Stadthaus Remembrance Site

The persecution

of tens of thousands of men and women in northern Germany was organised in the Stadthaus, as the headquarters of National Socialist terror, from 1933 to 1943. The Gestapo and Kripo also conducted interrogations in the Stadthaus, often accompanied by abuse and torture.

The women and men presented here were persecuted by the police for very different reasons. Several had been active in the Hamburg resistance against National Socialism or were persecuted as Jews, Sinti, Romnja and Roma and thus targeted for systematic murder. Others were arrested by the police as homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses or alleged "professional criminals". Clicking on a picture opens a short biography.

Regine Böhmer

was eight years old when the Sintezza was picked up by the police from her flat in Hamburg-Hammerbrook. Together with her parents and siblings she was deported to the Belzec labour camp in occupied Poland via the Hannoverschdr Bahnhof railway station on 20 May 1940. Some of the family members managed to escape, but they were arrested again and deported to concentration camps. The father and three brothers did not survive the concentration camp imprisonment. Regine Böhmer was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp and experienced the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945.

Gertrud Rast

, née Graeser, fled to France in 1933 as a member of the German Communist Party KPD. There she was arrested in 1939 after the beginning of the Second World War at the age of 42, interned and finally extradited to the Gestapo in 1943. After several months of imprisonment, including in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison, she was transferred to the Wilhelmsburg Arbeitserziehungslager (Langer Morgen) in December 1944. After 1945 she was a leading functionary of the KPD and later of the floow-up party DKP in Schleswig-Holstein.

Jenta Honig

née Salik, was born in Poland in 1892. She lived with her husband, the merchant Osias Leib Honig, and their four children in Vienna and later on from 1935 onwards in Altona. The Jewish family made efforts to emigrate to Palestine, especially after the pogrom of November 1938. Three sons succeeded in escaping from Germany, but Jenta Honig, her husband and their son Willi were refused permission to leave the country. On 8 November 1941, they were deported from Hannoverscher Bahnhof railway station to the Minsk ghetto. All three died there.

Richard and Käthe Tennigkeit

, née Schlichting, were members of the German Communist Party KPD. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the couple became active in illegal resistance work; they hid persecuted resistance fighters in their house, in a garden house settlement in Hamburg-Farmsen-Berne. In February 1944, they were arrested by the Gestapo. In April 1944, Käthe Tennigkeit died in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. The Gestapo claimed that she had committed suicide. Richard Tennigkeit died in Neuengamme concentration camp in December 1944.

Dorothea and Erich Golly

were both members of the Jehovah's Witnesses denomination, even after it was banned in July 1933. For the couple, this resulted in years of imprisonment in penal institutions and concentration camps: Erich Golly died in the Dachau concentration camp in February 1945 after more than eight years in prison. Dorothea Golly was also sent to a concentration camp after serving her sentence. She was freed at the end of the war in Ravensbrück concentration camp, seriously ill and blind.

Helmuth Hübener

was a member of the Mormons and an apprentice administrator in the social administration. He began listening secretly to the British radio BBC when he was 16 years old. He spread what he learned in the form of self-written scatter notes and leaflets in the Hamburg districts of Hamm, Hammerbrook and Rothenburgsort. Three friends helped him. Following a denunciation by a work colleague, the Gestapo arrested the youths in February 1942. On 11 August 1942, the People's Court in Berlin sentenced Helmuth Hübener to death, his friends received prison sentences.

Alfred Kästel

ran a flower shop in Altona. In 1942, the Hamburg Regional Court sentenced the gardener to two years in prison for homosexual acts. Since he had previous convictions, the court suggested his following "preventive detention". After serving his sentence, the Hamburg criminal police arranged for Alfred Kästel to be transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp in July 1944. He died there on 5 November 1944 at the age of 65.

Arnold Hencke

grew up in a working-class family in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel. He was a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) and the SPD. Even under conditions of illegality, he continued his political work. The Gestapo succeeded in arresting Arnold Hencke and other members of the SAJ Eimsbüttel in January 1935. This was followed by ill-treatment and imprisonment in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp and the Hahnöfersand youth prison. On 30 July 1937, 21-year-old Arnold Hencke was released from prison. He suffered from the consequences of his imprisonment for the rest of his life.

Ernst Kröger

from Neumünster was imprisoned several times as a youth for theft and forgery of documents. In 1933 the trained moulder was sentenced to eight months in prison. After his release, he committed several burglaries and was sentenced to seven years in prison. In May 1943, he was sent to Neuengamme concentration camp as a preventive detainee, where he died a few weeks later on 19 June 1943 at the age of 29.