Alfred Vogelsang, born 19.04.1913
Helene Vogelsang, born 17.05.1887
Paul Philipp Vogelsang, born 26.06.1909

Asselner Hellweg 99, Brackel

From 1906, Ludwig Vogelsang, born in Dortmund and a butcher by trade, owned and lived in the property at Asselner Hellweg 99. Two years after moving in, he married Helene Cohn from Hannover; she inherited the house on the death of her husband in 1938.

Helene was forced to vacate the house in 1940, after which she lived in various “Jew houses” around the city. In early 1942, she was deported to Riga and was presumably murdered there a short time later.

Ludwig and Helene had two sons: Paul Philipp, who became a butcher like his father, and Alfred.

In 1937, Paul Philipp married Henrietta Jacob, a sales assistant from Lenhausen, who moved into the Vogelsang family home in the following year.
In the wake of the “Pogrom night” of 1938, Paul and Alfred were held in detention for about five weeks in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Following their release, Alfred married Dorothea Heymann in February 1939 in Castrop-Rauxel. In May of the same year, the couple, along with Paul Philipp and another Dortmunder by the name of Alfred Gottschalk, fled to Brussels. Henrietta followed her husband in early 1940. After the German assault on Belgium in May of the same year, Paul, Alfred and their wives were arrested and sent to the French camp of Gurs. In summer 1942, all four were briefly released from the camp, but then again detained in Gurs. In early 1943, they were deported via Drancy camp near Paris to Ausschwitz. From then on, all trace of Alfred, Paul and Dorothea disappears, and after the end of the war they were officially declared dead.

In 1943, expecting a baby, Henrietta was spared deportation because of her pregnancy, and gave birth to their daughter Jacqueline in May 1943. The two were the only members of the family to survive the Holocaust, and emigrated in 1947 to the USA.

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