Location
Linienstraße 118
District
Mitte
Stone was laid
25 March 2015
Born
03 March 1889 in Rederitz (Westpreußen) / Nadarzyce
Occupation
Schneider
Deportation
on 27 November 1941
to
Riga
Murdered
30 November 1943 in Riga - Rumbula
-
David Hirsch © OTFW
David Hirsch was born on 3 March 1889 to the merchant Adolf Hirsch and his wife Henriette in Rederitz, Deutsch Krone, in the province of West Prussia. His siblings were Rosalie, born in 1884, and Sally, born in 1886. Until age 14, David attended the Jewish municipal school in Deutsch Krone. He then became a tailor’s apprentice in Schlochau and worked there as a journeyman.
David fought as a soldier for Germany in WWI and was awarded two medals. In 1919, he resumed his work as a tailor, this time at Spanheimstraße 12 in Berlin-Wedding. He married Dora Klein in April 1924 and moved with her to Linienstraße 130, where he started his own business as a ‘tailor for men and women’.
Dora (Dorothea) Hirsch, née Klein, was born on 13 May 1894 in Altenwalde, Kreis Neustettin, Pomerania. She was the youngest daughter of Salomon and Dora Klein and had two older sisters, Johanna (b. 1883) and Fanny (b. 1885). After Dora’s birth, her father, an innkeeper, married a second time. With his second wife Eva Klein, née Meyer, he had four more children: Dora’s half-siblings Clara, Max, Georg, and Leopold.
After finishing school, 13-year-old Dora Klein began an apprenticeship as a domestic worker at the Pankow orphanage at Berliner Straße 120. At age 16, she took a job as a domestic aid in the household of the Silberstein family at Schönhauser Allee 144. Eugen Silberstein praised her cooking and baking skills and ‘her honesty, reliability, and loyalty’. After working for the Silberstein household for 14 years, she married David Hirsch at age 30 in 1924, and moved with him to Linienstraße 130. Her son Heinz was born on 8 June 1926.
In 1935, the family moved from Linienstraße 130 to Linienstraße 118, where they lived on the second storey of the front building. It is possible that the move was related to the discrimination and exclusion of Jews that began in 1933; the contract for their flat or shop at Linienstraße 130 may have been terminated.
David Hirsch continued to work as a self-employed tailor at Linienstraße 118. Heinz Hirsch attended the Jewish middle school (now Jewish high school [Gymnasium]) at Große Hamburger Straße 27. A law passed in November 1938 forced David Hirsch to shutter his tailoring business at the end of 1938. As a result, he had no income after January 1939.
In the spring of 1939, with the help of the Jewish relief organisation in Germany, the family made a futile attempt to emigrate to Shanghai, which at that time was the last place that would accept Jewish immigrants without a visa. The application required them to fill out forms and hand over photos, CVs, diplomas, and medical certificates. These documents survived, and we located them in an archive in Jerusalem. The application was unsuccessful.
Around 1939, Dora's sisters Fanny and Johanna also lived on Linienstraße, at number 141. Their step-brothers Max, Leopold, and Georg were also in Berlin at that time.
In November 1941, the family received a notice of ‘emigration to the East’, in which they were informed that their flat ‘was to be vacated’. They were forced to provide lists of their full inventory of furniture and clothes. On 25 November, the family had to report to the collection centre set up by the Gestapo in the synagogue at Levetzowstraße, in the district of Berlin-Moabit. After their money, jewellery, and documents had been taken away, they were instructed to carry their remaining luggage past a barrier and present their identification card. At this point, they learned for the first time that the transport would go to Riga. They were forced to remain in the collection centre for two days, sleeping on thin paper mattresses on the floor.
Two days later, on 27 November, the deportees were made to walk for more than two hours, from Levetzowstrasse through the western part of Berlin to Grunewald station, ‘in a long line through the city’, as Hildegard Henschel, wife of Berlin’s last municipal chairman, later wrote. Children, the elderly, and the ill were driven there on trucks by the Gestapo and the SS. The older, third-class passenger cars then used for transports were jammed full.
The original plan was to take the 1053 people from this 7th transport from Berlin to the Riga ghetto. However, because the ghetto was already extremely overcrowded, all Latvian ghetto inhabitants were to be killed by SS and Latvian police in mass shootings in a forest near the Rumbula railway station. On 30 November, the transport carrying the Hirsch family arrived from Berlin.
The train from Berlin was directed to the railway siding at the Rumbula station. In the early morning, the people were herded out of the railway cars. Exhausted, they gradually discarded the hand luggage that they had been carrying. When they reached the forest, people were forced to disrobe and approach the pits. There, all of the people from the transport were shot.
