Hans Harpuder

Hans Harpuder was born 26 November 1901 in Berlin, Germany to Josef Harpuder and Gertrud Harpuder (geb. Hannes). They resided in an area not far from the present-day Kanzleramt. The oldest of three boys, Hans’ brothers, Erich (along with his wife Hertha and daughter Marianne) and Alfred both survived the Holocaust, fleeing Germany in the late 1930s for New York. Their father, Josef died before World War II while their mother Gertrude wanted to remain in Berlin; she was subsequently deported to Theresienstadt and murdered in Auschwitz. On 26 December 1931, Hans married Gerda Lewin in the synagogue on Fassanenstraße in Berlin which was subsequently destroyed on Kristallnacht (Reichspogromnacht). Upon the death of his father-in-law Josef Lewin, he took over the family business on Memhardstraße which produced material for packaging and shipping. This business was subsequently damaged on Kristallnacht. In 1934, his only natural-born child, Ralf was born; he had a daughter, Ursula whom he adopted upon marriage to Gerda. In 1937,Hans, along with his son Ralf had his German citizenship revoked as part of the implementation of the Nuremberg laws. Recognizing the situation in Germany was deteriorating and the repression of Jews expanding, Hans applied to depart the country along with his wife, children, and mother-in-law Selma. They departed from the Anhalter Bahnhof station in Berlin in March 1939 for Italy, where they boarded a ship to take them to Shanghai, China, the last open city where they could enter without a visa, having been declared stateless by the Third Reich. Living very much on a day-to-day basis and ultimately selling much of what little they were able to bring with them, Hans attempted to earn a living as a door-to-door salesman. As a result of the squalid living conditions they lived in, Hans died from an infection caused by food infested with parasites. He was buried in Shanghai in 1945. His gravesite was subsequently destroyed during the Communist takeover of China and has been lost to posterity.