Hertha Künstlinger
* 1891

Hertha Künstlinger, née Burchard, born on 26 Dec. 1891 in Harburg, deported from Berlin to Auschwitz on 9 Dec. 1942, murdered

Hölertwiete 8 (formerly Ludwigstrasse 13)

When Hertha Burchard was born as the child of the Jewish merchant Paul Burchard and his wife Frieda, née Levy (born on 14 May 1867), one year before the opening of the new Harburg town hall, the considerable increase of Harburg’s synagogue community in the years prior to the foundation of the German Reich had already slowed noticeably – in contrast to the continuously swift growth of the overall population of Harburg. The path from the apartment of the family on Ludwigstrasse (today Hölertwiete) was just as short as the path from there to the synagogue of the Jewish Community at the intersection of Eissendorfer Strasse and Albersstrasse (today Knoopstrasse). When her grandfather Simon Levy (born on 24 Aug. 1840) passed away on 22 Nov. 1914 and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery on the Schwarzenberg – as was her grandmother Johanne Levy (25 Dec. 1834 to 19 Oct. 1919) five years later – Hertha Burchard was 23 years old.

It is not known when she married Adolf Künstlinger and moved to Berlin. One cannot say much about the subsequent stations of their life together either. An established fact, however, is that their two children Hanna and Fritz Künstlinger (born on 30 May 1925) grew up in the metropolis on the Spree River.

That they and their mother felt state-sponsored anti-Semitism after 1933 to be a real threat is shown by the fact that Hanna Künstlinger managed, before the official ban on emigration for Jews, to leave Germany. She found refuge in the United States.

We do not know whether her mother and her underage brother harbored similar intentions. On 9 Dec. 1942, Hertha Künstlinger was deported along with 1,059 other men, women, and children on the 24th Transport eastward (Osttransport) to the Auschwitz extermination camp. The trip took one day. After the “selection,” 137 men and 25 women were designated for labor duty, whereas the other 898 people were taken into the gas chambers. We do not know whether Hertha Künstlinger was assigned to one or the other group.

It is an established fact, though, that after 1945 she did not return to her home. Her son Fritz also ranks among the victims of the Holocaust. His life ended in the same extermination camp on 4 Feb. 1943.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.