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Flora Vogel im Alter
© Galerie Morgenland

Flora Vogel (née Moses) * 1861

Osterstraße 85 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

1943 Theresienstadt
ermordet 17.05.1943

further stumbling stones in Osterstraße 85:
Louis Vogel

Louis Vogel, born 3/26/1892 in Hamburg, murdered on 9/23/1940 at the killing institution Brandenburg on the Havel
Flora Vogel, née Moses, born 8/17/1861, deported to Theresienstadt on 3/24/1943, died there on 5/17/1943

Stumbling Stones in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel, Osterstrasse 85

Flora and Semmy Vogel had married in 1884. Both came from Hamburg Jewish merchant families. Semmy Vogel, a paper hanger by trade, born January 15, 1858, son of the merchant Levy Vogel and his wife Sophie, née Finkenberg, then lived at Schaarmarkt 28. Flora, daughter of the merchant Jonas Moses and his wife Mathilde, née Levy, lived at number 52 of the street named Eichholz. Eight children were born in this marriage: John, born April 18, 1885, Margarethe (Grete), married Wandmacher, born December 6, 1886, Julius, born December 11, 1888, died February 24, 1889; Henriette, married Lütjens, born May 1, 1890; Louis, born March 26, 1892; Max, born June 25, 1894, died January 4, 1934; Paula, married Baden, born September 7, 1900, and Erna, married Wenz, born August 27, 1904.

The Vogel family lived in Hamburg’s new town when the children were born: in the street called Bei den Hütten, in 2. Elbstrasse and in Krayenkamp. Presumably, they were forced to move frequently – possibly they "lived apartments dry” – a common practice in those days: newly built apartments where the plaster had not yet completely dried were first rented to people with low income so the buildings could thus dry out by the heat generated by the tenants and their stoves. When the walls were dry, the apartments were rented at a higher price – mostly to other people.

Flora und Semmy Vogel were assimilated. They did send their kids to Jewish schools and observed Jewish holidays, but not the dietary laws. All of their children married non-Jewish partners, were followers of the Social Democrats, had themselves baptized or turned away from religion.

Before 1914, Semmy Vogel sold refurbished furniture at a small used-goods shop. He died on November 20, 1914. His youngest daughter was eleven, the elder kids were already grown up. Flora Vogel later lived in a small rear building apartment at Osterstrasse 85a or b, later to nearby Lutterothstrasse, often visited by her children and grandchildren, who all loved the erudite old lady.

In 1939, by then frail and almost blind, she entered the Jewish Community’s old folks’ home in Sedanstrasse. When she was served the deportation order on March 24, 1943 – the Nazi authorities were "evacuating” the Jewish homes and institutions – she was quartered in a "Jews’ house” at Beneckestrasse 6. In spite of her poor eyesight, the doctor Cai Lienau, Eichenstrasse 54 in Eimsbüttel, declared her "fit for travel.”

The day before her deportation, her deportation, her kids and grandchildren, who by way of their contacts to the Social Democratic milieu had not only been informed about the concentration camps at an early stage, but also about the brutal conditions there – many friends or Communist neighbors had been arrested and detained in concentrations camps in March 1933, shortly after the Nazis’ rise to power.

Thus, Flora Vogel’s children and grandchildren had an idea of what was in the offing for her. To spare her that fate, they brought along sleeping pills when they last came to see her, but in the end did not manage to administer them to their mother and grandmother. So, the old lady "went on transport” the following day. Flora Vogel did not survive for long in Theresienstadt. She died there on May 20, 1943.

Flora Vogel’s son Louis was a barber by trade. Like his siblings, he married a non-Jewish partner: om June 18, 1920, he was wedded to Lydia Caroline Baszulewski, a Lutheran Protestant from Itzehoe, a small mown northwest of Hamburg. At the time of their wedding, the couple lived at Schmuckstrasse 11, 4th floor, in Hamburg’s "Chinatown” in the St. Pauli district. On August 14, 1926, Louis Vogel was admitted to the state mental hospital in Hamburg-Langenhorn. In February/March 1925, he had already been treated at the Friedrichsberg mental hospital. We do not know the reasons for this. In any case, Lydia and Louis Vogel’s marriage could not bear the stress of Louis’ disease. They were divorced on July 25, 1927, and Louis stayed in Langenhorn permanently.

