Korzuch lived in Hamburg since 1927. He was born in Będzin, Poland at a time when there was a large Jewish community there. His father, Alter Korzuch, and his nine siblings lived in Dąbrowa. His mother, Chana Maria, née Altmann, had already died. In 1935, Moses lived in Hamburg as a sub-lessee of Albert Henoch at Bernhard-Nocht-Strasse 95. In 1937, he worked as a warehouse man and shipping clerk for a used paper export firm at Valentinskamp 33-34; the firm was owned by Adolf Lichtenhayn (b. 11.23.1895, d. 6.2.1966). By late 1938, he was unemployed, because Adolf Lichtenhayn, upon his release from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, emigrated to Shanghai (see Stolpersteine in der Isestraße 53).

Anna Zlotnik worked until shortly before the birth of their son Josef Moses (27 August 1938) at the Commission for the Israelite Welfare System on Benekestrasse. She was assigned from there as household help, predominantly for older people. Her last place was with the Horowitz couple at Klosterallee 7.

Anna and Moses lived in a small, 1½ room, apartment on the third floor at Marcusstrasse 38 (today Markusstrasse). The building and the synagogue in the rear courtyard, as well as House no. 36, belonged to the Portuguese Jewish Congregation of Hamburg.

In June 1939, Anna and Moses hoped to be able to emigrate to the USA. A cousin of Anna’s, Sam Friedmann, lived in New York and took on the required financial guarantee as well as the costs of the ship’s passage. Contact went through the American Consulate. However, the immigration quota for Polish citizens was very limited and, another complicating factor, was the fact that Moses Korzuch was stateless. It is also possible that their emigration failed because of missing documentation, which may also be the reason that Anna Zlotnik and Mosez Korzuch had not married.

Moses Korzuch, as a Jew, could no longer find work. As a jobless welfare recipient, along with other Jewish men, he was drafted for heavy excavation work in Tiefstaak (today, Tiefstack) and later for a underground construction firm in Harsefeld. He could see his family only on free weekends because his workplaces were outside of Hamburg and he was lodged in a special camp.
Despite difficult financial circumstances, Anna, according to a welfare care worker’s comments in June 1939, managed to take good care of her child. Josef Moses, she reported, was developing well and was well-nurtured. His mother was described as very diligent and kept the house impeccably clean.

Moses Korzuch was among the approximately 1000 Polish Jews in Hamburg expelled on 28 October 1938 to the border town of Zbaszyn (Bentschen), as part of the "Poland Action." Apparently, he returned and on 28 October 1939, after the war had begun, was arrested because he was a Polish Jew. From November 1939 to February 1940, he was incarcerated in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. His name was on the deportation list for the second transport to the Minsk ghetto, scheduled for 8 November 1941; but it was then crossed out. It is certain that Moses Korzuch arrived at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 24 February 1940, and was given prisoner number 20354; he was transferred from there in August 1941 to the men’s camp at Ravensbrück, receiving prisoner number 741. Most likely, he was in the so-called invalids‘ transport for inmates classified as unable to work, selected under the cover designation 14 f 13, and thereafter sent to the gas chamber in the killing center at Bernburg on the Saale River.

At the end, Anna Zlotnik lived with her 3-year old son Josef Moses as a sub-lessee at Wilhelminenstrasse 24 (today, Hein-Hoyer-Strasse) with Siegfried Liebreich (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-St. Pauli). On 25 October 1941, she received a deportation order for the "Litzmannstadt" (Lodz) ghetto. While there, she received on 30 March 1942 her order for "resettlement." It stated that she would go to another locale for work assignment. She was brought to Chelmno (Kulmhof) and murdered in a gas van there.

Great stretches of Markusstrasse were destroyed in the war. The street was completely rebuilt. For this reason, the commemorative stones for Josef Moses and his parents, Anna Zlotnik and Moses Korzuch, could not be placed at the spot where they had lived. Formerly, the street ran up to the intersection of Kurze Strasse and Hüttenstrasse, and now follows a different route.

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: June 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 9; StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge 1398 (Korzuch, Moses); StaH 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge 2039 (Zlotnik, Anna); StaH 351-11 AfW 21374 (Lichtenhayn, Adolph); StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 3; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 2; StaH 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinde Nr. 992 e 2 Band 1; Auskunft aus der Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen von Monika Liebscher, E-Mail vom 18.9.2013; Schindler-Saefkow/Schnell: Gedenkbuch, S. 337; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivor ans Victim Catalog, http://resources.ushmm.org/online/hsvperson_view.pp?PersonId=2024466 (Zugriff 26.1.2014); Auskunft aus der Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, von Monika Schnell, E-Mail vom 3.5.2014.
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