Betty Gortatowski née Wrzeszinski

Dr. Georg Gortakowksi, born on 25 January 1876 in Insterburg, East Prussia (now Chernyakhovsk, Russia) had lived at Kant Strasse 33 since 1914. He was a dentist with his own surgery based in his 5-room apartment on the second floor. By the standards of the day, it was a spacious and luxuriously fitted apartment. He noted in his ‘statement of assets’ that it had a balcony, an elevator and hot running water and a bathroom and a maid’s room adjoining the hall.
He was married to Betty Gortakowski, who had been born Betty Wrzeszinski on 30 November 1879 in Mogilno in the Province of Posen. They had a son, Herbert Ludwig, who had probably managed to escape Germany before 1939. He is noted as having ‘emigrated to New York’ in Gortakowski’s ‘statement of assets’. When the Nazis banned Jewish doctors and dentists from practising, Gortakowski re-termed himself a ‘tooth therapist’ and treated only Jewish patients. Later, the realization of the couple’s home furnishings yielded a relatively low sum, no doubt on account of the Nazis’ measures to plunder Jewish property, which had forced them to hand in valuables and pay various special fees.
The above-mentioned ‘statement of assets’ explicitly notes that the living room was rented out – at least in later months – and the furnishings and fittings were valued at only 293.72 Reichmarks after the couple’s deportation.
Dr. Georg Gortakowski and his wife Betty were deported from the assembly camp in Grosse Hamburger Strasse to Theresienstadt ghetto on 3 October 1942, together with more than 1000 others. Georg Gortakowski was murdered in Theresienstadt on 11 February 1943, his wife on 9 November 1943.