Annotations
Bremen
11/17/1941
People with luggage enter the assembly point in the building that is now the School am Barkhof. Carl Katz and Berthold Simonsohn can be seen on the landing. The shot may well have been taken without anyone noticing. The picture was most probably taken from the perspective of the persecutees.
Image: Collection Inge Berger
Annotations
People
2
Keywords
1
Historical context
Deportation von Bremen nach Minsk am 18.11.1941
On November 17, 1941, 440 Jews from Bremen and 130 Jewish persecutees from the administrative district of Stade had to present themselves at the assembly points established in Bremen: schools formerly known as Lettow-Vorbeck School and Carl-Peters School. The deportation list had been compiled by Wilhelm Parchmann, Kriminalobersekretär (administrative official at the criminal investigations police) and head of the “Judendezernat” (department responsible for Jews) at the Bremen Gestapo office. In the early hours of November 18, 1941, the police took the people to the Lloyd station, where the transport train “DA 56”, which consisted of Czech passenger cars, departed at 8:40 a.m. At about 11:30 a.m., the transport arrived at the Hanover train station in Hamburg, where additional cars with about 400 people were attached to the train. After a journey that lasted several days and took the deportees via Warsaw, the train reached the Minsk freight station on November 22, 1941. Only six Jews from Bremen survived the Shoah; all the others were murdered in the Minsk ghetto or in the Sobibor and Maly Trostinez camps.
About the image series
The series consists of three black-and-white pictures, each of which shows a group of people. They are available as digital scans; the backs of the photos are not included. It can be assumed that the pictures were taken on November 17, 1941, probably from two different perspectives in the schoolyard of the School am Barkhof (formerly Carl-Peters School) in Bremen. Despite photo matching and site visits, the exact positions from which the photographer took the photos cannot be determined. The pictures show the persecutees while arriving at the assembly point and while in there. The deportation luggage can be seen in one picture. It is very likely that the pictures were taken without the knowledge of the perpetrators involved and thus document the deportation from the perspective of the persecuted people themselves.
Photographer
Unknown,
Provenance
The pictures are in the possession of Inge Berger, née Katz, born on June 24, 1924. She received the pictures from her father, Carl Katz, an employee of the “Reichsvereinigung der Juden” (Reich Association of Jews) and, after liberation, the longstanding chairman of Bremen’s Jewish community. It is not known how Carl Katz came to be in possession of the pictures. Inge Berger was able to identify some individuals on the photos. Her family has been kind enough to make the pictures available for the #LastSeen project.
The Katz family was not sent on the deportation to Minsk. Inge Katz was a helper of the Jewish Community in the School am Barkhof. On July 24, 1942, she and her parents were deported to Theresienstadt. After liberation, she married Auschwitz survivor Shmuel Berger and emigrated with him to the USA.
Call number at source archive
ohne Signatur
Title at source archive
ohne Titel
Acknowledgements
Our first thanks go to the Berger/ Bahar family, who was generous enough to provide #LastSeen with the pictures. Special thanks are also due to Dr. Kristina Vagt, who told us of the existence of the deportation pictures. Sincere thanks are likewise extended to Peter Christoffersens for helpfully sharing information.
Text and research by Alina Bothe.
Kooperationsverbund #LastSeen. Bilder der NS-Deportationen Dr. Alina Bothe Projektleiterin
c/o Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg
Freie Universität Berlin
Habelschwerdter Allee 34A
14195 Berlin
lastseen@zedat.fu-berlin.de
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