Kiel, Germany

The Story of the Boys’ Families: The Senkpiel Family

^{Koldingstrasse, Kiel}

Otto and Anna Senkpiel lived on Koldingstrasse in Kiel with their six children. The names of four of whom are known: Otto-Benjamin (b. 1925, Günther, Lieselotte and Gisela (b. 1931). 

Anna  Senkpiel was born in 1900 in the Russian city of Brest-Litovsk. She was the third child of the Jewish fabric merchant. During World War I, she met Otto Senkpiel, a German soldier and native of Kiel, with whom she moved to Kurdwitz/Silesia in 1919, where Senkpiel worked as a local police officer and farm manager.

In 1927, the couple moved to Kiel with their daughter and two sons. Here, Anna Senkpiel and her children joined the Jewish community. Her husband remained a Methodist.

The Great Depression Otto lost his job, so his wife, a seamstress, earned the living for their family. After the Nazi takeover, Otto was offered a job with the municipality, but only on the condition that he separate from his Jewish wife and children—a demand Otto Senkpiel refused. Instead, he worked as a painter, in construction, and as a cinema doorman, but was frequently ill due to the emotional strain, leaving Anna Senkpiel to continue providing for the family, which became increasingly difficult for her as a Jew.

Persecution In 1936  Günther was expelled from school, denied an apprenticeship as a Jew by and emigrated to the Palestine Mandate. His sister Lieselotte followed him in 1939.

That same year, Anna was placed in a Jewish orphanage in Hamburg so she could attend a Jewish school. In 1942, she was already on a deportation list, but managed return to her parents.

Holocaust Otto-Benjamin, who had also hoped to go to Palestine, was enduring forced labour in a Berlin shoe factory. Constantly threatened with deportation, he asked his father in 1942 to bring him back to Kiel. 

^{Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.}

When the Kiel Gestapo rejected Senkpiel’s request, Otto-Benjamin went into hiding. His father was subsequently interrogated by the Kiel Gestapo. He was severely beaten and died after release. The family received no further word from Otto-Benjamin, who was murdered in Auschwitz on 30 November 1944.

In Hiding After the death of her husband, Anna Senkpiel lived in constant fear of deportation. Bombed out of her home in Kiel for the second time in August 1944, she went into hiding in Kleinmeinsdorf near Plön with her 13-year-old daughter Gisela and her two-and-a-half-month-old illegitimate daughter Edith.

^{Kiel 1944}

She was discovered in November when she desperately needed a ration card for the infant. In mid-November, she and the two children were arrested, taken to Berlin under police guard, and from there deported to Theresienstadt on 8 December 1944.

Post-war Destitution After the war Anna Senkpiel was impoverished and unable to care for Gisella who came to Britain as part of the First Group of the Boys. Her half-sister Edith also survived. Anna returned to Kiel but was refused a state pension. To find out more click here.