James Lissauer

: Altengammer Straße today, Photo: 2009, Heidemarie Kugler-Weiemann

From 1934 to 1938 James Lissauer, together with his wife Dora, lived in the attic flat at Altengammer Straße 13. The owner of the building lived on the first floor while the ground floor was rented out to another family.

: A portion from the 1848 announcement “concerning the family names adopted by the Israelite residents in the State of Lübeck".

James Lissauer was born on the 8th of February 1885 in Hamburg. His father Ephraim Joseph Lissauer was a trader. The extended Lissauer family had been resident in Lübeck since 1848 and even earlier than that in Moisling.

According to the Lübeck directories of 1908 and 1909 there were four families living in the parental home of James Lissauer at Schildstraße 5: downstairs there was Ephraim Joseph Lissauer, trader, and Hermann Lissauer, junk dealer and “agent”, on the first floor the livestock dealer Simon Emmering, who came from Holland, and on the second floor another family, who was presumably non-Jewish.

Until 1926 James Lissauer lived at Schildstraße 5 with his parents and relatives, including among others the Emmering family. It was obviously only then that the then 41-year-old journeyman butcher established his own home. His wife Dora Christine Elisa, née Wisser, was twelve years younger than he. She was a Protestant, and was born in Lübeck on the 15th of December 1897. They moved within the district of St.Lorenz from Hansering 17 to Sumpfkrug 8 then to Brüderstraße 5 before they moved to Stockelsdorf just to the west of Lübeck in 1930, then back to Ritterstraße 24 in June 1931 and finally to Altengammer Straße 13 on the 7th of May 1934.

The couple had no children.

: 1935 Leaflet, inserted into the newspapers calling on people to boycott Jewish places of business

: Cattle market in Lübeck, 1935

James Lissauer’s job titles changed from journeyman butcher to haulier of cattle to simply transport worker. Presumably he first worked at the Lübeck Slaughterhouse but with the Jews working there experiencing increasing difficulties he left and tried to earn a living in other ways.

The last entries on his registration card are stamped with "Erk. dienstlich behandelt" (German for „fingerprinted and photographed) and "20thDec. 38 / 4th February 39 n. Holland von Amts wegen" (German for „In Holland as ordered by the government”). From this we can conclude that James Lissauer was among the many Jewish men, who were arrested during the night of the pogrom on the 9th and 10th of November 1938. Like all the other men from Lübeck, who had been arrested, he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin. Through his family connections with the Emmering family, who had already emigrated to Holland, he was able to obtain his release and flee to Holland in December 1938, where his wife was able to follow him in early February 1939.

But the safety from the Nazis his exile in Holland provided him died shortly after he arrived. After Holland’s occupation by the Germans in May 1940 James Lissauer was imprisoned in Camp Westerbork, Holland.

On the 18th of January 1944 he was deported to Theresienstadt, (now Terezin, Czech Republic) and from there on the 16th of May 1944 to Auschwitz. James Lissauer was murdered on the 7th of July 1944, at the age of 59. The fate of his wife is unknown.

A lot of James Lissauer’s relatives also became victims of Shoah. Here we want to name those of his relatives who had also lived at Schildstraße 5: Irma Rosenstein, née Lissauer, born 1896, her husband Otto Rosenstein and her daughter Leah Lieselotte, born 1929, died in Litzmannstadt, (now Lodz, Poland). Their son Hermann Rosenstein, born 1922, fled from Lübeck to Amsterdam, was first deported to Auschwitz and then to a sub camp of the Dachau concentration camp, where he lost his life.

Betty Emmering, née Lissauer, born1881, like James Lissauer was deported from Holland to Theresienstadt, (now Terezin, Czech Republic) and then on to Auschwitz and was murdered there.

Their sons Ferdinand, born 1905, and Aron, born 1906, as well as his wife Franziska, née Blumenthal, and their little daughter Ingrid, born 1931 in Lübeck, were all murdered at the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland.

References in Addition to Standard Reference Materials:

Adressbücher und Meldekartei der Hansestadt Lübeck (Address and Registration Records of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck)
Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck, Staatliche Polizeiverwaltung 109, 110
Datenpool JSHD der Forschungsstelle “Juden in Schleswig-Holstein” an der Universität Flensburg
Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands: www.joodsmonument.nl
Goldberg, Bettina/ Paul, Gerhard: Matrosenanzug - Davidstern. Bilder jüdischen Lebens aus der Provinz, Neumünster 2002
Klatt, Ingaburgh: “...dahin wie ein Schatten”, Aspekte jüdischen Lebens in Lübeck, Lübeck 1993
Memorbuch zum Gedenken an die jüdischen, in der Schoa umgekommenen Schleswig-Holsteiner und Schleswig-Holsteinerinnen, hrsg. V. Miriam Gillis-Carlebach, Hamburg 1996
Albrecht Schreiber, Zwischen Davidstern und Doppeladler, Illustrierte Chronik der Juden in Moisling und Lübeck, Lübeck 1992
Yad Vashem, The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names
Zeitzeugengespräche (Conversations with contemporaries of James Lissauer)

Heidemarie Kugler-Weiemann, 2009

Translators: Martin Harnisch and Glenn Sellick

James Lissauer

References in Addition to Standard Reference Materials:

Installation at the location