Rita Henny Müller
* 1929

Paula Müller, née Andrade, born on 12 Mar. 1909 in Hamburg, deported on 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, murdered on 29 Jan. 1943 in Auschwitz
Rita Henny Müller, born on 1 Dec. 1929 in Hamburg, deported on 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, murdered on 29 Jan. 1943 in Auschwitz

Beim Schlump 28

Georg Müller, baptized a Protestant, and his Jewish wife Paula Müller led a so-called “mixed marriage” (“Mischehe”) according to Nazi terminology. They had a daughter named Rita Henny. The marriage was divorced. Paula Müller was a native of Hamburg, her parents were Joseph and Franziska Andrade.

Paula Müller earned a living for herself and her daughter as a worker. In 1935, the Jewish Community noted that she was unemployed, and in Jan. 1941 that she was receiving welfare assistance.

Apparently, Rita Henny, “half-Jewish” (“halbjüdisch”) along the Nazis’ “racial” lines, was classified as a “Jew by definition” (“Geltungsjude”). For this reason and also due to the divorced “mixed marriage,” she and her mother were served the deportation order to Theresienstadt. By that time, they already lived at Beneckestrasse 4, a “Jews’ house” (“Judenhaus”).

On 29 Jan. 1943, both of them were deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Paula Müller was apparently murdered immediately upon arrival; for Rita Henny – aged 13 then – the Hamburg Memorial Book contains a reference to her having been murdered in the Majdanek extermination camp but according to more recent research, this is not very likely.

In 1981, Paula Müller’s sister and Rita Henny’s aunt, Flora Neumann, herself a survivor of Auschwitz, submitted a Page of Testimony (Gedenkblatt) for both of them at Yad Vashem.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.