Ella Hattendorf
* 1894

Ella Hattendorf, born on 24 Apr. 1894 in Osternburg/Oldenburg, deported on 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga

Ella Hattendorf grew up in Oldenburg. After elementary school, she initially attended, until age 16, the Caecilienschule there, a renowned girls’ school. Afterward, she probably did a commercial apprenticeship. We know that she worked as an accountant at a lacquer and paint plant in Oldenburg from 1924 to 1936.

In Hamburg, she jointly owned two properties in Barmbek with her sister Frieda, which were sold in accordance with an implementing decree of the Reich Ministry of Economics in Dec. 1939. The proceeds were deposited in an account of which the two sisters could not freely dispose. In addition, they were forced to pay the “levy on Jewish assets” (“Judenvermögensabgabe”) amounting to 5,000 RM (reichsmark).

Ella Hattendorf probably lost her job in Oldenburg because she was Jewish. She left her own one-bedroom apartment and moved, along with her mother, 70-year old Nanny Hattendorf, to Hamburg, where they had relatives. Initially, mother and daughter lived at Ostmarkstrasse 6 (today again Hallerstrasse), then on Moltkestrasse, before moving as subtenants into a room on Isestrasse on 4 Oct. 1940. Just over a year later, on 6 Dec. 1941, Ella Hattendorf was deported from there to Riga.

Her mother still had to undertake a move to the “Jews’ house” (“Judenhaus”) on Benneckestrasse, before being deported to Theresienstadt on 15 July 1942 and murdered in Treblinka two months later. A “Stolperstein” was laid for her at Hallerstrasse 6.

Ella’s sister Frieda, too, became a victim of the Shoah, as did their sister Grete Levin, who had worked as a domestic help in Hamburg since 1938 (see publication on “Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Winterhude,” p. 93).

A fourth sister, Emma, had emigrated along with her husband and two children in 1939 and survived.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.