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Peter Perls
© Yad Vashem

Peter Perls * 1931

Weidenstieg 8 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

1943 Theresienstadt
ermordet in Auschwitz

Peter Perls, born 10/29/1931 in Schkeuditz, deported to Theresienstadt on 6/23/ 1943, deported to Auschwitz on 10/23/1943, murdered there
Weidenstieg 8

On the list of 109 people for the transport to Theresienstadt on June 23rd, 1943, the name Peter Perls features under the address of Weidenstieg 8. He is the only person with that family name on the list, even though he was only eleven years old. The boy had to leave Hamburg all alone without a loved one at his side.
His parents Hans Perls and Käthe Perls, née Goldmann, had married in Hamburg in May 1926, but Peter’s mother (born 1900) died of breast cancer in Schkeuditz in May 1933 at the age of only 32. Peter was two and half years old when she died, his brother Jürgen, born in February 1928, was five years old. During the last year of their mother’s illness, the boys lived with the Goldmanns in Hamburg, their maternal grandparents, part of the time. Käthe Perls was buried at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg.

Peter Perls’ father Hans Perls, born 5/25/1900 in Kattowitz (now Polish Katowice) was a neurologist, who had received his approbation and doctorate in Jena in 1924 and then worked as an intern at the Hamburg University Hospital in Eppendorf. In this time, he probably met his future wife Käthe. From 1925 to 1933, he was a neurologist at the miners’ association hospital "Bergmannswohl” in Schkeuditz, a small mining town in northern Saxony halfway between Leipzig and Halle. According to the census of 1932, 42 Jews lived there. In April 1933, Hans Perls was fired by the hospital pursuant to the "Law on the Restoration of Professional Civil Service” because he was Jewish. Subsequently, he set up as a neurologist with his own practice in Leipzig. In 1934 and 1935, his practice and home address was Funkenburgstrasse 5. In 1935, he was registered as a Jewish doctor without license from the statutory health insurance. In Leipzig, he was a member of the Jewish Cultural Association, as was his second wife Hildegard Perls. Peter Perls moved from Leipzig to Berlin and then illegally emigrated to Palestine via Italy, together with his son Jürgen (later Yochanan), Peter’s elder brother, his new wife Hildegard and her two children. Although Hans Perls again treated patients in Palestine, he did not succeed in learning the Hebrew language and thus was unable to gain a new professional foothold. His wife supported the family with a quilt and pillow cleaning business she ran together with her sister. Hans Perls died 1967 in Tel Aviv. Today, his daughter-in-law, his grandchildren and great grandchildren live near Israel’s metropolis.

Whereas his father, his brother and his stepsiblings emigrated, Peter Perls remained in Hamburg with his grandparents Hugo and Auguste Goldmann. Auguste Goldmann came from Bremen and was a Protestant Christian. Her husband was Jewish and born in Poland. In a fatal misassessment of the situation, Hans Perls thought his little son safe with his "Aryan” grandmother. According to the racist Nazi ideology, Peter was a "half-Jew”, but because three of his four grandparents were Jewish, he was treated as a Geltungsjude, an "assertive Jew.”
Peter started school in April 1938. From November 15th, 1938, Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend public schools, and even before they had only been admitted if the "Jews’ quota” was not exceeded. Peter thus went to the private elementary of Cläre Lehmann at Heilwigstrasse 46 that then already had almost exclusively Jewish pupils. Regarding Cläre Lehmann and the story of her school, see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Eppendorf und Hamburg-Hoheluft-Ost, p. 242 ff. In 1938, nine children, five boys and four girls, attended the first grade of Cläre Lehmann’s school. After the fourth grade, the children were to switch to the Talmud Tora School or the Jewish girls’ school. Several of them, among them Peter Perls, were baptized Christians. In March 1940, Peter was enrolled in the Volks- und Oberschule für Juden, the "Elementary and Secondary School for Jews” – the Talmud Thora School no longer existed – with the remark "qualified for grade G3.” He attended this school until it was closed in the summer of 1942. His graduating report card no. 997 of June 30th, 1942, that identified him as a pupil of grade G4, contained only good grades. The commentary noted, "Peter has successfully absolved the grade and achieved the maturity for grade 1 of a secondary learning institution.” But after his forced leave from the school, there was no more place to learn for Peter. Until his deportation a year later, Peter was not allowed to attend any secondary school.

