Elsbeth Platz
* 1884

Elsbeth Platz, born 17.3.1884 in Dortmund, deported to Riga on 6.12.1941

Lenhartzstraße 31 (Eppendorf)

Elsbeth "Else" Lidia Platz was born in 1884 in Dortmund in the street Brückstraße 42, as the daughter of the Jewish cattle dealer Meier David Platz (1848-1914) and Sophie (Sara) Platz, née Löwenberg (1855-1927). Her brother Leonard Alfred Platz, born in Gronau in 1882, died in Dortmund on August 24, 1883, in the Louisen Hospital. He was probably buried in the Ostfriedhof, but his grave no longer exists.

Elsbeth’s father Meier Platz had been born in 1848 in Gronau near the Dutch border (Münsterland/ Westphalia) as the son of the butcher David Meyer Platz and had married Sophie Löwenberg from Niederntudorf (Westphalia) near Paderborn, 180 km southeast, in November 1880. The change of residence of the newly founded family from Gronau to Dortmund, 120 km to the south, took place between April 1882 and August 1883.

It can be assumed that Elsbeth attended a secondary girls' school in Dortmund from 1890 to 1900. However, she is not recorded in the chronicles of the Goethe-Oberlyzeum as having graduated in the relevant years.

Meier Platz moved from Dortmund to Hamburg in January 1902 to Collaustraße 19 (renamed Spengelweg in 1948) near the Eimsbüttel market. What reasons motivated the 53-year-old to move to such a distant destination can no longer be reconstructed due to a lack of records. A year later he returned to Dortmund; it is not known whether his wife and his 18-year-old daughter Elsbeth accompanied him to Hamburg. In 1906 and 1907 the family lived in Dortmund at Wißstraße 38 near the city hall. On September 28, 1907, they deregistered in Dortmund and moved to Hamburg.

On this second move to Hamburg, they settled in the centrally located Hoheluft-Ost district. The father was as mentioned - a cattle dealer, but in the Hamburg address books there is no occupation listed after his name. According to the Hamburg registration index, he died in April 1914 in Kaltenkirchen in Holstein. It is conceivable that he was there on a business trip. The death certificate issued in Kaltenkirchen merely notes that he died in the home of the innkeeper Hans Schmidt. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf.

Elsbeth Platz, now 30, and her 59-year-old mother remained in the apartment at Lehmweg 51, first floor. Without the family's breadwinner, however, they probably needed additional income, such as by renting out a room. Mother and daughter were able to keep the apartment through the war years 1914/18, the inflation period 1923 and later the economic crisis. The mother died in September 1927 in the Israelite Hospital in Hamburg; her burial in the Jewish Cemetery Ohlsdorf was taken care of by Mendel Josias, an official of the burial brotherhood (Chewra Kadischa) of German Israelitis.

From May 1922, both Sophie Platz and Elsbeth Platz were listed as independent members of the Jewish Community. However, the membership form only bears the signature of Jakob Loewenberg and the handwritten note "for Sophie Platz and for Else Platz. On Sophie's file card, contributions were recorded only in 1922 and 1923; for Elsbeth, contributions were noted for the years 1922 to 1934.

Elsbeth's choice of profession was probably based on the example of other family members. in her mother's family there were fife teachers: Elsbeth's uncle Dr. Jakob Loewenberg (born 1856 in Niederntudorf/ Westphalia), who moved to Hamburg in 1886 and became a member of the liberal Tempelgemeinde and the German Peace Society, as well as his son Dr. Ernst Loewenberg (born 1896 in Hamburg) and his daughter Annette "Annie" Loewenberg (born 1902 in Hamburg) and Elsbeth's cousin Dr. Richard Levi Dannenbaum (born 4.3.1879 in Fürstenberg/ Westphalia), who was married to a (non-Jewish) former teacher. Richard Dannenbaum was the son of Johanna "Hannchen" Dannenbaum, née Löwenberg (1845-1922), a sister of Sophie Platz, née Löwenberg. And his brother, Adolph Dannenbaum (1873-1936), a graduate engineer at Blohm + Voss, had also married a teacher: Meta Dannenbaum, née Israel (born 8.8.1881 in Hamburg), who until then had taught languages at a Jewish girls' school in Hamburg.

Elsbeth's father's family also had a teacher: Elsbeth's uncle Moses Platz (1850-1928) had moved from Gronau to Münster in 1895 as a cattle dealer. Of his five daughters, Paula Platz (born 14.10.1889 in Gronau) became a teacher. When she married the lawyer Dr. Sally Jonas (1880-1941) in 1919 and moved with him to Cologne, Elsbeth Platz attended the ceremony and stayed at her uncle's house in Münster for two weeks. (19 years later, Mr. and Mrs. Jonas emigrated to the Netherlands on November 18, 1938, where Paula worked as a teacher in the orphanage "Huize Kraaybeek" in Driebergen and was deported from the transit camp Westerbork to the extermination camp Sobibor on June 8, 1943).

The unmarried Elsbeth "Else" Platz taught English at Dr. Loewenberg's non-religious secondary girls' school (Lyzeum) at Johnsallee 33 (Rotherbaum) from 1907 to 1931. In 1909, the Oberschulbehörde carried out an inspection of teaching, which included a lesson by Elsbeth Platz: "Class V English, Fräulein Platz, conversation about a reading piece in Baumgartner's textbook. Good." An arithmetic lesson, which she presumably gave as a substitute, was also examined, but did not receive as much positive response as the English lesson.

