Rudolf Hopp

Rudolf Hopp was born on December 8, 1914 in Berlin. He was the son of the furniture dealer Alfons Hopp and his wife Frieda, née Moses. Rudolf's father (*1878) came from Schrimm an der Warthe (today's Śrem); his mother (*1886) from the small town of Reetz (now Recz). His parents had married in Schöneberg in January 1914. The family's apartment was at Potsdamer Strasse 82, near Heinrich von Kleist Park. Unfortunately, no further information has been preserved about the parental home, childhood and youth of Rudolf Hopp in Berlin at the end of the Imperial period and the Weimar Republic. It is also not known whether he had siblings or was the only child of Alfons and Frieda Hopp. In all probability, however, his parents belonged to the Jewish community in Berlin.

After graduating from school, Rudolf Hopp completed an apprenticeship as a craftsman and worked as a carpenter in Berlin. Until his marriage in 1940, he lived in his parents' apartment, which was given the number 179 when Potsdamer Straße was renumbered in 1937. With the gradual disenfranchisement and persecution of Jews since 1933 - or all persons who were considered Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws in the Nazi state - coercive state measures against Rudolf Hopp and his family also began. This included numerous measures of discrimination and social exclusion, the deprivation of civil rights and displacement from professional and economic life. From 1933, Rudolf's father's furniture business was also affected by anti-Semitic campaigns and boycotts, which found their most visible expression in the pogroms of May and November 1938 in Berlin. In the 1930s, Rudolf must have met the machine worker Ruth Henriette Ehmann from Herrnstadt (Wąsosz). Ruth, born in 1920, was the youngest of six children of the merchant Siegfried Ehmann (1874–1926) and his wife Emma, ​​née Steinberg (1881–1938). On September 19, 1938, Rudolf and Ruth Henriette had a son who they named René. In January 1940, the two married in the registry office in Mitte and shared an apartment at Badstraße 64, where they lived as subtenants with Bernhard Barkowski. Their second son, Joel Abel, was born on October 20, 1940. At the beginning of the 1940s at the latest, Rudolf and Ruth Hopp were used for forced labour: Rudolf had to work as a carpenter in the furniture and cabinetmaker Otto Gleichmar at Zossenerstraße 41 in Kreuzberg; Ruth was forced to work as a "cleaner" at Zeiss Ikon's Goerzwerk in Zehlendorf. Life had become a struggle for existence for the family in Berlin in the 1940s. To name just one of the many drastic measures, with the police decree of September 1, 1941 “about the identification of Jews” they could only move in public with the stigmatizing “Jewish star”.

Disenfranchisement was followed by deportation : On October 1, 1941, the Gestapo had informed the Jewish community in Berlin that the “resettlement” of Berlin Jews would begin. The Hopp couple were arrested in Berlin in the fall of 1942 and deported to one of the Berlin transit camps together with their two sons . From there they were taken along with Rudolf's 56-year-old mother on October 19, 1942 via the Putlitzstraße freight depot with the "21. Osttransport” to the Riga ghettodeported. At the time of the deportation, Rudolf and his wife were 28 and 22 years old, their son René was four, little Joel Abel turned two as the train approached the ghetto. Three days after departure, on October 22, 1942, the transport reached the Riga ghetto. Immediately after their arrival in Riga, the vast majority of the 959 deportees, including all women and children, were taken into the surrounding forests and shot there in pits. 81 men with manual trades were selected for forced labor in work details. It is not known whether Rudolf Hopp was one of these, in any case none of the five family members belonged to the few survivors from Riga.

Biographical Compilation
Indra Hemerling

Additional Sources
Berlin address books 1914–1943; Jewish address book for Greater Berlin 1929/1930 and 1931/1932. Berlin Telephone Book 1932. Online at: zlb.de (accessed July 26, 2021).
Victim Database Yad Vashem. Central DB of Shoah Victims' Names. Online at: http://yvng.yadvashem.org (accessed 26 July 2021).

Supplementary cards for information on descent and previous education from the census of May 17, 1939 in the Federal Archives Berlin-Lichterfelde (stock R 1509).

Marriage notice for Alphons Hopp and Frieda Moses (No. 13, Berlin-Schoeneberg on January 9, 1914); Siegfried Ehmann and Emma Steinberg (No. 751, Berlin on August 29, 1901). Berlin State Archive. Online at: ancestry.com (accessed 26 July 2021).

Entry on the wedding of Rudolf Hopp and Ruth Ehmann. List of names for the marriage register 1940. Registry office Mitte of Berlin. Online at: http://www.content.landesarchiv-ber... (accessed on July 26, 2021).

deportation lists. Reproduction in the National Archives and Records Administration, USA, call number A3355: Rudolf Hopp, "21. Osttransport” (serial no. 454); Ruth Hopp, née Ehrmann (serial no. 455); René Hopp (serial no. 456); Joel Hopp (serial no. 457); Frieda Hopp, née Moses (serial no. 790). Online at: statistik-des-holocaust.de (accessed on July 26, 2021).

Entry on Rudolf Hopp: Family database Jews in the German Reich. Genealogienetz.de. Online at: https://www.online-ofb.de/famreport... (accessed on July 26, 2021).

Entry for Rudolf Hopp in the genealogy database Geni. Online at: https://www.geni.com/people/Rudolf-... (accessed July 26, 2021).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hopp, Rudolf

08 December 1914 in Berlin. Residing in Berlin

Deportation: from Berlin on 19. October 1942, Riga

Date of death: 22. October 1942, Riga

Source: Victims of the persecution of the Jews under the Nazi dictatorship in Germany 1933 - 1945 [http://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch/directory.html]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rudolf Hopp was born in 1914. Prior to WWII he lived in Berlin, Germany. During the war he was in Berlin, Germany. Deported with Transport 21 from Berlin,Berlin,Berlin,Germany to Riga, Rigas, Vidzeme,Latvia on 19/10/1942. Rudolf was murdered/perished in Riga, Latvia. This information is based on a List of deportation from Berlin found in Gedenkbuch Berlins der juedischen Opfer des Nazionalsozialismus, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Zentralinstitut fuer sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung, Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1995.

Source: [http://db.yadvashem.org/deportation/nameDetails.html?language=en&it...]