Former neighbors

The house at Käthe-Niederkirchner-Str. 35 in the Bötzowkiez was a so-called "Jews House" during the Nazi dictatorship. Simon Lütgemeyer has lived there since the late 1990s and has done intensive research on the history of the house's residents.

According to estimates, there were around 3000 so-called "Judenhäuser" in Berlin. Jewish Germans had to live here so that the deportations to the concentration camps could be carried out more effectively. Paul Samter and Fanny Hartogsohn lived at Lippehner Str. 35 until their deportation to the death camps. 

Paul Samter

Born on March 25, 1884 in Wollin near Usedom, after many years of military service before and during World War I, Paul Samter works as a textile merchant and salesman with his own car until he finally has to do forced labor as a street sweeper and in road construction. In 1921 he marries Else Herrmann, who is eight years younger than him and comes from Wollin too, and one year later their son Heinz is born. At the beginning of 1939, they involuntarily move from Bismarckstr. 111, where the family has lived since 1925 according to the telephone book (previously Barbarossastr. 50), to Lippehner Strasse 35. 

To his brother Franz, who suffers persecution in Brunsbüttel but survives and dies in Hamburg in 1970 after a laborious struggle for compensation, Paul writes a farewell letter one day before he and his wife are deported to Auschwitz in February 1943, which is preserved in the files of the "Wiedergutmachungsämter" (state archives):

My very dear ones!

We are now beginning the great journey.

You will still receive a commemoration from another side. Live all quite well & let it go well with you, our best wishes accompany you always.

Warm greetings & kisses

Your Else, Heinz & Paul

Both are presumably murdered immediately after arrival. Their son Heinz remains in the house and is deported to Auschwitz four months later. In 1944 he is still listed in a medical file there and probably dies a little later.

Fanny Hartogsohn

Born on 18.1.1895 as the daughter of the butcher Israel Hartogsohn and his wife Ester, Fanny grows up with her younger sister Henny in Emden, where she marries the butcher and cattle dealer Carl Hartogsohn in 1920. Their children Esther, Auguste and Philipp are born in 1922-27.

The family lives very religiously, but also has a good relationship with the Christian neighborhood. With the onset of Nazi rule, the ban on shechita and the boycott of Jewish merchants, the family's living conditions increasingly deteriorate. Both daughters have to leave the parental home early to work as domestic helpers. On February 21, 1940, Fanny and Carl are forcibly relocated to Berlin and move into Lippehner Straße 35. There they live in the front house 3rd floor together with the Hamacher / de Vries family, who also come from East Frisia.

Twelve-year-old Philipp, who initially attends the Jewish horticultural school in Ahlem, also moves in with his parents in the Bötzowviertel after the school closes. For three years they live under the greatest privations and constant fear of deportation. On February 3, 1943, Fanny, her husband Carl and son Philipp are deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Daughter Esther is deported to Auschwitz two months later shortly after her wedding. Only her sister Auguste is able to escape in 1940; she dies in Israel in 2011.

Since 2017, according to research by Traute Hildebrandt, six Stolpersteine commemorate the Hartogsohn family at their last freely chosen place of residence, in front of Lilienstraße 3 in Emden. And since 2019, their names can also be found on the silent doorbell plaque at the house Käthe-Niederkirchner-Str. 35.

Simon Lütgemeyer / M. Steinbach, Nov. 2021

Source: Documentation „Käthe 35“ (www.kaethe35.de)