Humberghaus

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The Humberghaus

The Humberghaus at Hohen Strasse 1 in Hamminkeln - Dingden is an old residential and commercial building that is now a museum. It is reminiscent of the Jewish Humberg family who ran a butcher's shop and a manufactured goods store here and lived in Dingden until 1941. During the renovation from 2001 by members of the Dingden home association, numerous traces from the life of the family in the house were discovered and prepared for exhibition. Among other things, there is a private mikveh here , which is a rarity. The house, initially only rented, was bought in 2008.

The renovation was completed in 2010. The " Humberghaus Dingden History Site", which shows details of the state around 1940, has been open to the public since 2012. The Humberghaus has been a member of the working group of Nazi memorials and places of remembrance in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2014 .

history

The previous building of the Humberghaus was built around 1700 by Jacob Nienhaus from Rhede (* approx. 1645; † October 3, 1730), whose supposed brother Johann married into the neighboring house, today's St. Josef nursing home. Jacobs granddaughter married Henrich Wilhelm Nienhaus (~ February 20, 1711 - October 15, 1793), who came from the neighboring house. After his son's death in 1797, another family moved into the house. In 1820 the first Jewish resident of Dingden, the small merchant Simon Cohen, moved into the house. 17 years later the house burned down and Simon Cohen started a new building, incorporating the old pavement that pointed to Niehaus. He apparently took on himself financially, so that the not yet completely finished new building was forcibly sold. The new residents were David Plaat and his family, later his brother Philipp with his wife Aleida. When she was widowed, she took in her niece Rosalia Landau, then married Humberg.

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Rosalia Humberg and her son Leopold still lived here. When the house was ransacked by SA men in 1938, Rosalia was no longer alive. The house was confiscated and Leopold was evicted in 1941. After 2000 it came to the home club Dingden. When he came across many Jewish traces here and began his research, the house became a place of remembrance , which was opened in 2012 in the presence of several descendants. The granddaughter Ruth, married Muscovitch, and her daughter Susan came from Canada , as well as the great-grandchildren Marvin and Leonard (Lennart) Terhoch from the family of a brother.

Traces of the past

Traces of the previous building of the Humberghaus can be seen in the preserved stone pavement : the initials "JN" refer to the builder of the house, who was called Jakob Nienhaus.

Because the users of the house changed little after the deportation of the Humberg family, many traces of Jewish life have been preserved in the Humberg house. In the exterior plaster next to the entrance door, the outline of a small oval company sign can be seen, which had already been knocked off by SA people on the day power was handed over. It used to have the inscription “Abraham Humberg. Cattle trade ”.

In addition to the mikveh, there were also traces of a mezuzah on the door frames. A stone kiln , which probably belonged to the first Jewish homeowner, was found under the floorboard .

The existing material legacies of the families fully fulfill Habbo Knoch's purpose of

“ Memorial sites as multi-layered, multifunctional and polyvalent facilities for mourning, commemorating, preserving, collecting, researching and communicating ... that give visitors sensory, ritual, emotional and cognitive access to history, its historical context and open to their present meaning. "

- Bone 2018

Spaces

A kosher butcher's shop has been operating in the Humberghaus since 1840 . It had once belonged to the Plaat family. In 1882 Abraham Humberg took over the business. The butcher's shop was later continued by his sons Leopold and Siegmund until 1938.

It was in a pentagonal corner room on the first floor. For reasons of hygiene, the walls were painted up to a certain height; This green paintwork, including a hanging device from which the animals could bleed, were reconstructed, as were the remains of decorative paintings. Behind this room was a kitchen in which the meat and sausage products were prepared. It was equipped with a hand water pump and a sink so that the meat could be cleaned of blood residues. It probably also contained a cauldron for making sausages. The house was hit by a bomb on March 23, 1945. Traces of this event are broken ceiling beams and cracked paving in the kitchen.

