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Rolf Hink * 1922

Lange Straße 20 (Altona, Altona-Altstadt)

HIER WOHNTE
ROLF HINK
JG. 1922
EINGEWIESEN 1938
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
‚VERLEGT‘ 28.7.1941
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
27.11.1941 ‚HEILANSTALT‘
TIEGENHOF / GNIEZNO
ERMORDET 7.8.1942

Rolf Hink, born 22.3.1922 in Hamburg, admitted to the former Alsterdorf Asylum (‘Alsterdorfer Anstalten’, now ‘Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf’) on 7.6.1938, transferred to the Sanatorium and Nursing home Hamburg-Langenhorn (‘Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn’) on 28.7.1941, deported from there on 27.11.1941 to the Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof (polish: Dziekanka) near Gnesen (polish: Gniezno), died there on 7.8.1942

Lange Straße 20 (Altona-Alstadt) (formerly Kleine Elbstraße 22)

Rolf Gustav Otto (callname Rolf) Hink was born in Hamburg on 22 March 1922. He lived with his parents at Kleine Elbstraße 22 (now Lange Straße 20) in Altona-Altstadt. His mother, Lina Gertaline Friederike Hink, née Laps, born on 21 July 1894 in Brake, and his father, the shipbroker Friedrich Johann Emil Hink, born on 23 July 1896 in Altona, had married on 22 January 1921 in Altona.

Rolf Hink was admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum on 7 June 1938. His medical records are no longer available. The little we know comes from two sources: Firstly, from a file card (referred to as a ‘hereditary health file card’ or ‘Sippschaftstafel’), which was created for the Hamburg health passport archive set up from 1934 (under National Socialism, a ‘hereditary biology inventory’ of the health authorities was intended to provide information about the hereditary burden of ‘Sippen’ = obsolete for families/blood relatives). The second source is a statement made by his mother in May 1968 in the preliminary proceedings against the former director of the Alsterdorf Asylum, Pastor Friedrich Karl Lensch, and the then organiser of patient transports at the health authorities, Gerhard Kurt Struve.

There, Rolf Hink's mother reported that her son had fallen ill at polio at the age of two and was then ‘mentally retarded’, but that he had been able to attend an auxiliary school (now a special school) in Altona. At the age of 16, he was confirmed in the main church in Altona. After his parents saw during a visit to what was then the Alsterdorf Asylum that many patients were doing proper work on the institution grounds, they gave their son there so that he could ‘learn a craft profession’.

Rolf Hink's father died in Altona General Hospital a few months after his son was admitted to Alsterdorf on 18 October 1938. From then on, his mother was solely responsible for him.

Rolf Hink's above-mentioned index file shows that he was paralysed on one side. He was also diagnosed with imbecility (a term for moderate mental disability) and epilepsy caused by congenital syphilis. It was said that he had no school knowledge and only had relationships with the environment to the extent that he acted out his agitated states on it. He is said to have caused great difficulties in care because he had to be constantly supervised. Rolf Hink was judged to be incurably ill. He could not be called upon to do any work.

On 28 July 1941, at least 50 men were initially transferred from the Alsterdorf Asylum to the Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home. Rolf Hink was one of them. Three days later, another transport followed with at least 20 women. The patients were taken to Langenhorn in buses operated by the ‘Gemeinnützige Krankentransport-Gesellschaft’ (GeKraT).

Michael Wunder, who has researched the history of the murdered Alsterdorf patients, pointed out that the transports, which mainly consisted of particularly weak people who were unable to work, had been compiled according to the registration forms sent to the ‘Euthanasia’ centre at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. Pastor Lensch, then head of the Alsterdorf Asylum, had then received a corresponding list of transport participants from the Hamburg health authorities. Health Senator Ofterdinger had assur ed him that it was merely a transfer to relieve the burden on the Alsterdorf Asylum and to make good use of the empty beds in Langenhorn.
Nevertheless, excitement spread among the inmates when the GeKraT buses drove onto the grounds of the Alsterdorf Asyl um. Due to the church protests against ‘euthanasia’, which had reached their peak throughout the Reich at this time, and information from institutions in southern and eastern Germany, the killing operations were also well known among the carers at the Alsterdorf Asylum and, through them, to some of the inmates. Lensch therefore wrote a circular to all carers in which he described the removal as an ‘administrative act’ that had ‘nothing to do with other measures’. The nursing staff had to acknowledge receipt of this circular.

