Hanna Aghitstein
* 1871

Hanna Aghitstein, née Baruch, b. 9.29.1871 in Hamburg, deported to Theresienstadt, 7.19.1942, deported again on 9.21.1942 to the Treblinka extermination camp

Großneumarkt 38 (Schlachterstraße 46-47)

Until her marriage, Hanna Aghitstein, née Baruch, lived with her father Falk Selig Baruch at the no longer existing Schlachterstrasse 46-47, house 4, in the Jewish Lazarus-Gumpel Foundation.

The Lazarus-Gumpel Foundation, founded in 1837 by the merchant Lazarus Gumpel (1770-1843), was instituted to provide free housing. The poorer families who stayed there had to feed themselves and observe the Jewish religion. The widower Falk Selig Baruch was “a man of business” and earned his livelihood as a merchant. He came from Moisling, a southern suburb of Lübeck with one of the larger Jewish congregations, where he was born on 11 January 1832. Hanna took care of the common household because her mother Sophia, née Seligmann, had died on 11 February 1903 at 69 years of age. The Baruch family lived in the Lazarus-Gumpel Foundation since 1883.

Hanna got to know the hat maker’s assistant Saimu/Laimund Aghitstein, ten years her junior, at Caffamacherreihe Street 24. Saimu, called Aghitstein in Hamburg, was born on 28 May 1881 in Garbestie, Moldavia. His mother Ruhla Leia Aghitstein, née Marcovici, had, like many Romanian Jews around 1900, left her homeland and emigrated with a few family members to Cleveland, Ohio. His father Altar Aghitstein was a distiller (that is, he was involved in the productions of spirits) and had already died in Cleja in Romania. Hanna Baruch and Saimu Aghitstein married on 8 June 1911. One year later, Hanna’s father Falk Selig Baruch passed away and was buried next to his wife in the Ilandkoppel Jewish Cemetery in Ohlsdorf.

He never got to know his granddaughter Senta who was born on 12 May 1913. The Aghitsteins were living at Peterstrasse 71-73 when they fell into financial need. Saimu, after having worked many years in the hat factory, became physically weak and was able to earn less. In a letter to the Welfare Office, the Commission for Poor Relief of the German Israelite Congregation reported: “The family is at the moment not in the position to pay the rent or the gas bill. We ask that you take this family, which we can recommend as orderly and industrious, into your care.”

Hanna soon became ill with rheumatism and cataracts. Later she suffered a hernia of the abdominal wall. In 1923, her 10-year old daughter Senta spent a month in the Israelite Hospital with suspected typhus.

In 1927, Hanna suffered a nervous breakdown and, after a stay in the hospital, did not return home, “because she was continually threatened by neighbors”; she moved in with acquaintances. Senta was temporarily placed in an orphanage and then given to a foster family.

In late 1927, Hanna Aghitstein again joined her husband, who meanwhile had had to give up their apartment and now subleased a furnished room with a makeshift kitchen for RM 15 a week from Bubert, at Jägerstrasse 43 II. In January 1928, Senta again lived with her parents. After finishing her eight years of schooling at the Israelite Girls School on Carolinenstrasse, she successfully completed a three year commercial apprenticeship with the Adolf Sommer ladies’ wear firm, on Neuer Wall Street. After her training ended she stayed on as a saleswoman. At the same time she took foreign language courses in the evenings from the Berlitz School at Mönckebergstrasse 11. In 1933, she moved on to the Ost-Indien-Haus at Neuer Wall 15, one of the largest women’s fashion houses in Hamburg.

Around 1929, the Aghitstein family found accommodations in the Lazarus-Gumpel Foundation homes at Schlachterstrasse 46-47, house 7. For their two-room apartment they now paid RM 3 monthly.

On 11 January 1936, the family experienced a severe and fateful blow when Saimu, as the result of a fall, suffered a fractured skull and then died in hospital. Two years after her father’s death, Senta lost her job because Heinrich Colm (b. 2.29.1880, d. 2.27.1944), the owner of the Ost-Indien-Haus was expropriated.

An aunt in the USA sent her an affidavit, a guarantee of the required financial liability. Via Antwerp, Senta emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio on 13 August 1938.

Her mother Hanna was supposed to follow as soon as possible. But nothing came of this. After the Lazarus-Gumpel-Foundation was converted into a so-called Jew house by order of the Gestapo, Hanna Aghitstein and Flora Halberstadt (see her biographical sketch) ended up sharing apartment no. 14. Both women were deported to Theresienstadt on 19 July 1942. For the 71-year old Hanna Aghitstein, the “Old People’s Ghetto” was only a way station on her journey that ended in the gas chamber, disguised as a shower room, in the Treblinka extermination camp. (The named deportation destination to Minsk on her commemorative stone is the result of outdated research.)

After the conclusion of the collective deportation, the Lazarus-Gumpel-Stift was forcibly sold in 1942 to the Hanseatic City of Hamburg by the Reich Association of Jews in Germany. Thus ended the story of the 105-year old Jewish institution. So, too, the once thickly populated Schlachterstrasse has disappeared from the Hamburg city map; it went under in a hail of bombs during the July 1943 series of heavy air raids on Hamburg (“Operation Gomorrah”).

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.