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Horst Willhöft * 1938

Marckmannstraße 135 (ehemalige Kinderklinik) (Hamburg-Mitte, Rothenburgsort)

HORST WILLHÖFT
GEB. 23.3.1938
ERMORDET 21.1.1943

further stumbling stones in Marckmannstraße 135 (ehemalige Kinderklinik):
Andreas Ahlemann, Rita Ahrens, Ursula Bade, Hermann Beekhuis, Ute Conrad, Helga Deede, Jürgen Dobbert, Anneliese Drost, Siegfried Findelkind, Rolf Förster, Volker Grimm, Antje Hinrichs, Lisa Huesmann, Gundula Johns, Peter Löding, Angela Lucassen, Elfriede Maaker, Renate Müller, Werner Nohr, Harald Noll, Agnes Petersen, Renate Pöhls, Gebhard Pribbernow, Hannelore Scholz, Doris Schreiber, Ilse Angelika Schultz, Dagmar Schulz, Magdalene Schütte, Gretel Schwieger, Brunhild Stobbe, Hans Tammling, Peter Timm, Heinz Weidenhausen, Renate Wilken

Rothenburgsort Children's Hospital

In the former Rothenburgsort Children's Hospital, the National Socialists implemented their "euthanasia program" from the early 1940s.
Hildegard Thevs was able to research 33 names of murdered children.

A plaque on the building has commemorated the more than 50 murdered babies and children since 1999:

In this building
between 1941 and 1945
more than 50 handicapped children were killed.
An expert committee classified them
as "unworthy life" and assigned them
to be killed in specialized children's wards.
The Hamburg health administration
was involved in this.
Hamburg medical officers supervised
the admission and killing of the children.
Doctors of the children's hospital
carried them out.
None of those involved
was prosecuted for this.


Further information (in German) on the Internet at:

35 Stolpersteine für Rothenburgsort – Hamburger Abendblatt 10.10.2009

Stolpersteine für ermordete Kinder – ND 10.10.2009

Stolpersteine gegen das Vergessen – Pressestelle des Senats 09.10.2009

Die toten Kinder von Rothenburgsort – Nordelbien.de 09.10.2009

35 Stolpersteine verlegt – Hamburg 1 mit Video 09.10.2009

Wikipedia - Institut für Hygiene und Umwelt

Gedenken an mehr als 50 ermordete Kinder - Die Welt 10.11.1999

Euthanasie-Opfer der Nazis - Beitrag NDR Fernsehen 29.05.2010

Hitler und das "lebensunwerte Leben" - Andreas Schlebach NDR 24.08.2009
©

Horst Willhöft, born on 23 Mar. 1938 in Hamburg, murdered on 21 Jan. 1943

Horst Willhöft was born in Hamm-Mitte in Mar. 1938 and baptized a Lutheran. At that time, the obligation to report infants and toddlers with disabilities did not yet exist.

His development was delayed, but apparently, he lived at home. We know nothing about his story before he was admitted to the children’s hospital in Rothenburgsort, nor how much time he spent there. He was placed in the children’s internal medicine ward, which was the responsibility of the physician Ilse Bauer, and he died there in the late evening of 21 Jan. 1943. The following report of the nurse Felicitas Holzhausen from 1946 exists about his murder: "Dr. Bayer examined the child with extraordinary care. One day, Dr. Bauer asked me to get 10 ccm of Phenobarbital [Luminal] from the medicine cabinet. Dr. Bauer told me that she wanted to inject the child by the name of Willhöft. We went into the room where the child was lying. I turned the child on its stomach and held it, and Dr. Bauer gave the child the injection into the upper quadrant of the buttocks. After about an hour, the child fell asleep and may have been lying asleep for about two days until he died.” Horst died shortly before his fifth birthday.

His mother notified the registry office in Rothenburgsort of his death. "Cerebral damage and pneumonia” were entered as the cause of death.


Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2019
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: StaH 213-12 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht NSG, 0017-001, 002; 332-5 Standesämter, 1187-70/1943