Henriette Lehmann
* 1880

Philipp and Henny Lehmann, in whose memory these Stolpersteine have been placed, are my grandparents. They lived here, at Hellkamp 31 on the second floor, from 1912 onwards.

My grandfather was born in 1876 in Wiesbaden. He worked as an insurance salesman at the Norddeutsche Versicherungsgesellschaft until 1920, and later for the Hamburg Port Authority. My grandmother, who was four years younger than her husband, was a housewife, as was usual for women at the time. Both were members of the Jewish Community.

Their children Hermann, Adolf (our father), Karl, and their half-sister Hedy grew up in this building.

A poem written by Philipp while he was a soldier in the First World War to our father has survived. In it he describes himself as a good German, who must defend his fatherland.

The harassment and persecution of the Jews in Germany began when Hitler came to power in 1933. They were to serve as scapegoats for all of the evil in the world. As early as 1935 a law was passed which stated that “Only those state subjects with German or related blood are citizens of the Reich…”. This law made all Jewish Germans “non-Germans,” and thus enemies.

Philipp Lehmann couldn’t and wouldn’t understand. In his mind he was a German, and he brusquely rejected all warnings to consider emigrating.
In 1936 he and Henny were forced to leave the apartment in which they had lived for nearly 30 years and move into a “Jew’s house” at Schlachterstraße 42 (present-day Großneumarkt), then later to one at Dillstraße 15. Only then did Philipp accept reality.

After the November Pogroms in 1938, in which all synagogues in the Reich were destroyed or burnt down, his sons Hermann and Karl were held in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp for several weeks. When they were finally released they strongly urged him to consider emigrating.

Karl, his wife Else, and Hedy fled to England. Hermann and his wife Regina were deported to Minsk on 8 November 1941. Philipp and Henny received their “evacuation orders” in December 1941, which read: “…You are to report on 6 December to the Moorweide assembly point. Each person may bring: one suitcase weighing no more than 50 kg [110 lbs], bedding and blankets, provisions for 3 days, up to 100 Reichsmarks.”

On 6 December 1931, they and more than 700 Jews from Hamburg and 90 from Lübeck were sent to the Jungfernhof Concentration Camp near Riga in Latvia. In Riga, the SS had executed about 4000 Latvian Jews on 30 November and more than 27,000 on 8 December in order to “make room” for the German Jews.

Philipp and Henny Lehmann were 65 and 61 years old when they were deported. They had no chance of survival, as they were too old to be assigned to a work detail. We never heard from them again.

Their names, along with those of Hermann and Regina, are carved on the Lehmann family gravestone at the cemetery in Oxford. We are glad to see them memorialized here in Hamburg with these Stolpersteine.

Translator: Amy Lee
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.