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Gerda Jürgensen
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Gerda Jürgensen * 1933

Laeiszstraße 19 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Pauli)

HIER WOHNTE
GERDA JÜRGENSEN
JG. 1933
EINGEWIESEN 1941
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 16.8.1943
AM SPIEGELGRUND
"KINDERFACHBETEILUNG"
ERMORDET 4.12.1944

Gerda Lina Emma Jürgensen, born 17.4.1933 in Hamburg, admitted on 20.8.1941 to the then Alsterdorfer Anstalten (today: Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf), transferred to Vienna on 16.8.1943 to the "Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien", died on 4.12.1944 in Vienna

Laeiszstraße 19 (St. Pauli)

Gerda Lina Emma Jürgensen was born on April 17, 1933 in the Elim Hospital in Hamburg. She was the daughter of the launchmaster Paul Hans Otto Jürgensen, born on July 5, 1897 in Hamburg, and his wife Marie Anna, née Jensen, born on May 16, 1900 in Wewelsfleth (in today's Steinburg district). The couple had married in 1928 and since then lived at Laeiszstraße 19 in the St. Pauli district.

Gerda Jürgensen developed physically according to her age, but not mentally. In July 1939, she was judged by the Hamburg Youth Welfare Office to be '"not fit for school". The girl was also not suitable for the auxiliary school ("Hilfsschule”) because her restless and erratic nature would make lessons impossible for herself and the other children. ("Hilfsschule" was a name no longer used today for independent special educational or curative schools for children who, for various reasons, were not considered capable of attending elementary school). Gerda Jürgensen was to continue attending kindergarten.

On August 16, 1940, Gerda's father took his own life. Her mother now had to become gainfully employed and could not adequately care for or supervise her child, so Gerda continued to attend kindergarten for this reason as well.

A new examination of Gerda in October 1940 led to the same result as in July 1939: she was still the same restless, easily excitable child from whom "nothing was safe. Gerda was completely unfocused, unable to fix her attention. She hardly ever answers a question, because at the same moment her mind is on something completely different. The child could neither be placed in kindergarten nor in private care. Enrollment in school was out of the question. Therefore, Gerda Jürgensen's admission to the Alsterdorfer Anstalten (today: Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) was sought.

The institutions initially refused Gerda's admission to the Youth Welfare Office twice because of overcrowding, so that the girl was not admitted there until August 20, 1941. A few brief entries in the patient's file in the following two years recorded illnesses. It is not clear from the records in the file whether there were any visits from the mother. Because Gerda "chewed off all her fingernails," she was forced into a "protective jacket" at night or had to wear leather gloves. (With a "protective jacket", colloquially "straitjacket", an extensive restriction of movement could be enforced).

During the heavy air raids on Hamburg in late July/early August 1943 ("Operation Gomorrah"), the Alsterdorf institutions also suffered bomb damage. The management of the institution took the opportunity, after consultation with the health authorities, to transfer some of the residents who were considered to be "weak in labor, in need of care or particularly difficult" to other sanatoriums and nursing homes. On August 16, 1943, a transport with 228 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 girls and women from the Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home left for the "Wagner von Jauregg Sanatorium and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna" in Vienna (also known as the "Am Steinhof" institution). Among them was Gerda Jürgensen.

During "Aktion-T4" (a camouflage term for the Nazis' "euthanasia" program, so named after the location of the Berlin euthanasia headquarters at Tiergartenstraße 4), the institution in Vienna had been an intermediate facility for the Hartheim killing center near Linz. After the official end of the gas murders in the killing centers in 1941, the murders continued in the previous intermediate institution.

In the institution "Am Steinhof" there had been a "specialized children's department" (Kinderfachabteilung) since 1940, which was called the "Vienna Municipal Youth Welfare Institution 'Am Spiegelgrund'". The term "children's specialist department" was used in Nazi Germany for special psychiatric facilities in hospitals as well as in sanatoriums and nursing homes that served the purpose of "child euthanasia," i.e., the research on and killing of children and adolescents who were severely physically or mentally handicapped.

On September 21, 1944, Ernst Illing, then head of the so-called children's department "Am Spiegelgrund", was commissioned by the Reich Governor in Vienna to prepare an expert report on Gerda Jürgensen. We do not know the reason for this order. The "expert opinion" stated in summary: "uneducable". This sealed her fate.

Gerda Jürgensen died at the age of eight on December 4, 1944.
The cause of death was given as "pneumonia".

In the Wagner von Jauregg sanatorium and nursing home in Vienna, patients were systematically murdered by overdosing on medication, by not treating illnesses, and above all by depriving them of food. Of the 300 girls and women from Hamburg, 257 had died by the end of 1945, 196 of them from Alsterdorf. Of the total of 630 disabled children, women and men transported from Alsterdorf to intermediate institutions or directly to "euthanasia" killing centers, 511 were killed - according to the state of knowledge in 2016.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: AB; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9139 Geburtsregister 1511/1897 Paul Hans Otto Petersen/Jürgensen, 3465 Heiratsregister 865/1923 Paul Hans Otto Jürgensen/ Marie Anna Jensen; Waltraud Häupl, Der organisierte Massenmord an Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Ostmark 1940-1945, Wien 2008, S. 65; Peter von Rönn, Der Transport nach Wien, in: Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 425 ff.; Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 35, 283ff., 331 ff.; Herwig Czech, Erfassung, Selektion und "Ausmerze", Wien 203, S. 89 ff.; Harald Jenner, Michael Wunder, Hamburger Gedenkbuch Euthanasie – Die Toten 1939-1945, Hamburg 2017, S. 284.