The liberal private school, taken over from her uncle in 1892, had moved into refurbished rooms there in 1907 and had been recognized by the Hamburg Oberschulbehörde in 1912 as a ten-class higher educational institution (Lyceum). Accordingly, the school was oriented to the curricula of the state lyceums; half of its 22 teachers were employed as permanent and half as non-permanent teachers.

In May 1922, the uncle had signed the membership form for the German-Israelite Community of Elsbeth Platz and her mother in their place. It seems that he was the driving force for this accession. Jakob Loewenberg was in the public eye as a well-known representative of liberal Judaism in Hamburg, as the head of a private school and spokesman for Hamburg's private schools, and as a member of the Chamber of Teachers. The fact that his niece, who was at the same time a teacher employed by him, did not profess her Judaism did not correspond to his ideas.

The school rooms were rented by the German-Israelite Community for eight of its girls' classes, which had received a large influx due to this and the simultaneous closure of the Bieberstraße Lyceum. A quarter of the students at Dr. Loewenberg's private girls' secondary school transferred to Ria Wirth's private secondary school for girls at Mittelweg 90; however, Elsbeth Platz probably did not find employment there.

Due to the few existing sources on Elsbeth Platz, no reliable information can be given about her further professional activities. After 1931, according to family records, she was only employed as a teacher on a temporary basis. Her name no longer appears in the Hamburg teachers' directory for the 1932/33 school year. Later, she is said to have given language courses for Jewish emigrants at the Jewish Community at Beneckestraße 2, which began in the fall of 1933 and were still held in the spring of 1937. On her cultural tax card, "50 RM mtl. 22.6.1936" was noted without any indication of origin or duration. It is also conceivable that she gave private lessons as a language teacher for well-off Jews who wanted to emigrate. On a form from July 1940, she listed her pension of 170 marks and 100 marks from language courses as her monthly income, which just about covered her expenses.

The address Johnsallee 31 (next to the former Loewenberg School) also appears on her cultural tax card (without date), where the Higher Commercial and Foreign Language School was located, founded in October 1933 by graduate commercial teacher Hermann Lülsdorff (1887-1957. Since Elsbeth Platz was not noted in the house registration file of Johnsallee 31, it is likely to have been the address of her place of work. During which period and to what extent she worked there as a teacher of English is not documented.

The contributions noted on Elsbeth Platz's cultural tax card dropped to only about 40% from 1931 on. In 1933/34 they once again almost reached the former level, only to start at zero in 1934/35, behind which was noted "deleted as of 1.1.1935". For the next few years she does not appear to have been listed as a member of the Jewish Community, however the word resigment is missing from her record card.

She lived for the longest time at Lehmweg 51 I. Stock/ Hoheluft-Ost (1907-1934). The following subtenancies were subsequently noted on her cult tax card: 3.12.1934 Löwenstraße 52 III. Stock/ Eppendorf with import merchant Ludwig Honig; Flemingstr. 5/ Winterhude with Schleswiger; Oderfelderstr. 8/ Harvestehude with the couple Dr. med. Julius Simon and Erika Simon, who sold their house in 1938. From 1938 to 1939, she lived as the main tenant on the first floor of the house at Lenhartzstraße 31/ Eppendorf, which belonged to the architect and building contractor Alfred Ruppert. After the free choice of housing for Jews was abolished, she moved in as a subtenant with Mrs. Nathalie Simon, née Müller (born 28.6.1864 in Hamburg) at Böttgerstraße 8/ Rotherbaum; the house belonged to the merchant Alfred Lion (1884-1941/42), who also lived there until June 1938 and was deported to Minsk on November 8, 1941. Nathalie Simon took her own life in January 1942 after years of humiliation and the now escalating danger of deportation.

Elsbeth Platz was also deprived of all her rights and property by the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazi regime. Some of the stages of disenfranchisement and stigmatization were: Prohibition to work in state schools (1933), obligation to declare property (1938), prohibition to attend theaters, cinemas and exhibitions (1938), abolition of the free choice of housing (1939), obligation to hand in precious metals, furs, radios and bicycles, prohibition to travel in public transport, obligation to wear a yellow Jewish star on clothing (1941).

On December 6, 1941, Elsbeth Platz was deported to the Jungfernhof subcamp of the Riga ghetto together with her cousin Richard Dannenbaum. The mortality rate in the subcamp was high due to cold, hunger and non-existent sanitary facilities. By March 1942, most of those still alive there had been shot.

Elsbeth Platz did not survive the ghetto subcamp. Under what circumstances she died was not recorded by the German camp administration.

A Stolperstein was laid for Elsbeth Platz in Hamburg-Eppendorf in May 2015.

A Stolperstein in Hamburg-Harvestehude at Parkallee 19 has commemorated her cousin Richard Dannenbaum (1879-1941) since July 2019.

For her cousin Adele Levy, née Platz (1887-1944), a Stolperstein was laid in August 2007 in Münster at Salzstraße 31.

Translation Beate Meyer