Despite the justification, four months later Rolf Hink and other men and women from Langenhorn were transferred to the Tiegenhof (Dziekanka) ‘Gau-Heilanstalt’ near Gnesen (Gniezno). The Hamburg Euthanasia Memorial Book contains the names of 66 former Alsterdorf patients who were taken to Tiegenhof on this transport. (Four of the total of 70 Alsterdorf patients had died in Langenhorn before the transport). In total, more than 200 people were transported from the Sanatorium and Nursing home Langenhorn to the ‘Gauheilanstalt Tiegenhof’ in several transports between 26 September and 27 November 1941. The Hamburg Euthanasia Memorial Book lists 206 people.

The Dziekanka psychiatric hospital near Gniezno had been occupied by the German Wehrmacht in October 1939 and was given the name ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’. Until the summer/autumn of 1941, the Germans murdered the Polish patients in several operations. When the Hamburgers arrived at Tiegenhof, they too met the same fate. They were killed through systematic starvation, overdoses of medication and neglect. There were separate killing rooms in the Tiegenhof accommodation centres, where the defenceless and exhausted victims were injected with lethal drugs, administered by enema or dissolved in soup.

In the investigation proceedings against Lensch and Struve in 1968, Rolf Hink's mother Lina gave an impression of the conditions in the Tiegenhof institution under which Rolf Hink and others lived and were put to death. According to the interrogation protocol, she stated: ‘In the summer of 1941, he was transferred to AK Ochsenzoll. [AK Ochsenzoll' was the post-war name of the Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing home, which was also used as an auxiliary hospital for somatic patients from 1939]. It was said at the time that this hospital was safer because of the danger of aeroplanes. My son spent about 4 to 5 months in AK Ochsenzoll. After that, he was transferred unexpectedly and without my knowledge to the Tiegenhof institution near Gnesen. I received a letter from the management of AK Ochsenzoll stating that this transfer had been necessary because of the increased danger of air raids. I then visited my son in Tiegenhof at Whitsun 1942. I stayed with him for about 8 days. I was allowed to visit him every morning and afternoon. He was emaciated to a skeleton. He had large open wounds on his legs. I realised immediately that all the patients were receiving inadequate medical care. In Tiegenhof I also recognised many former patients of the Alsterdorf Asylum. They all looked miserable and run-down. My son and other patients complained that they were only given sour cabbage and a kind of watery soup to eat every day. With a heavy heart I left my son again and went home. At the beginning of August 1942 I received a letter from the management of the TIEGENHOF institution. I was informed that my son Rolf had dysentery and was seriously ill. I immediately travelled by train to TIEGENHOF. I was admitted to his bedside. He was no longer responsive but was still alive. He was breathing deeply and calmly. His eyes were closed. He made an apathetic impression on me. I sat at his bedside from 10.00 in the morning until 06.00 in the evening. He didn't even regain consciousness. I asked the ward doctor whether my son had woken up again. He told me verbatim that I would never forget those words again in my life: ‘He's due!’
I could vividly imagine what this implication meant. I think the ward doctor was Polish. While I was sitting by my son's bed, I noticed that he smelled strongly of morphine. The next morning I wanted to visit Rolf again. I was told that he had died and was lying in the mortuary. I saw him again in the mortuary. He made a peaceful impression. He was already lying in a wooden coffin. At my request, I had Rolf buried in the hospital cemetery within 24 hours. I then received his death certificate from the administration of the Tiegenhof institution.
That is all I can say about the fate of my son Rolf. I couldn't shake off the feeling that not only my son Rolf, but also other inmates of the Tiegenhof institution were deliberately starved to death in this way. They should just die.’

Rolf Hink died on 7 August 1942 at the age of 20. The cause of death stated on his death certificate was ‘febrile intestinal catarrh’.

Neither Pastor Lensch nor Kurt Struve had to answer in court for their involvement in the ‘euthanasia’ of those entrusted to their care.

Translation: Ingo Wille
Stand: January 2025
© Karin Gutjahr

Quellen: Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 332-5 Standesämter, 6295 Geburtsregister Nr. 2238/1896 (Friedrich Johann Emil Hink), Sta. Altona I, Nr. 1434/1938 (Friedrich Johann Emil Hink), Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf Archiv, Erbgesundheitskartei von Rolf Hink; Strafverfahren gegen Friedrich Lensch und Kurt Struve, Protokoll der Vernehmung von Lina Hink. Hamburger Gedenkbuch Euthanasie, S. 254 (Rolf Hink). Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 269 ff.