In addition to this professional kitchen, the family's eat-in kitchen was at the back of the house. The original tiled floor has been preserved, as have the ceiling beams blackened by smoke from the stove. The so-called up chamber is connected to the kitchen-dining room, a room that is located above the vaulted cellar of the house and is therefore elevated by three steps. The up-chamber allowed a look into the corridor between the butcher's shop and the manufactory shop. At the time of the Humberg family, it was furnished with a sofa and probably served as the main lounge for the family members.

In the corner room next to the up chamber is the mikveh, which is considered the most valuable testimony of Jewish life in Dingden. It seldom happened that private houses were equipped with mikvehs. In the case of the Humberghaus, the furnishings can be traced back to the butcher's trade of the men in the Humberg family. Ulrich Hermanns suspects that the family set up the private mikvah after the mikvah was no longer available in the Bocholt synagogue. The mikveh was fed by rainwater and had no drainage.

Next to the room with the mikveh, on the narrow side of the house, there is a room in which the paving stone with the initials of Jacob Nienhaus was exposed. It is possible that the room, which has an oven niche, once served as a bedroom, but it may also have been connected to the mikveh next door.

The corner room next to this room may have served as a living room. Rosalia Humberg's manufactory shop was next to it. It had a dark green wall painting with coffered fields, which has been preserved in fragments. The front door of the house was between the manufactory and the butcher's shop, through which you entered a hallway that led straight ahead to the Upkammer. From this hallway a staircase led to the upper floor, which was probably the family's private quarters. Some of these rooms are used today for exhibitions on the history of Dingden under National Socialism and in the post-war period, as well as for emigration; an office and library are also located on the upper floor.

Exhibits

In the Humberghaus, memorabilia are presented to the individuals who used to live in the house. Among other things, the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam loaned Leopold Humberg's estate to the local history association Dingden. Ruth Muscovitch contributed her father's bicycle, Ernst Humberg, which he used on the run and took with him to Canada.

Former acquaintances handed over other items to the Heimatverein, which were included in the exhibition. The clockwork of a French mantel clock from around 1900 was owned by Ernst and Hilde Humberg. Ernst Humberg fled to neighbors during the Reichspogromnacht and later across the Dutch border; his wife Hilde, who was heavily pregnant at the time, had the remnants of her property taken from her house in Brünen by the Klein-Wiele joinery and repaired. The mantel clock from the S. Marti company had been smashed. Hilde Humberg gave the clockwork to one of the employees in the joinery, Johann van Stegen. Hilde followed her husband to the Netherlands and then emigrated with him to Canada. Van Stegen's descendants handed the movement over to the Humberghaus around 70 years later.

A blue stoneware jug from the Westerwald , which was also made around 1900, comes from Leopold's possession . He gave it to a neighbor, Adelheid Bußkönning, to thank him for getting him a rucksack from his old friend Johann Kruse when he was forced to leave his apartment within a few hours in July 1941. A descendant gave the jug to the museum.

A passenger list of the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company's Duchess of Bedford from March 31, 1939 has been preserved; it records the escape of Adolf Terhoch, his wife Frieda and their twins, also to Canada.

The Humberg, Terhoch, Frank, Muscovitch families

Abraham Humberg was born in 1852. He came from Klein Reken , was a merchant, butcher and cattle dealer , fought in the Franco-German War , became a member of the Dingden Warrior Association and in 1882 married Rosalia Landau. In the same year he took over the butcher's shop. Abraham Humberg died in August 1932.

His wife Rosalia was four years younger than her husband. She had moved from Ramsdorf to her aunt Aleida Plaat in Dingden in 1880 and took over their textile business. Rosalia Humberg lived until 1937. Although the NSDAP had banned it, several local residents attended her funeral in Bocholt.

Rosalia and Abraham Humberg, who celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1932 , had seven children:

Johanna

The oldest child of the Humberg couple was Johanna, who was born in 1883. Johanna Humberg remained single and sold haberdashery. After 1913 she lived in Wesel , suffering from hearing loss. Presumably she was murdered after her deportation to Riga in 1941.

