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Czilli Wallschütz (née Reichenberger) * 1875

Raboisen 83 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg-Altstadt)

HIER WOHNTE
CZILLI WALLSCHÜTZ
GEB. REICHENBERGER
JG. 1875
EINGEWIESEN 1940
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

Czilli Wallschütz, née Reichberger, born 3/29/1875 in Kassa, Hungary (now Košice, Slovakia), murdered on 9/23/1940 at the killing institution Brandenburg on the Havel

Stumbling Stone Hamburg old town, Raboisen 83

When Czilli Reichberger was born on March 29, 1875, Kassa belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today, it belongs to Slovakia and is called Košice). Jews were allowed to settle there in 1840. Czilli’s parents Hermann Reichberger, a merchant, and his wife Fanny, née Stern, were of Jewish faith.

We do not know when Czilli Wallschütz, née Reichberger, came to Berlin. It may be that she moved because she was pregnant and gave birth to her illegitimate son Hans Reichberger in Berlin. Her younger legitimate son Carl Wilhelm Wallschütz later declared that his half-brother had emigrated to North America in 1926 or 1927.

On Christmas Eve of 1890, Czilli married Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wallschütz, a Lutheran Protestant mechanic. Her father at that time had already died, her mother lived in Budapest. Carl Hermann and Czilli Wallschütz’ two children were born in Berlin, their son Carl Hermann Wilhelm on March 3, 1899, their daughter Auguste Ida Lisbeth on June 18, 1903. Their birth records do not reveal whether Czilli had converted to the Lutheran faith. After Auguste’s birth, the family moved to Hamburg and settled at Hansdorfer Strasse in the south Barmbek section of the city.

After World War II, their son Carl Wallschütz testified in proceedings for compensation that his parents had separated when the Nazis came to power, "my mother lived in a rented room in Barmbek, my father in a room in Gerhofstrasse.”

After separating from her husband, Czilli Wallschütz had joined the Jewish Community. In the Community’s culture tax files, she is listed without her husband, her addresses were Raboisen 83 in Hamburg’s old town and Gerstenkamp 9 in South Barmbek. In 1934, she paid culture tax the first time, her occupation was given as Tagfrau ("day woman”, i.e. housemaid). From the summer of 1935, she lived at the almshouse in Oberaltenallee. In his testimony, her son explained this with the fact that his mother had been ailing, but clear in her mind. A short time later, she was moved to the almshouse in Hamburg-Farmsen, where she stayed until September 1940. When visiting her, Carl Hermann Wilhelm Wallschütz always observed his mother as "being clear in her mind.”

In spring and summer of 1940, the Berlin "Euthanasia” agency at Tiergartenstrasse 4 planned a special operation to eliminate all Jewish patients living in public and private mental hospitals in Germany. The agency had all Jewish patients of the institutions registered and then assembled in so-called collecting institutions. In northern Germany, this was the Hamburg-Langenhorn mental hospital. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg were ordered to transfer all of their Jewish patients there before September 18, 1940.

Czilli Wallschütz arrived in Langenhorn on September 18. About the last visit to his mother in Langenhorn, her son Carl Hermann Wilhelm Wallschütz testified: "My mother was mentally sane. She had only been taken to Langenhorn on a pretext.”

On September 23, Czilli Wallschütz and 135 other patients from north German institutions were loaded on a train at the Hamburg-Ochsenzoll freight station and transported to Brandenburg on the Havel, where they arrived the same day. In the part of the former prison that had been converted into a gas murdering facility, the patients from northern Germany were immediately herded into the gas chamber and murdered by carbon monoxide gas. Only one patient, Ilse Herta Zachmann, temporarily escaped that fate (cf. there).

Czilli Wallschütz’ death was recorded by the fictive registrar’s office "Chelm, Post Lublin” under the number 332/1941. According to her faked death certificate, she was supposed to have died of a heart attack on January 30, 1941.

The people murdered in Brandenburg, however, had never been in the town east of Lublin called Chelm in Polish, Cholm in German. The mental hospital there had ceased to exist after SS troops had murdered almost all its patients on January 12, 1940. And there had never been a German registrar’s office in Chelm. It was solely invented to cover up the murder operations, and recording fictive later dates of death served the purpose of demanding board fees for the already murdered patients.

Karl Hermann Wilhelm Wallschütz received the faked death certificate of his mother from the fictive sender Irrenanstalt Chelm, Post Lublin ("Chelm Insane Asylum, Post Office Lublin”). The faked death certificate for Czilli Wallschütz is one of the few such documents preserved. Only the many preserved amendments to birth registry entries still bear witness to the false death and registry dates and the ostensible events. Often, not even these entries exist.

Czilli Wallschütz’ husband Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wallschütz died on February 28, 1937.

We know nothing of the fate of Czilli’s daughter Auguste Ida Liesbeth Wallschütz. Czilli’s son, the post office employee Carl Hermann Wilhelm Wallschütz, like his sister, had been baptized and confirmed as a Lutheran Christian. Nonetheless, the Reich Post Office dismissed him on October 9, 1933 pursuant to the "Law for the Restoration of Professional Civil Service.” From 1935, he was forced to do so-called supporting work in a home in Nordholz, later in Hamburg-Waltershof. In a troop of Jewish men he performed heaviest earthwork in a silt field where sports- and playgrounds for a child daycare center and an allotment garden area were to be built. The Horn race track, Tiefstack power station and Buxtehude, where he was deployed to sewer construction work, were further stations of his forced labor. After the war, the postal service again hired Carl Hermann Wilhelm Wallschütz. He died in Hamburg on September 20, 1960.

A Stumbling Stone for Czilli Wallschütz was laid at Raboisen 83 in Hamburg’s old town.

Translation by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 9; AB; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer Patientinnen und Patienten der psychiatrischen Anstalt Langenhorn, die aufgrund nationalsozialistischer "Euthanasie"-Maßnahmen ermordet wurden, zusammengestellt von Peter von Rönn, Hamburg (Projektgruppe zur Erforschung des Schicksals psychisch Kranker in Langenhorn); 332-5 Standesämter 1064 Sterberegister Nr. 447/1937 Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wallschütz, 1383 Sterberegister Nr. 466/1960 Carl Hermann Wilhelm Wallschütz; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 21712 Carl Wilhelm Wallschütz; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.1939 bis 27.1.1941; Landesarchiv Berlin PRep 501 Nr. 119 Geburtsregister Nr. 594/1899 Carl Wilhelm Wallschütz, PRep 501 Nr. 1854 Geburtsregister Nr. 1433/1903 Auguste Ida Liesbeth Wallschütz, Heiratsregister Nr. 1367/1898 Czilli Reichberger/Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wallschütz; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig.
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