Siegmund was the second-oldest child of Alexander and Berta Harf from Wickrath. He was an avid soccer player for the Jewish sports club RjF Schild Mönchengladbach and worked at the Niederrheinische AG für Lederfabrikation from 1926 to 1938. He had been married to Emma Zander since 1936. They lived at Plattenstraße 59. Beginning in 1939, Siegmund was forced to perform hard labor as an ironer at the Reiners clothing factory at Friedrichstraße 33 in Mönchengladbach. On December 11, 1941, the couple was deported to the Riga ghetto, where Siegmund was assigned to work as a ghetto policeman. After the ghetto was dissolved in November 1943, both were sent to the “Army Clothing Office” (ABA 701) in Riga, a satellite camp of the Kaiserwald concentration camp. On September 30, 1944, they were transported by cargo ship to Liebau (Latvia), where Siegmund was forced to work in an SS special camp at the harbor. On February 19, 1945, Emma and Siegmund were transported to Hamburg, where they were imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel police jail until April 11, 1945. The prisoners were then forced to undertake an 86-kilometer march to the “Nordmark Labor Education Camp” near Kiel. Siegmund and Emma were among the prisoners who were liberated on May 1, 1945, as part of a rescue operation by the Swedish Red Cross. The exhausted prisoners were able to regain their strength in Holsbybrunn, Sweden. In November 1966, Siegmund and Emma testified as part of a preliminary investigation by the Hamburg Public Prosecutor’s Office against several members of the SS and the Ordnungspolizei who had been involved in Nazi crimes in the Riga ghetto. At that time, the couple was already living in Cali (Colombia).

Text: Joachim Schröder

Translated with DeepL, proofread by Jule Schouren

Bibliography and Sources:

Erckens, Günther, Jews in Mönchengladbach. Jewish Life in the Former Communities of Mönchengladbach, Rheydt, Odenkirchen, Giesenkirchen-Schelsen, Rheindahlen, Wickrath, and Wanlo, Vol. 1, Mönchengladbach 1988, p. 733

von Wrochem, Oliver (ed.): “Death Is Always Among Us.” The Deportations to Riga and the Holocaust in German-Occupied Latvia, Berlin 2022

Website Spuren im Vest: https://spurenimvest.de/2021/05/25/harf-siegmund/

Yad Vashem Archives, TR.19/59, pp. 98–102 (Siegmund Harf), pp. 107–111 (Emma Harf)