Heinrich Gabel

"I, Heinrich Gabel, was born on 15 October 1910 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. My father, the lawyer Dr Heinrich Gabel, had died shortly before I was born. I was brought up here by my mother, who lived with her parents, and attended the Goethe School from 1917 to 1920 and then the humanistic Fichte-Gymnasium in Berlin-Wilmersdorf from 1920 to 1929. Here I passed my school-leaving examination 'with honours' in 1929. As the modest fortune left to me by my father had been destroyed by inflation, I earned my school fees during the last years of school by giving private tuition in order to relieve my mother, who was working. I started studying law in the summer term of 1929; I only studied in Berlin because I had to earn my own money for my studies and there would have been no opportunities for me to earn money abroad. At the beginning of this year, I passed my trainee lawyer exam with 'good'. I would now like to try to obtain a doctorate. I assure you that I have never registered for this exam anywhere. I therefore ask to be admitted to the doctorate by the faculty. "¹

With this handwritten letter, 22-year-old Heinrich Gabel applied to the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin on 9 June 1933 to be admitted to the doctoral examination. Although Heinrich Gabel was Jewish, he was still able to complete his studies. Only the assessment of his dissertation entitled "Der Anteil der Miterben im Konkurs" and the doctoral examination were still missing. Another letter to the university from March 1934 has survived. In it, Heinrich Gabel asks that he be allowed to shorten his dissertation in order to save printing costs. The letter reflects his family's financial problems:

"I humbly request retrospectively that you authorise the cuts. Unfortunately, economic reasons force me to print the work as cheaply as possible, as my father is dead, my mother has recently lost her job and I myself only have a small trainee position where I hardly earn anything. "²

Heinrich Gabel dedicated his dissertation to his mother Charlotte Gabel (née L?wenstein), who was born in Berlin on 4 January 1890. She was deported to Auschwitz on 1 March 1943 and has been considered "missing" ever since^.3

We know little about Heinrich Gabel's fate in the following years. On 25 August 1937, he and his wife Lucie Beate (born Mayer on 26 August 1912 in Berlin) had a son, Gerhard Gabel.

We do not know exactly why the young family decided to emigrate with a small child. Looking at the documents in the doctoral file, economic reasons were probably also decisive. Heinrich Gabel and his wife boarded a passenger ship in Hamburg on 13 May 1939 with their son, who was not even two years old, which was to take them to safety in Cuba. The fate of this ship and its passengers went down in history as the "odyssey of the St. Louis": When the "St. Louis" reached Havana on 27 May 1939, it was not allowed to dock at the harbour pier there because Cuban President Bru had declared the refugees' landing permits invalid and forbade the ship to be cleared. Despite days of negotiations and desperate pleas, only a few people were allowed to disembark and the "St. Louis" had to leave the harbour again on 2 June 1939. Captain Gustav Schr?der set course for Florida, as he wanted to secretly bring at least some of the passengers ashore in lifeboats in a "night and fog operation". However, the American Coast Guard stopped the plan. After other countries refused to take on the passengers of the "St. Louis", they had to turn back towards Europe. Only at the last moment did France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain agree to take in the 906 Jewish refugees. The Gabel family was among the 181 people granted refuge by the Netherlands^.4 In the Netherlands, they were housed together with other passengers in the Heyplaat quarantine centre in Rotterdam, which was fenced in with barbed wire and guarded by police officers with sheepdogs^.5

It is unclear how long the Gabel family stayed in the Westerbork internment camp after the invasion of Nazi Germany. On 6 September 1944, Heinrich Gabel, his wife Beate and their son Gerhard were deported from Westerbork to Theresienstadt and Heinrich Gabel was deported from there to Auschwitz on 29 September 1944^.6 Beate and Gerhard Gabel were also deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz a few days later on 4 October 1944^.7

The family had managed to stay together all those years up to that point and survive all the hardships together. However, all traces of Beate and Gerhard Gabel were lost in Auschwitz; they were probably murdered immediately after their arrival there. Gerhard Gabel was just seven years old at the time and had spent most of his life on the run or in camps.

Only Heinrich Gabel survived the selection for the time being. His name appears on a transport list dated 2 October 1944 with another 296 Jews who were destined for labour deployment and were transferred from Auschwitz I to the Golleschau Auschwitz III subcamp. He was given the prisoner number B11177 on the transport list. The 33-year-old lawyer is described there as an "auxiliary worker"^.8 His name is said to appear in the Auschwitz prisoner hospital on 28 October 1944^.9 Like his mother, his wife and his son, Heinrich Gabel was murdered in Auschwitz; the date of death is given as 28 February 1945^.10

The Stumbling Stone was sponsored by the Humboldt University Law Students' Association.