Leopold

Leopold Humberg, born in 1884, remained single. He worked as a cattle dealer and butcher and did not move out of his parents' house in Dingden. He came back from the First World War as a disabled man and was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class. Leopold Humberg was the last Jewish citizen of Dingden. He had to leave the place in 1941 and was deported via Münster to the Theresienstadt ghetto on July 31, 1942 , where he died on November 11, last residence "Building Q 310".

Helene, married. Frank, your children and grandchildren

Helene Humberg, b. 1886, married the cattle dealer and butcher Abraham Frank (born 1872) in the neighboring village of Velen and had two children with him, Edith and Siegfried. Well integrated into the local community, the Frank family stayed in Velen even after the butcher's shop was forced to close. On December 13, 1941, Helene and Abraham Frank were deported to Riga via Münster-Bielefeld and murdered there. In 2012 a stumbling block for Abraham Frank and the other Franks was laid in the Bahnhofsallee in Velen . The Abraham Frank School in Velen, with a second location in Ramsdorf , is named after him, representing all murdered Jews in the area.

Stolperstein Helene Frank, b. Humberg, in Velen. In fact, there is no reference to Theresienstadt.

Her daughter Edith Frank, born in 1918, was sent to England on April 1, 1939 on a Kindertransport . She lived in London and is the only child of the Frank family from Velen to survive the Holocaust. She died in exile in 2000.

Edith's brother Siegfried, born in 1913, was arrested during the riots during the Reichspogromnacht in 1938, after which he was able to flee to the Netherlands . There he was arrested by the Dutch authorities in September 1939 and shortly thereafter interned in the Westerbork transit camp, when it was still under local administration as a "Jewish reception camp". He stayed here for five years, even when the camp came under German fascist administration some time after the Germans invaded the country . The Nazis took over the camp with all its inmates. In the camp he married Margot Cohen from Bocholt. In September 1944 the family came to Theresienstadt. Siegfried Frank was transported to Auschwitz and then came to the BRABAG "Wille satellite camp" , part of the Buchenwald concentration camp . He died on April 23, 1945, on the death march .

Siegmund, married to Selma, Canada

Siegmund Humberg was born in 1887. Like his father, he became a cattle dealer and butcher. In 1936 he married Selma, b. Gottschalk, with whom he emigrated to Canada in 1940 and from 1945 to Dewittville, Quebec province, on the border with the USA . The couple ran a farm there. Siegmund Humberg died in Dewittville in 1954.

Frieda, married. Terhoch, and the twin sons, Canada

Frieda Humberg, born in 1889, was the youngest daughter. She married the dealer Adolf Terhoch, with whom she had twins Kurt and Rudi in 1921. The four from Ramsdorf were able to flee to the Netherlands in 1937 and to Canada in 1939, where they settled in Winnipeg . A pillowcase hand-embroidered by Frieda with the initials "FT" came back to Dingden in 2018 on the occasion of the visit of her Canadian great-great-granddaughter Jocelyn to the museum.

Stolperstein Frieda Terhoch, Ramsdorf, Hausstrasse 5, survivors in Canada

The Terhochweg in Drensteinfurt , the birthplace of the father Adolf, reminds of the evicted family .

Ernst, his wife Hilde, his daughter Ruth and their grandchildren, Canada

Ernst Humberg, the penultimate child, was born in 1893. He too took up the profession of cattle dealer. In 1930 he moved to Brünen . His first wife, Erna b. Leeser, he soon lost. In his second marriage he married her younger sister Hilde, with whom he had a daughter Ruth in 1938. This Humberg family was able to emigrate to Winnipeg in 1939, where they became farmers. He died in 1957. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren keep in touch with Dingden.

Wilhelm

The youngest son of the family was born in 1895 and was also a cattle dealer. He married Rosette (Rosetta) Menko, with whom he lived in Borken and had two daughters, Margot and Vera. In 1933 he moved to Winterswijk , where his wife was from and where the third child, Jakob, was born. The entire family was deported to Auschwitz in 1943; no one returned from there.

