- Document ID: do_pugwuxoiY9dQJN765edXu
- Document Collection: 7-14-1 Documentation of the CLI
- Link to Online Archive: https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/132387858
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Siegbert Borower (1891 - 1981) - Genealogy (geni.com)
Picture & story:
https://www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de/object/lexm_lexmperson_00003269
https://www.chinafamilies.net/refugees/2569-borower-siegbert/
Second wife: Elsa Buttermann:
Stolpersteine in Hamburg | Namen, Orte und Biografien suchen (stolpersteine-hamburg.de)
On 2 Nov. 1939, Elsa Buttermann married Siegbert Borower, a Jewish merchant and pianist. He was born on 21 July 1891 in Kempen in the Allgäu and came to Hamburg in 1918 after having served in the First World War. He worked at first as a merchant, and then, from 1 Oct. 1927 to 16 Nov. 1935 as a pianist in various establishments run by the A. F. Nagel company, a wine wholesaler and distillery, earning up to 400 RM a month. He had two children from his first marriage to Alwine Lolle. They were born ca. 1918 and 1920, and both survived the Second World War.
Elsa and Siegbert Borower’s time together was short. They rented rooms in the apartment of the Gerson family at Paulinenalle 6. On 10 May 1940, Siegbert boarded a ship to Shanghai in Genoa, Italy, thus escaping the ever more threatening anti-Jewish measures implemented by the Nazi regime. After the outbreak of the war in September 1939, Shanghai was one of the only destinations that did not require a visa for European Jews fleeing the Nazi terror and, beginning in 1941, the impending deportations. Elsa’s husband traveled on a ship called the Conte Verde. His second-class billet cost US$300, the Shanghai administration demanded another US$400 entry fee to prove that the émigré was not destitute. His sister Livia Fischbein, who lived in New York, provided the funds. His escape via Genoa proved to be just in time, as Italy entered the Second World War on the side of Germany in June 1940 and the Mediterranean was closed to passenger shipping. From that point onwards, destinations in Asia could only be reached via Siberia.