The Story of the Family of Dr David Heinemann

Translated by Lesley Loy

Dr David Heinemann, a secondary school teacher, was born on 09.01.1872 in Kleinsteinach.  In 1902 he married Ernestine Goldschmidt from Hammelburg.  In that same year he came to Gunzenhausen as a teacher.

The couple had two children :

Hilmar               *11.08.1904 in Gunzenhausen + January 1945 in the Dachau concentration camp (according to the Ludwigsburg archives he died in the Auschwitz concentration camp)

(Daughter)        *1906 Nürnberg

While in Gunzenhausen they lived in the house of the family of Johann Huber, at Bahnhofstrasse 35.  David Heinemann was transferred to Nürnberg in 1906 and his daughter was born there.

Source : Gunzenhausen municipal archives

In 1939 the family was living in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine, at Ludwigsstrasse 73.  Dr Mörz of the municipal archives there sent us further information on the family:

"As we are just working on a new edition of the book “Jews in Ludwigshafen”, which also contains a list of Jewish households from the year 1912 and throws some light on their fates, I can report the following : Up until his expulsion by the Nazis, David Heinemann worked as a teacher in the Ludwigshafen secondary school, but had the title of upper school director as he worked in the upper secondary school as of 1914.  He moved to Mannheim after January 1939 and was deported from there to Gurs.  His wife, Ernestine Heinemann, née Goldschmidt (*1874 in Westheim near Hammelburg), died on 12.3.1942 in the Noé camp.  With the help of relatives, David Heinemann was able to reach Montevideo, where he died on 13.08.1963.  The Speyer municipal archives contain a personal file and a file on Heinemann’s compensation after the war. 

Of the son Dr Hilmar Heinemann we only know that in 1944 he was moved from a camp in Holland to Theresienstadt  and from there to Auschwitz, where he died (was murdered?) in 1945."

Noone has been able to give any information about the fate of the daughter.

In February 2020 we received information from Andreas Mach that Hilmar Heinemann was obviously on the St. Louis, that carried in 1939 more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany which wanted to escape the Nazi regime. But in Cuba (also in the USA and Canada) they were denied permission to land and had to return to Europe. It landed in Antwerp and the passengers were distributed to Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Great Britain.

• We learned about the fate of Hilmar Heinemann: “He 1904 8 11 was born in Gunzenhausen - was interned in Dachau in November 1938 - disembarked from the St, Louis in The Netherlands, deported to Westerbork, Theresienstadt, and to Auschwitz where he perished.“