Conclusion

Photographs and texts as well as a number of objects remember the members of the Humberg family. With the help of an iPod guide, visitors experience everyday life at home at the time of the last residents. The illustrator Lars Baus created drawings in which he imagined the family life of that time in every room.

literature

  • Ulrich Bauhaus, Hermann Ostendarp: The history of the Humberghaus Dingden and its Jewish residents, in Jews in Wesel and on the Lower Rhine. A search for clues. Edited and published by Christian-Jewish Friends of Wesel and City of Wesel, 2014, pp. 130 - 161, with numerous Fig.
  • Bernhard Großbölting: The Humberghaus. The history of the house and its inhabitants. Dingden series of publications, 8th ed. Heimatverein Dingden, 2012 943.55392  in the DDC
  • "The letter is at home now". Coby Kwadijk-Breijer bequeathed the letter to the Heimatverein Dingden in which her friend Margot Humberg congratulated her on her birthday in July 1943. Shortly afterwards, the 14-year-old was murdered in Auschwitz by Bernfried Paus. Rheinische Post (Wesel edition), June 2, 2011 full text
  • Reinhard Finck: Traces of the Past, and Canada meets Dingden. The Humberghaus in Dingden. Yearbook of the Wesel district 2021. Mercator, Duisburg 2020 ISSN  0939-2041 pp. 45–56

