In October 1938, a mass of arrests and deportations were made all across the German Reich, those affected were those who the National Socialists classified as Polish Jews. An estimated 17,000 were part of this wave of mass deportation. Eliasz Rammer from Frankfurt (Oder) was one of them.
Eliasz Rammer was born to Jewish parents in Stanisławów, what today is Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine), on 13 June 1893. The Galician city belonged to the Habsburg Empire at the time, and was an important trade city. Nearly one third of the city’s population were of the Jewish faith.
After the First World War Galicia and, Stanisławów along with it, became part of the Second Polish Republic. As a result of the economic crisis, thousands of people, including many Jews, left their Galician homeland to try their luck in the German Empire. In the early 1920s Ida Rammer, Eliasz’s sister, was the first family member to make their way to Germany. Born in 1903, Ida settled in Frankfurt (Oder) after the First World War and worked as a seamstress. In the summer of 1921 she returned to Poland, there she likely told her brother Eliasz about her experiences on the Oder.
In 1924 he moved to Frankfurt (Oder). As a master tailor, he opened his own business that he successfully operated until his deportation. In his private life he also found happiness. In January 1925, he married Ella Wolff, a Jewish woman from Berlin. Their marriage witnesses also belonged to Frankfurt’s Jewish community. This alone is a good indication of how well Rammer had integrated in the city.
After the National Socialist’s consolidated power in January 1933, Rammer lost his master craftsman’s certificate and could only work as an ordinary tailor. Thereafter he had to leave his apartment in the center of Frankfurt for more affordable accommodation. The apartment located at Berliner Strasse 1 was his last address before being deported in 1938.
How Rammer’s name landed on the list of those to be deported is unknown. It appears that his name was the only in Frankfurt (Oder) to be subjected to the “Polenaktion”. The records indicate that Rammer was deported by train to Zbąszyń on 28 October 1938. There he did not stay long and chose to return instead to his hometown of Stanisławów. There he most likely lived until the start of the Second World War with his sister Ida Rammer at the address Zosnia Wola 113.
Between September 1939 and July 1941, the city was under Soviet occupation. After the start of the German-Soviet war, the Germans occupied Stanisławów. In the fall of 1941 they established a Ghetto for the city’s Jewish population. Eliasz was again deported, this time along with his mother and brother to the Ghetto. There was where any traces of them disappear. Nearly the entire Jewish population of Stanisławów, over 20,000 children, women and men were murdered by the Germans in the Shoah. It can therefore be assumed that Rammer was among the victims of this Genocide.
Markus Nesselrodt