City of Neu Isenburg

Names

Seif, Golda

First NameGolda
Family NameSeif
Date of Birth01/19/1937
Birthplace/Place of ResidenceReichelsheim (Odenwald)
Residence in „Heim Isenburg“12/08/1939 - 03/02/1942
Departure toFrankfurt am Main, Hans-Thoma-Straße 24 (home of the association "Weibliche Fürsorge")
Profession-
Deportation/Escape

Deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on 09/15/1942, and to Auschwitz concentration camp and extermination camp on 10/12/1944

Date of Death/Place of DeathAuschwitz concentration camp and extermination camp

Golda Seif was the daughter of Frieda (Freda) Seif who is also listed in this Memorial Book. Golda was placed in the Jewish Women's League home in Neu-Isenburg in December 1938. The five-member Seif family had been forcibly expelled from their hometown of Reichelsheim in Odenwald and was therefore in a desperate situation (for the following, see the database of the Jewish Museum of Frankfurt am Main).

Richard Seif and his wife Frieda née Adler, both born in 1910, probably lived from the mid-1930s in Reichelsheim in Odenwald. Their oldest son, Jacob, was born in Verden in 1934. The two daughters, Golda, born in 1937 and Judit, born in 1938, were both born in Reichelsheim.

Richard Seif was a teacher. Since the family lived in an official residence belonging to the synagogue in Reichelsheim, it can be assumed that Richard Seif was employed by the Jewish community.

In 1935, the Jewish students in Reichelsheim were excluded from public school, so Richard Seif had to take the six schoolchildren from Reichelsheim and other children from Fränkisch-Crumbach to the private Jewish district school daily with the municipal bus to Höchst in the Odenwald where he also taught. On one such trip in 1935, Richard Seif and his protégés were victims of an anti-Semitic attack. A student who survived the Shoah later reported:

"One day ... we saw a truck standing across the street at a distance. ... The owner of the truck got out of the cab and had a starter crank in his hand. He came up to us and, without saying a word, began to smash the windows of our bus, behind which we crouched and started to cry. "

During the November pogrom in 1938, the synagogue next to the Seif family apartment was raided and set on fire. Reichelsheim National Socialists under the leadership of a Squad of Bensheim SS-men also devastated numerous houses of Jews and mistreated their residents. They dragged the Jewish residents out of their homes and forced them to dance round a fire burned before the synagogue. The prayer books and Torah scrolls from the synagogue were burned in this fire.

The Seif family was among the victims of these attacks. Richard Seif suffered another attack on his life in connection with the pogrom. He was pushed in front of a moving car and narrowly escaped death.

On January 6, 1939, Frieda Seif escaped to Frankfurt, Richard Seif followed her on July 15 of the same year. The family tried to escape into the Netherlands in vain. It is not known where the children lived at that time. The two-year-old daughter, Golda was temporary with relatives in Bocholt, presumably with her grandparents.

Four months after Golda was given to the care of the Isenburg home in December 1939, her mother also escaped to the home. She worked there as a cook. Mother and daughter lived together for two years at the institution.

When the Jewish Women's League home had to be vacated in the spring of 1942, many of the residents were moved to Jewish institutions in Frankfurt. On March 2, 1942, Golda Seif together with other children from “Heim Isenburg” came to the "“Weibliche Fürsorge”" home where her siblings were already living. That meant that the five-year-old was again separated from her mother. Frieda Seif found accommodation and a job at the Jewish retirement home in Frankfurt's Wöhlerstraße.

Richard Seif was deported in 1942 to the Rivesaltes camp close to the Perpignan city of Southern France and then deported on September 11of the same year to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp via the Drancy transit camp near Paris. No trace of him exists there on.

Frieda Seif and her three children were deported from Frankfurt on September 15, 1942, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Two years later, on October 12, 1944, they were taken from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. The 32-year-old Frieda Seif and her three children, eight-year-old Jakob, five-year-old Golda and four-year-old Judit, were murdered in Auschwitz. Probably they were selected and murdered right after their

Source: Datenbank des Jüdischen Museums Frankfurt am Main. Texte: zeitsprung. Kontor für Geschichte, Frankfurt am Main:

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Auf der Terrasse von Haus I, Schwarz-weiß Fotografie
Heim Isenburg

Under NS-Rule

Life in “Heim Isenburg” could be organized and regulated quite easily until the pogrom of November 1938, even if discrimination and harassments made the life of residents quite hard.
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