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Heimatverein Dingden. The planned Heimatmuseum became a place of Jewish history at: www.unser-denkmal.de ( Memento from January 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Working group NS memorials meets in Dingden , on: humberghaus.de , accessed on September 16, 2017.
  3. ↑ Presentation of the house by the working group, 2014
  4. ↑ He moved here from Caßlau. The Jews in Dingden , website Reinhard Tenhumberg, here dated 1808
  5. ↑ a b c d Ulrich Hermanns, The Humberghaus in Dingden - an extraordinary place of history , on: www.yadvashem.org
  6. ↑ Ruth and her daughter Susan Muscovitch in Winnipeg , in the Etz Chaim Synagogue, 2019, in English
  7. ↑ Definition , in Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte , September 11, 2018 doi : 10.14765 / zzf.dok.2.1221.v1
  8. ↑ In 1887, while still in Dingden, their son Louis Plaat was born. He became a victim of the Holocaust. Memorial book, Federal Archives and Jüdischer's memory book, in Dutch . Louis was murdered in Sobibor in 1943.
  9. ↑ meaning
  10. ↑ The Dingden mikvah is described in Udo Mainzer, Elfi Splendor: Jüdisches Kulturerbe in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Vol. 5: Arnsberg District. JP Bachem, Cologne 2005, p. 40. Still classified as "probably" at this point in time.
  11. ↑ French clockwork: New exhibit in the Humberghaus , at: www.humberghaus.de
  12. ↑ Historical jug: New exhibit in the Humberghaus , on: www.humberghaus.de
  13. ↑ Two new exhibits for the Humberghaus , by Petra Kuiper, derwesten.de , October 30, 2014
  14. ^ Johanna, in Book of Memory. The German ... Jews deported to the Baltic States . Saur, Munich 2003, list of names p. 706: She was deported by train on December 11, 1941 from Düsseldorf. There is a stumbling block for them in Wesel, Rheinstrasse 9.
  15. ^ Leopold, data set in the memorial book, Federal Archives (Germany)
  16. ^ Searching for traces in Theresienstadt , by Margret Brüring, Westfälische Rundschau, Wesel edition, October 16, 2013
  17. ^ Norbert Fasse: Catholics and Nazi rule in the Münsterland. The office of Velen-Ramsdorf 1918-1945. Bielefeld 1986, p. 624f.
  18. ↑ Abraham Frank , in detail at the Velen Secondary School ; Helene Humberg, b. March 4, 1886 Tenhumberg, source specifies the couple: Yard Arrival Skirotawa in Riga on December 15, 1941 23 o'clock . The information "Deportation Theresienstadt" on both Stolpersteine ​​is wrong, it was a direct train, see Leo Baeck Institute Archive, p. 4, with both names .
  19. ↑ In the Book of Memory. The German ... Jews deported to the Baltic States . Saur, Munich 2003: Fehler, place of birth "Lingen", read from Dingden (Abraham is also listed); on p. 3 of the Leo Baeck Archives, however, correctly "Velen".
  20. ↑ The Jewish Victims of the Holocaust 1941-1945. At this point the Holocaust, the systematic deportation and extermination of Jews by the Nazi rulers in Germany, took shape for the first time in Münster and the Münsterland. In the days before December 13, 1941, 403 Jewish men, women and children ... were brought together forcibly and under degrading circumstances in the Gertrudenhof pub located here at the time. On the night of December 13th they were taken to the freight yard. They left Münster around 10 a.m. in locked wagons. Four days later, the transport ended in the Riga ghetto. Memorial stele Gertrudenhof, inscription . This deportation train in Bielefeld , photo in the city archive there. Detail from the platform, small picture
  21. ↑ page 74f. on this matter . Katja Happe: Germans in the Netherlands 1918-1945. Diss. Phil. University of Siegen , 2004
  22. ^ Against forgetting , by Philipp Ortmann, Neue Ruhr Zeitung, ed. Wesel, January 30, 2015. A report on an event in the Humberghaus, with new research on the whereabouts of former residents, including Siegfried, by Ulrich Bauhaus, Hermann Ostendarp from Hometown club.
  23. ↑ On April 18, 1945 ... the subcamp was evacuated in great haste. Sick prisoners unable to walk were taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp by train. The others had to start a death march via Kamenz in the direction of Theresienstadt. Of 600 prisoners, only one in two survived. 300 prisoners were shot by the guards on the way or died of exhaustion. 100 armed SS men drove the emaciated forward. Lausitzer Rundschau , bombs on Schwarzheide , March 15, 2005
  24. ↑ born June 25, 1893 in Burgsteinfurt . Mentioned in the Historical Handbook of the Jewish Communities in Westphalia and Lippe , register volume, with reference to the main volume "Administrative Region Münster". According to the first source, died in 1966.
  25. ↑ Family name list , place: Coesfeld
  26. ↑ These four people are known to be the only ones of the Humbergs to have been expatriated by the fascist authorities . See Michael Hepp Ed .: Register of places of birth and last place of residence - Index to Place of Birth. Index to place of last-known residence. Volume 3. Saur, Munich 1988, again de Gruyter, Berlin 2012. Source Reichsanzeiger . (Adolf, under Drensteinfurt : p. 75, list no. Of the Foreign Office and in Reichsanzeiger 33 of February 17, 1939; the twins, under Ramsdorf : p. 220, list no. Of the Foreign Office 79, no. 88, 89; Frieda, under Dingden, p. 73, list 79, serial no. 87) Why this family in particular was important enough to carry out bureaucratic proceedings against them in Berlin requires further investigation. At that time, it was mainly used by intellectuals, party politicians or internationally connected people. There must have been enemies of Frieda and / or Adolf in the region who initiated the expatriation; or the ship's passenger list was sent to Berlin by agents. The expatriation was, insofar as a "legal" procedure according to Nazi standards was planned, a prerequisite for all assets of the persons concerned, pension claims and the like available in the Reich. to expropriate. See on the general process: To what extent emigrants were monitored by the foreign missions of the German Foreign Ministry and in what way this was involved in the process of expatriating German ... Jews, becomes clear in the ... study of the Foreign Ministry. Eckart Conze et al. Ed .: The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic of Germany. Hamburg 2010, p. 14ff.
  27. ↑ Humberg's great-great-granddaughter in Dingden , with photo of Jocelyn and the cover, by Eva Dahlmann.
  28. ↑ Information about the individual family members in the download area of ​​www.humberghaus.de ; to Wilhelm and family Against forgetting , with pictures; Margot in Winterswijk
  29. ↑ Four pictures: see web links. Also report: The story of a Jewish family, by Margret Brüring, Neue Ruhr Zeitung , Wesel edition, October 17, 2012

Coordinates: 51 ° 46 ′ 12 "  N , 6 ° 36 ′ 41"  E