Dr. Hans-Heinrich Meyer

Location 
Bornepfad 4 -6
Historical name
Bornepfad 4 - 6
District
Hermsdorf
Stone was laid
12 September 2008
Born
22 March 1897 in Berlin
Occupation
Chemiker
Forced Labour
Arbeiter (Fa. Scherb und Schwer, Berlin Weißensee)
Deportation
on 01 March 1943 to Auschwitz
Murdered
1945 in Auschwitz
Dr. Hans-Heinrich Meyer was born in Berlin on 22 March 1897, the son of Dr Heinrich Meyer, a municipal councillor, and his wife Gertrud, née Lessing. He was probably born at Keith Strasse 10, Berlin W 62.

He took his Abitur school-leaving exams early, in 1916, to be able to join the army and serve in the First World War. Soon afterwards he fell ill and started to study chemistry while still a soldier. After the war, he continued his studies at the Kaiser Wilhelm University in Berlin. He graduated with a doctorate in 1929.

Dr. Hans-Heinrich Meyer had a Jewish background but was a baptised Protestant, like his sister Gabriele.

In 1932 he married Dr Jolan Hagedorn, a Hungarian medical doctor who was a baptised Catholic. They lived together at Bornepfad 4-6. In 1935 Dr Meyer’s wife moved back to Budapest and in 1939 they were divorced.

In 1940 Dr Hans-Heinrich Meyer was assigned to the company Scherb und Schwer, Lehder Strasse 34/35 in Berlin-Weissensee as a forced labourer. On 26 February 1943 he was arrested during the Nazi regime’s “factory campaign”, a concerted action to swiftly arrest and deport all Jewish forced labourers that very few were able to evade.

On 1 March 1942, Dr Hans-Heinrich Meyer was deported to Auschwitz, aged 46, on the “31st transport to the East” (Blatt 22, Nr. 386) along with 1735 others. Out of all of these people, only 142 men were selected for work. The others were immediately murdered.

It is not known whether Dr Hans-Heinrich Meyer was one of those selected to work. There is no mention of him in the Auschwitz archive. He was legally declared dead on 14 March 1953; his date of death was given as 31 December 1945.

Arthur Bukofzer and his family lived in the same house as Dr Hans-Heinrich Meyer. The Bukofzer family survived because Arthur’s wife was “Aryan”. In 2008 their daughter Ellen, who had known Dr Meyer as a neighbour for 2½ years, said: “Dr Meyer was a very decent, kind, cultured person and we children loved him very much.”