Frieda and Herta Alexander

Frieda Alexander and her daughter lived with the Camnitzer family on the third floor of Breite Straße but only for a short time.

On 13 May 1939 both women came from Hamburg and registered in Lübeck. Earlier traces of information about them cannot be found. Therefore only the following can be said:

According to Lübeck registration files Frieda Alexander, née Segal, was born on 26 March 1880, in Linsk in the Scheiwitz district in Pomerania. Other sources say Minsk, Republic of Belarus, however since Frieda Alexander was a German citizen that is unlikely.

Her daughter Herta was born on 13 March 1916 at Landeck, the Schlochau district therefore not far from Linsk.

So far there hasn’t been any information discovered about Frieda’s husband and accordingly Herta’s father.

Details in their registration files about job experience read "cook" for Frieda Alexander and "presser of clothing" for her daughter. So we can assume that both women worked as domestics for the Camnitzer family until they were deported.

The daughter may have also worked as a presser at the clothing shop "Gebrüder Hirschfeld" (German for “Hirschfeld Brothers”), perhaps working at their business in Hamburg before moving to Lübeck. The company "Gebrüder Hirschfeld" had stores in Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen as well as Leipzig and Hanover.

On 6 December 1941 Frieda and Herta Alexander were deported to Riga, Latvia, together with the Camnitzer couple and their daughter Elsa and many other Jewish people from Lübeck. We don’t know, whether they already lost their lives at Camp Jungfernhof/Riga in the first winter months, or whether they were among the many victims of the mass shootings in Bikernieki Forest in February and March 1942 or if they lost their lives after long painful months and years of forced labour in the Riga ghetto or at the Kaiserwald Concentration Camp or the Stutthof Concentration Camp.

At the time of deportation Frieda Alexander was 61 years, and Herta Alexander was just 25 years old.

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
• Buch der Erinnerung, Die ins Baltikum deportierten deutschen, österreichischen und tschechoslowakischen Juden, bearbeitet von Wolfgang Scheffler und Diana Schulle, München 2003
• Datenpool JSHD der Forschungsstelle “Juden in Schleswig-Holstein” an der Universität Flensburg
• 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
• Conversations with contemporaries of the Alexander family

Heidemarie Kugler-Weiemann, 2009

Translated by:  Martin Harnisch and Glenn Sellick, 2010