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Julchen Levi * 1888

Bremer Reihe 24 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

1941 Riga

further stumbling stones in Bremer Reihe 24:
Emma Levi

Emma Levi, born on 29 May 1892 in Hamburg, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Stolperstein in Hamburg-St. Georg, at Bremer Reihe 24

Emma Levi was the youngest daughter of the butcher and horse dealer Saly Levi, born on 14 Mar. 1864 in Altenstädt, today a district of Naumburg in North Hessen. His wife Jette, née Fränkel, born on 27 Jan. 1862, came from Ehrenberg. It was not possible to determine which Ehrenberg it was. The Levi couple must have immigrated to Hamburg during the 1880s. They were of the Jewish faith.

Emma’s older sisters Julchen, called Frieda, born on 12 Nov. 1888, and Giedchen, born on 30 Mar. 1890, were born in Glashüttenstrasse 4 in the Hamburg St. Pauli quarter. Selma, born on 4 June 1891 at Glashüttenstrasse 105, followed soon after, and the family moved their residence from Hamburg-Neustadt to Koppel 85 in St. Georg, a workers’ quarter. Emma Levi was born there on 29 May 1892 at Bremerstrasse 16. Three months later, her sister Selma died at the age of only one year and three months.

In July 1910, the family relocated their residence to Bremer Reihe 24, also in St. Georg. One and a half years later, on 4 Oct. 1911, as the three Levi girls had just come or were coming of age, respectively, their father Saly died at the age of 47. Saly’s widow Jette kept the apartment on Bremer Reihe until the end of her life on 9 Oct. 1920.

Emma Levi was sickly all her life.

We have no information about Emma’s school days. The Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg) certified that she had been intelligent. Emma learned the trade of a hat maker.

Emma Levi increasingly developed into a "problem child.” In Dec. 1914, she had to undergo gynecological surgery. In 1915, she complained about the feeling of "numb fingers.” In 1917, she was treated at St. Georg General Hospital because of a skin disease that spread throughout her entire body. A further hospital stay followed shortly afterward on suspicion of a sexually transmitted disease, which was confirmed in 1919. As her sister Julchen later reported at the Friedrichsberg State Hospital, Emma had an extended relationship with a man who had probably infected her.

Jette Levi died on 9 Oct. 1920 at the age of 58. Julchen and Emma Levi kept the apartment on Bremer Reihe even after the death of their mother. Julchen remained unmarried. She worked as a cashier, later as a private secretary. Giedchen, the third Levi daughter, married the non-Jewish director of music Karl Stoppauer from Vienna in 1923. She probably left her hometown after the wedding.

Emma Levi’s health did not improve in the years following her mother’s death. She suffered from the consequences of the 1919 infection. Various therapeutic approaches were attempted in the hospital, some of which led to temporary successes, so that Emma was able to convalesce in Feb. 1928 in the Kollow convalescent home, located between Geesthacht and Schwarzenbek.

In Nov. 1928, Emma Levi was admitted to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital because of severe excitement. She was constantly irritable and "unfriendly to very hateful” toward her fellow patients. At the beginning of 1930, she suffered from various fever attacks that lasted for months. In July 1933, Professor Wilhelm Weygandt, the head of the Friedrichsberg State Hospital, was of the opinion that "The patient Emma Levi [...] is in need of institutional care for an unforeseeable period of time; she cannot be discharged.”

At the beginning of 1935, the therapy options for the chronic inflammation of nerve tissue for which Emma Levi was diagnosed were exhausted. She was transferred to the Farmsen care home (Versorgungsheim Farmsen), where she lived for the next few years.

In the spring/summer of 1940, the "euthanasia” headquarters in Berlin, located at Tiergartenstrasse 4, planned a special operation aimed against Jews in public and private sanatoriums and nursing homes. It had the Jewish persons living in the institutions registered and moved together in what were officially so-called collection institutions. The Hamburg-Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt” Hamburg-Langenhorn) was designated the North German collection institution. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg were ordered to move the Jews living in their facilities there by 18 Sept. 1940.

Emma Levi arrived in Langenhorn on 18 Sept. 1940. On 23 Sept. 1940, she was transported with another 135 patients from the North German institutions to Brandenburg/Havel. The transport reached the city in the Mark (March) on the same day. In the part of the former penitentiary that had been converted into a gas-killing facility, the patients were immediately driven into the gas chamber and murdered with carbon monoxide. Only Ilse Herta Zachmann escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

It is not known whether, and if so, when relatives became aware of Emma Levi’s death. In all documented death notices, it was claimed that the person concerned had died in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German). In addition, the dates of death provided were postdated. Those murdered in Brandenburg, however, were never in Chelm/Cholm, a town east of Lublin. Also, there was no German records office in Chelm. Its fabrication and the use of postdated dates of death served to disguise the killing operation and at the same time enabled the authorities to claim higher care expenses for periods extended accordingly.

Emma’s sister Julchen also perished in the Holocaust. In Dec. 1941, she belonged to the 753 Jews of Hamburg who were deported to Riga and did not return from there. A Stolperstein commemorates her at the location of her last residence at Bremer Reihe 24.

Emma’s sister Giedchen apparently survived the Holocaust protected by marriage to her non-Jewish spouse. She died on 11 Jan. 1980 at the age of 90 in Prien/Chiemsee.

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

Stand: March 2020
© Ingo Wille/Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 9; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer 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); 213-13 Landgericht Hamburg Wiedergutmachung 3144 Julchen Levi, 3145 Giedchen Stoppauer geb. Levi; 332-5 Standesämter 314 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 3190/1892 Selma Levi, 821 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 1388/1920 Lette Levi, 2182 Geburtsregisterauszug Nr. 5386/1888 Julchen Levi, 2278 Geburtsregisterauszug Nr. 1571/1892 Emma Levi, 3455 Heiratsregisterauszug Nr. 596/1923 Giedchen Levi/Karl Stoppauer, 6902 Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 1104/1911 Saly Levi, 9058 Geburtsregisterauszug Nr. 726/1890 Giedchen Levi, 9069 Geburtsregisterauszug Nr. 1435/1891 Selma Levi, 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 54712 Giedchen Stoppauer; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1 1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.39 bis 27.1.1941; UKE/IGEM, Patienten-Karteikarte Emma Levi der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; UKE/IGEM, Patientenakte Emma Levi der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; Standesamt Prien am Chiemsee, Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 18/1980 Giedchen Stoppauer.
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