Fünfhausen 5 - The Daicz family

Albert Daicz, born on 20 December 1894 in Breziny / Lodz, was a tailor. His wife Chana (Anna) Daicz, née Finkelberg, also came from the same place in Galicia. She was born on 17 October 1893.

In 1920 the couple came to Lübeck with their elder daughters Gisela (born 20 February 1917) and Esther (born 15 April 1919). Both their sons were born in Lübeck: Max Isaak on 30 May1921 and Julius on 18 January 1923. Because of their mental handicaps both boys were placed in residence at Heim Vorwerk (a mental home in Lübeck) in 1931.

After primary school at Burgschule (Fortress School) Rosi attended  Geibel-Mädchen-Mittelschule (Geibel Girls’ High School) starting in March of 1938. One of her then school-friends in Frau Leonhard’s class remembers her as friendly and always happy. Rosi had had beautiful blonde curls, a slim and pointed face, and she wore glasses. After 9 November 1938 she had to leave the school, so they had been in the same class for only very few months.  According to the decree of 15 November 1938 Jewish children and youth were no longer allowed to attend "German schools”. On 13 December 1938 Geibel-Mittelschule informed the school administration that Rosi Daicz had left class 6b.

In early 1939 Albert Daicz was able to emigrate with other men from Lübeck to Shanghai and so survived but it was done under difficult and sad conditions. He wanted to have his family to join him, however it did not happen in spite of all his endeavours.

In the letters of Bertha and Dora Lexandrowitz to their relatives in Shanghai we can read something about Frau Daicz and her children. In November 1939 Rosi writes greetings to others at the end of their letter:

"My dear ones! As I just happen to be here, I want to send my regards. I’m fine, and I hope to hear the same from you.   Give my regards to Papa, when you see him. Lots of love, Rosi." ( p. 69)

From the letters it follows that Frau Daicz’s mother Malka Finkelberg had to stay in hospital for a long time and finally had to be nursed by the family at home for several months until her death in February 1940.

On 19 February 1941 Bertha Lexandrowitz writes to Shanghai:

"On Sunday I went by myself to the cemetery in Moisling. (Gisela Daicz wanted to accompany me, but she couldn’t, as only the Friday before they had received the news about the death of both her brothers and naturally were shattered.) Due to the thaw the water there was ½ m deep and in spite of Rosi Daicz’s rubber boots I couldn’t walk up close to the graves…. My heart was completely broken. " (p.121)

Together with 13 other children and youth both boys, Max and Julius, had been transferred from Heim Vorwerk to Hamburg-Langenhorn on 16 September 1940. Only a few days later, on 23 September 1940, they were transported from there to Brandenburg and murdered the very same day. Between February and December 1940 a total of 8,989 people were murdered in a gas chamber at the so-called euthanasia facility in Brandenburg.

The family was informed of their deaths but obviously only belatedly.

At that time Frau Daicz and her daughters had already been evicted from their apartment at Fünfhausen 5 and had found shelter at St.-Annen-Straße 11.

After her exclusion from Mädchen-Mittelschule in Lübeck Rosi went to school in Hamburg and travelled back and forth every day. The high cost of the train journey was covered by the Jewish organisations, but was supposed to be cut off as of August 1941. Therefore Frau Daicz wrote a letter to the headmaster (principal) of the school, Direktor Spier, on 20 August 1941:

                                                                  Lübeck, 20th Sept.41

Sehr geehrter Herr Direktor Jonas,                                            

Most Honourable Headmaster Jonas,                                               

When my daughter Rosi arrived here on Thursday afternoon to say good-bye and travel back in the evening, it appeared as if she was suffering from some minor ailment.  As she was also running a slight temperature, I preferred to have her stay here for a few days. As of today, Sunday, Rosi’s health has rather become worse than better. Namely she has to stay in bed because of a sore throat connected with intermittent fits of dizziness. May I therefore ask you to excuse her absence from school?

At the same time I want to tell you the following. A complete separation from my daughter would be totally impossible for me. My husband is in Shanghai, and only recently I’ve lost two of my children through a tragic fate, and two will leave my home in a few weeks to marry out of town, so Rosi is the last one to stay with me. Even though she is going to live with my sister there, it is sooner a mercy than consolation for me for reasons I don’t want to specify here. We have now come to the decision that Rosi will leave school immediately. Now I hope that you don’t obstruct my wishes. Rosi is to be trained with me here at home in housekeeping, or should that not be possible she is to take up any other potential job. Or shouldn’t it be possible to let Rosi travel back and forth every day? I hope to find your understanding for my wish and am

Yours faithfully

Frau Daicz

The school’s principal Dr. Alberto Israel Jonas replied on 26 September 1941:

“Dear Frau Daicz!   I herewith acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 20th of this month. As Rosi has fulfilled the compulsory education requirements, there are no objections if you remove her from our school. It is only a pity that Rosi is to be torn away from her academic development in this way. I shall try to obtain permission so that Rosi can live here and may nonetheless travel home on her holidays. I will let you know as soon as I have had any news.”

(Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 362-6/10 Talmud Tora)

From the documents available it cannot be determined if Rosi continued going to school.

Only few days after the wedding, on 8 November 1941, Esther and her husband were deported from Hamburg to Minsk, Belarus, and they never returned.  

A month later, on 6 December 1941, the so-called „evacuation to the East” came for Anna Daicz and her daughters Gisela and Rosi, for their deportation to Riga, where they were murdered at some undetermined time. It is not known whether they were already killed at Camp Jungfernhof in their first months there, if they were among the many victims of the shootings at Bikernieki Forest in February and March of 1942 or if they were still imprisoned in the Riga ghetto or one of the concentration camps and were forced to perform hard labour until they died.  

Albert Daicz struggled through as a tailor, doing mainly repairs and mending, in the ghetto of Shanghai. In the refugees’ register of Hong Kong we find his address: 302/5 Zang Yang Lu. In 1947 he married a second time. His attempt to make himself at home in Israel failed. In 1953 he went to New York and died there on 13 March 1963 after ten years of desperately struggling to survive.

References in Addition to Standard Reference Materials:

• Adressbücher und Meldekartei der Hansestadt Luebeck (Address and Registration Records of the Hanseatic City of Luebeck)
• Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck,
• Staatliche Polizeiverwaltung 109, 110, 121, 126
• Schul- und Kultusverwaltung 375
• Amt für Schulwesen 879
• 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
• Kugler-Weiemann, Heidemarie / Peperkorn, Hella (Hrsg.): "Hoffentlich klappt alles zum Guten ", Die Briefe der jüdischen Schwestern Bertha und Dora Lexandrowitz (1939 - 1941), Neumünster 2000
• Landesarchiv Schleswig, Abt. 352 Kiel, 9043, 8059 und Abt. 761, 17959,8146, 8147, 8148
• Albrecht Schreiber, Zwischen Davidstern und Doppeladler, Illustrierte Chronik der Juden in Moisling und Lübeck, Lübeck 1992
• Staatsarchiv Hamburg  362-6/10 Talmud Tora
• Yad Vashem, The Central Database of Shoah Victims Names
• Ursula Randt, Die Talmud Tora Schule in Hamburg 1805 bis 1942, Hamburg 2005
• Conversations with contemporaries of the Daicz family

Heidemarie Kugler-Weiemann, 2008

Translation:  Martin Harnisch and Glenn Sellick, 2010

For the brothers Max Isaak and Julius two Stolpersteins were laid 8 Mai 2012 in front of the entrance of the former Heim Vorwerk, later renamed as Vorwerker Diakonie:
Triftstraße 139-143