In spring and summer of 1940, the Berlin "Euthanasia” agency at Tiergartenstrasse 4 planned a special operation to eliminate all Jewish patients living in public and private mental hospitals in Germany. The agency had all Jewish patients of the institutions registered and then assembled in so-called collecting institutions. In northern Germany, this was the Hamburg-Langenhorn mental hospital. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg were ordered to transfer all of their Jewish patients there before September 18, 1940.

On September 23, Louis Vogel and 135 other patients from north German institutions were loaded on a train at the Hamburg-Ochsenzoll freight station and transported to Brandenburg on the Havel, where they arrived the same day. In the part of the former prison that had been converted into a gas murdering facility, the patients from northern Germany were immediately herded into the gas chamber and murdered by carbon monoxide gas. Only Ilse Herta Zachmann temporarily escaped that fate (cf. there).

We do not know whether or when Louis Vogel’s family was informed of his death. Louis Vogel’s entry in the birth registry was amended stating that the Chelm II registrar’s office his death under the number 412/1941.

In all documented notifications of the murdered mental hospital patients, it was claimed that they had died a natural death in Chelm, Poland (Cholm in German). The people murdered in Brandenburg, however, had never been in the town east of Lublin called Chelm in Polish, Cholm in German. The mental hospital there had ceased to exist after SS troops had murdered almost all its patients on January 12, 1940. And there had never been a German registrar’s office in Chelm. It was solely invented to cover up the murder operations, and recording fictive later dates of death served the purpose of demanding board fees for the already murdered patients.

Louis Vogel’s siblings were, for the time being, exempt from deportation on account of their mixed marriages. Margarethe (Grete) was deported to Theresienstadt at the beginning of 1945. She survived. His eldest brother had also been served the deportation order to Theresienstadt in 1945, but succeeded in being deferred because he was ill. He had been detained at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from June 1938 to February 1940 and had to do forced labor. Henriette, Paula and Erna Vogel also survived the Holocaust.

Stumbling Stones at Osterstrasse 58 in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel commemorate Louis and Flora Vogel.

Translation by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2020
© Susanne Lohmeyer

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 9; AB; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer Lebenden jüdischen Frauen und Männern der psychiatrischen Anstalt Langenhorn, die aufgrund nationalsozialistischer "Euthanasie"-Maßnahmen ermordet wurden, zusammengestellt von Peter von Rönn, Hamburg (Projektgruppe zur Erforschung des Schicksals psychisch Kranker in Langenhorn); 332-5 Standesämter 257 Sterberegister Nr. 545/1889 Julius Vogel, 2668 Heiratsregister Nr. 520/1884 Semmy Vogel/Flora Moses, 2101 Geburtsregister Nr. 1868/1885 John Vogel, 2134 Geburtsregister Nr. 5874/1886 Margarethe Vogel, 2183 Geburtsregister Nr. 5870/1888 Julius Vogel, 2226 Geburtsregister 1983/1890 Henriette Vogel, 2284 Geburtsregister Nr. 1361/1892 Louis Vogel, 2344 Geburtsregister Nr. 2375/1894 Max Vogel, 3243 Heiratsregister Nr. 806/1914 John Vogel/Käthchen Lehmann, 3375 Heiratsregister Nr. 544/1920 Louis Vogel/Lydia Caroline Baszulewski; 13405 Geburtsregister Nr. 2465/1900 Paula Vogel; 8031 Sterberegister Nr. 1099/1915 Semmy Vogel, 8679 Heiratsregister Heinrich Albert Wandmacher/Margarethe Vogel, 8753 Heiratsregister Walther Lütjens/Henriette Vogel, 9868 Sterberegister Nr. 15/1934 Max Vogel; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 1960 Flora Vogel, 7938 John Vogel; 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialbehörde – Sonderakten 1960 Flora Vogel; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26. 8. 1939 bis 27. 1. 1941; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Louis Vogel der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg. Baumbach, Sybille/ Lohmeyer, Susanne/Louven, Astrid/Meyer, Beate/Salomon, Sielke/Wienrich, Dagmar, "Wo Wurzeln waren …”. Juden in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel 1933 bis 1945, Hamburg 1993, darin: Familie Vogel, S. 195ff. Böhme, Klaus/Lohalm, Uwe (Hrsg.), Wege in den Tod. Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 70f. Klee, Ernst, "Euthanasie"– im NS-Staat. Die "Vernichtung" lebensunwerten Lebens, Frankfurt a. M. 2009, S. 269ff.
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