David Hirsch was 52 years old, Dora Hirsch was 47, and Heinz Hirsch 15.
Dora and David had eight siblings in total. Of these, only two of Dora’s brothers, Georg and Leopold, survived National Socialist persecution and emigrated to Australia.
David fought as a soldier for Germany in WWI and was awarded two medals. In 1919, he resumed his work as a tailor, this time at Spanheimstraße 12 in Berlin-Wedding. He married Dora Klein in April 1924 and moved with her to Linienstraße 130, where he started his own business as a ‘tailor for men and women’.
Dora (Dorothea) Hirsch, née Klein, was born on 13 May 1894 in Altenwalde, Kreis Neustettin, Pomerania. She was the youngest daughter of Salomon and Dora Klein and had two older sisters, Johanna (b. 1883) and Fanny (b. 1885). After Dora’s birth, her father, an innkeeper, married a second time. With his second wife Eva Klein, née Meyer, he had four more children: Dora’s half-siblings Clara, Max, Georg, and Leopold.
After finishing school, 13-year-old Dora Klein began an apprenticeship as a domestic worker at the Pankow orphanage at Berliner Straße 120. At age 16, she took a job as a domestic aid in the household of the Silberstein family at Schönhauser Allee 144. Eugen Silberstein praised her cooking and baking skills and ‘her honesty, reliability, and loyalty’. After working for the Silberstein household for 14 years, she married David Hirsch at age 30 in 1924, and moved with him to Linienstraße 130. Her son Heinz was born on 8 June 1926.
In 1935, the family moved from Linienstraße 130 to Linienstraße 118, where they lived on the second storey of the front building. It is possible that the move was related to the discrimination and exclusion of Jews that began in 1933; the contract for their flat or shop at Linienstraße 130 may have been terminated.
David Hirsch continued to work as a self-employed tailor at Linienstraße 118. Heinz Hirsch attended the Jewish middle school (now Jewish high school [Gymnasium]) at Große Hamburger Straße 27. A law passed in November 1938 forced David Hirsch to shutter his tailoring business at the end of 1938. As a result, he had no income after January 1939.
In the spring of 1939, with the help of the Jewish relief organisation in Germany, the family made a futile attempt to emigrate to Shanghai, which at that time was the last place that would accept Jewish immigrants without a visa. The application required them to fill out forms and hand over photos, CVs, diplomas, and medical certificates. These documents survived, and we located them in an archive in Jerusalem. The application was unsuccessful.
Around 1939, Dora's sisters Fanny and Johanna also lived on Linienstraße, at number 141. Their step-brothers Max, Leopold, and Georg were also in Berlin at that time.
In November 1941, the family received a notice of ‘emigration to the East’, in which they were informed that their flat ‘was to be vacated’. They were forced to provide lists of their full inventory of furniture and clothes. On 25 November, the family had to report to the collection centre set up by the Gestapo in the synagogue at Levetzowstraße, in the district of Berlin-Moabit. After their money, jewellery, and documents had been taken away, they were instructed to carry their remaining luggage past a barrier and present their identification card. At this point, they learned for the first time that the transport would go to Riga. They were forced to remain in the collection centre for two days, sleeping on thin paper mattresses on the floor.
Two days later, on 27 November, the deportees were made to walk for more than two hours, from Levetzowstrasse through the western part of Berlin to Grunewald station, ‘in a long line through the city’, as Hildegard Henschel, wife of Berlin’s last municipal chairman, later wrote. Children, the elderly, and the ill were driven there on trucks by the Gestapo and the SS. The older, third-class passenger cars then used for transports were jammed full.
The original plan was to take the 1053 people from this 7th transport from Berlin to the Riga ghetto. However, because the ghetto was already extremely overcrowded, all Latvian ghetto inhabitants were to be killed by SS and Latvian police in mass shootings in a forest near the Rumbula railway station. On 30 November, the transport carrying the Hirsch family arrived from Berlin.
The train from Berlin was directed to the railway siding at the Rumbula station. In the early morning, the people were herded out of the railway cars. Exhausted, they gradually discarded the hand luggage that they had been carrying. When they reached the forest, people were forced to disrobe and approach the pits. There, all of the people from the transport were shot.
David Hirsch was 52 years old, Dora Hirsch was 47, and Heinz Hirsch 15.
Dora and David had eight siblings in total. Of these, only two of Dora’s brothers, Georg and Leopold, survived National Socialist persecution and emigrated to Australia.