Helene Golomb née Mayer

Helene Mayer, was born on 09.10.1904 in Berlin, Barbararossa St. 32. She was the only daughter of Selma Mayer, née Giesenow, and Hugo Mayer.

Helene Mayer lived with her parents Hugo and Selma Mayer in Barbarossa Str. until she emigrated to Palestina in 1936 without her parents.

Helene Golomb née Mayer grew up in Berlin during the Wilhelmine period. At the end of the 1st World War she was 14 years old. In the 20s she got her car driver's license in Berlin, something that was certainly not a matter of course for women at that time. If you talked to her about the Berlin of the 20s, she mentioned the theater performances she liked to attend. But she was also interested in Zionism. In 1936 she left Germany via Italy without her parents and reached the then British Mandate of Palestine (today Israel) on a tourist visa.

Her Father Hugo Mayer was a merchant and owned a metal goods factory and stamping shop since 1906, initially at Oranienstraße 34, and since the 1920s at Köpenickerstraße 114 in Berlin-Luisenstadt (today Kreuzberg). The "Metallwarenfabrik und Stanzerei Hugo Mayer" produced pressed, drawn, stamped articles using "electroplating, soldering eyelet tinning, and increasingly construction componentsand accessory parts for the emerging radio and broadcasting industry. It was a widely known specialty company that also exported to European countries.
Her mother, Selma Mayer was instrumental in the factory management. She handled commercial matters on her own responsibility and had power of attorney. Her duties included bookkeeping, payroll, canvassing customers and taking orders. She also negotiated with banks.

From 1933 onwards, Selma and Hugo Mayer were increasingly exposed to harassment as Jews, as was their company, due to its Jewish ownership. Hugo Mayer was therefore forced to sell the factory on July 28, 1936. Payment of the purchase price was immediately blocked by the Berlin-Schöneberg tax office.

After immigrating to Palestina in 1936, she settled down in Tel-Aviv, where she met in 1937 Mordechai Max Golomb, born in Lodz on 13.3.1897, but moved with his parents and family to Wuerzburg as a small child and was raised there. Max Golomb was a merchant in the steel industry and worked with companies in Germany, France, South Africa and Holland, until he decided 1934 to immigrate to Palestina and became member of the Darom Yehuda bus cooperative, which merged 1950 with Egged.
Helene Mayer married Max Golomb in Tel Aviv on 29.4.1937. They lived in an apartment in Motzkin Blvd. Their son Gabriel Menahem Golomb was born in Tel Aviv on 18.09.1946.