Otto Zimak
* 1879

Otto Zimak, born 26 May 1879 in Gilgenburg, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga-Jungfernhof where he died on 22 Feb. 1942
Helene Zimak, née Rosenberg, born 1 Feb. 1874 in Stuhm, deported 6 Dec. 1941 to Riga-Jungfernhof where she was killed on 10 Feb. 1942

Heinrich-Barth-Straße 17

Otto Zimak (the family name was also spelled Zimmak) was born in Gilgenburg, East Prussia as the third-oldest of six children to the merchant Wolf Zimak and his wife Julie Zimak, née Simson. We have no information about Otto Zimak’s childhood or adolescence.

On 6 Mar. 1902, Otto Zimak married Helene Rosenberg, the daughter of Lewin and Sophie Rosenberg, born on 1 Feb. 1874 in Stuhm, West Prussia.

The couple ran a grocery store in the city Pestlin in Stuhm District. On 8 Feb. 1906 their daughter Frieda was born, followed one year later by their son Leonhard Lewin on 18 Nov. 1907.

According to his grandson Fred, Otto Zimak was a Social Democrat. In accordance with the Treaty of Versaille, the residents of Stuhm District voted as to whether their district would remain part of Prussia and the German Reich or become part of Poland. Otto Zimak actively supported remaining part of Germany.

After the National-Socialists assumed power, revenue from the grocery store dropped, the store was boycotted and defaced. Ultimately the Zimaks were forced to sell their store far below its market value. In doing so they lost their livelihood and left their home town.

In 1937 Otto and Helene moved to Hamburg with their son Leonhard and moved in with their daughter Frieda at Heinrich-Barth-Straße 17 who had lived in Hamburg since 1935. She was married to Wendelin Richert who was not Jewish. In 1940 the Zimak Family was forced to give up the apartment and move into the neighboring “Jewish house” at Rutschbahn 15. It was there that they received the order to be deported on the transport leaving on 6 Dec. 1941 for the East.

Originally the transport was to take them to Riga Ghetto, but then it was redirected to the overflow camp Jungfernhof. Jungfernhof was a state farm and was actually slated to be expanded into a model National-Socialist agricultural operation. Now it was turned into a camp. The Jews arriving there had to stay in barns and cattle stalls.

Of the entire Zimak Family, only Leonhard survived. After the war he reported on Hamburg’s deportees’ arduous work of settling in. His mother Helene came down with diarrhea and vomiting. On 10 Feb. 1942 she was loaded onto trucks along with 600 other elderly inmates, taken away and killed. His father Otto Zimak, weakened by the cold and hunger, died “peacefully” in Leonhard’s arms on 22 Feb. 1942. He was buried in a mass grave at Jungfernhof.

Frieda Richert née Zimak and her husband were evacuated to Kalmsee in Westfalen in 1943, following air raids on Hamburg. It was there that someone denounced Frieda as being Jewish. She was arrested and sent to Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig on 17 Apr. 1944. As the concentration camp was evacuated in Mar. 1945, she was liberated from a “death march” by the Red Army, and she returned to her husband in Hamburg.

Leonhard Zimak survived on his own. Following an odyssey of camps, towards the end of the war he was returned to Hamburg and imprisoned at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. When the camp was being cleared out and the detainees moved to Kiel-Russee, the Swedish Red Cross assumed responsibility for the detainees on 1 May 1945. On 2 May he was already safe in Sweden. He described his family’s fate in letters. (See reports at www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de under Heinrich (Henoch) Herbst).

Information as of May 2016

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.