Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Wilhelmine Rosenbaum (née Stock) * 1876

Lehmweg 57 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)

1941 Minsk

Wilhelmine Rosenbaum, née Stock, born on 15 May 1876 in Fliesteden, deported on 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk

Lehmweg 57

Wilhelmine Rosenbaum was born on 15 May 1876 in Fliesteden in the Rhein-Erftkreis administrative district/North Rhine-Westphalia. Her parents were Werner and Rosa Stock. Sometime after 1918, she married the merchant Levy Rosenbaum, a native of Westheim (born on 3 Apr. 1868). Levy Rosenbaum was a widower, bringing from his first marriage with Jenny Fischel, who had passed away in 1918, six underage children into the marriage, five sons and a daughter: Julius (born on 12 Aug. 1902), Alfred (born on 5 Jan. 1904), Max (born on 28 Sept. 1905), Erich (born on 11 Aug. 1907), Erna (born on 9 May 1909), and Walter (born on 27 Dec. 1910). Four of the Rosenbaum sons and daughter Erna managed to flee abroad later.

In Westheim, the Rosenbaum family operated a grocery and chinaware store at house no. 69. The store was staffed primarily with Wilhelmine Rosenbaum, while her husband worked as a livestock dealer. The family lived in secure financial circumstances. Two of the sons studied law and medicine, respectively, and two became merchants. Only one son stayed in Westheim as a livestock dealer. Daughter Erna married a restaurant owner from the neighboring village.

In 1929, Wilhelmine’s husband Levy Rosenbaum passed away. After 1933, when the calls for boycotts showed an effect, the Rosenbaums leased their store to a local businessman. During the November Pogrom of 1938, the Rosenbaums’ house was devastated substantially. The two sons living in Westheim at the time were arrested. After the pogrom, Wilhelmine Rosenbaum moved in with relatives in Hamburg, the Behrs at Grindelhof 89, house no. 7 on the second floor.

She was not present in person during the signing of the forced sale of the house by the Rosenbaum community of joint heirs at a notary’s office in Warburg in May 1939. The sales proceeds, however, did not benefit the family, because, as Wilhelmine Rosenbaum informed the "Chief Finance Administrator [Oberfinanzpräsident] Westf.[alen] in Münster” in a letter dated 22 Sept. 1940, "the sum was confiscated by the Hamburg-Barmbek tax office toward the levy on Jewish assets [Judenabgabe].” In the same letter, she stated that she would reside in Hamburg until her emigration, even though one of her sons had still remained in Rimbeck, Post Office Scherfelde/Westphalia; the remaining of the five children were staying abroad. Apparently, Wilhelmine Rosenbaum had good relations to the family of the children’s biological mother, for she lived with the Fischels when she came to visit from Hamburg. By this time, her financial circumstances had become extremely precarious.

In the letter mentioned above to the foreign currency office with the Chief Finance Administrator in Münster, she asked for the unblocking of funds. She stated that from the usufruct of the Rosenbaum assets, she received 435 RM (reichsmark) a year, of which she had to pay 33.92 RM in taxes to the Westheim municipal treasury.

She was not able to realize the planned emigration anymore, and just before her deportation to Minsk on 18 Nov. 1941, Wilhelmine Rosenbaum had to move from Grindelhof to Lehmweg 57. We do not know what happened to her in Minsk; probably she was murdered there.


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

Stand: October 2018
© Lore Wieprecht

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 8; StaH 314-15 OFP, R 1940/906; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden, 992e2 Band 3; Recherche und Auskunft Gudrun Banke und Siegfried Stolz Stadtarchiv Marsberg vom 20.4.2010.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".