Including a contribution by the Keydocuments-Project
The LostLift database which Hendrik Althoff M. A has contributed to for the IGdJ through extensive research in the Hamburg State Archive, is now online. The database is a service made available by the German Maritime Museum – Leibniz Institute of Maritime History in Bremerhaven, where research into the treatment of Jewish emigrants’ removal goods has been underway since 2018. After the outbreak of World War II, their cargo – stored in so-called lifts – was no longer shipped from Hamburg and Bremerhaven, but confiscated and its contents sold at public auctions. LostLift gathers data on several thousand of these cargo items, making it possible to reconstruct the paths of their ownership. In a recently published article for the Key Documents edition Hendrik Althoff presents the case of Betty Levy, who had to emigrate to Cape Town via Hamburg, and explains the research potential of the database, using Betty Levy's removal goods register.
The photo shows a lift being loaded in the port. HHLA/Gustav Werbeck/ Archives of the Speicherstadtmuseum. With kind permission.