In his schooldays, Peter Perls was often harassed and mobbed. His grandmother tried to mitigate his situation and often came to pick him up at school so that he didn’t have to walk the long way home without protection. In the meantime, his father had made desperate efforts to enable him to join the family in Palestine. When this plan failed due to the beginning of the war, in spite of the fact that he had obtained all the necessary documents, Hans Perls sought to organize a way for his son to get to the USA. However, that plan also failed.

Peter’s grandfather Hugo Goldmann worked as a representative and shareholder of a wholesale tobacco products distributor. The company had been founded in 1901. In 1937, Hugo Goldmann was forced to leave the company because he was Jewish. His son Georg was co-owner of the business, and his "Aryan” mother became a partner. The family had probably lived at Wiesenstrasse 37 until October 1937, when they moved to the second floor of the house Weidenstieg 8. The building was damaged in an air raid in 1943, after which the Gestapo confiscated the apartment with the exception of a single room that was left to the Goldmann family.

Peter Perls was deported to Theresienstadt on June 23rd, 1943. There, he lived in Block Q 609, where other unaccompanied orphan children were billeted. The streets of Theresienstadt were all named Q and L, plus a number. Q 609 was an old three-story building where large groups of children were crowded into cramped rooms. The children slept in three-story bunk beds. On top of the squeeze, there was a vermin plague, fleas, and bedbugs. German and Czech children lived in the house; every room was its own "camp.” The groups were not mixed, and German and Czech children were incited against each other. Beppo Kramer, whose name was actually Jirka Kramer, headed the house – he was Czech. His deputy was Else Timendorfer, a governess from Berlin.

A few children from northern Germany made friends with her. Gerhard Lilienfeldt, a fellow sufferer of Perls’, a ten-year-old who was in Theresienstadt with his five-year-old brother, survived. The witness to history who died in 2009 sponsored the Stumbling Stones for Peter Perls and for Irmgard and Arnold Löwenthal, sister and brother from Angerstrasse. Gerhard remembers Peter as a very mature and astute boy. His companions called him "the absentminded professor.” Both Gerhard and Peter were baptized Protestants and once attended a Protestant church service together. The Protestants in Theresienstadt were unable to help the children.

In 1944, a delegation of the International Red Cross was to visit the ghetto. The command launched an "embellishment program”, had flowers planted, buildings painted. As a contribution to the adornment, Peter Perls and some other children designed an Album as a birthday present for Beppo Kramer, head of the children’s home. Peter Perls wrote some rhymed verses for the album. The album was preserved; it was left behind when most of the children and Beppo Kramer were taken to Auschwitz. Gerhard Lilienfeldt, who was deferred, took possession of it and saved it. Many years later, he gave it to the Theresienstadt Museum.

On October 23rd, 1944, Peter Perls was taken to Auschwitz and murdered. He was thirteen years old.
His grandfather Hugo Goldmann died in October 1943, his grandmother Auguste in January 1945. Weeks after Hugo Goldmann’s death, the deportation order for him arrived by letter. The family went to the authorities to report the mistake. As a "mongrel of the first degree”, Hugo and Auguste’s son Georg was not deported. However, he had to do forced labor and was detained at a labor camp in France in 1944. He returned to Hamburg after the war.

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

Stand: February 2018
© Susanne Lohmeyer

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 8; StaH 332-5 Standesämter, 8808 + 175/1926; StaH 351-11 AfW, 171005 (Hugo Goldmann); StaH 361-2 II Oberschulbehörde (OSB) II, B192 Nr. 1 Schule allgemein; StaH 362-6/10 Talmud Tora Schule StaH 741-4 Fotoarchiv Sa 1248; Maajan Nr. 76, 2005, S. 2631–2633; Mitgliedskarte der Israelitischen Religionsgemeinde zu Leipzig; BArch, Liste der jüdischen Einwohner im Deutschen Reich 1933–1945; BArch, R1509, Ergänzungskarten für Angaben über Abstammung (Volkszählung v. 17.5.1939) Wohnortliste Hamburg; FZH/WdE Interview mit Prof. Hermann Degwitz am 15.6.1993 von Alfons Kenkmann; Auskunft Stadtverwaltung Schkeuditz vom 19.8.2010; Auskünfte von Margit Goldmann 2010; Auskünfte von Yuvall Pniell 2008; Auskünfte Stadtverwaltung Schkeuditz; Auskünfte Jüdische Gemeinde Leipzig 2008; HAB II 1939; Beate Meyer, "Jüdische Mischlinge", S. 333ff.; H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945, S. 547ff.; Ärzte und Zahnärzte in Sachsen 1933–1945, S. 237f.
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