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Betty Meyer * 1875

Wexstraße 29 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
BETTY MEYER
JG. 1875
EINGEWIESEN 1935
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

further stumbling stones in Wexstraße 29:
Herbert Meyer

Betty Meyer, born on 15 Oct. 1875 in Hamburg, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Stolperstein in Hamburg-Neustadt, at Wexstrasse 29

Betty Meyer was born on 15 Oct. 1875 as the daughter of the merchant Adolph Meyer, born on 21 May 1849, and his wife Mathilde, née Wolffsohn, born on 8 Sept. 1843. Natives of Hamburg, the parents had married there on 5 May 1874 and they were of the Jewish faith. When Betty was born, the Meyer couple lived at Wexstrasse 29 in Hamburg-Neustadt.

Betty Meyer got her first name after her maternal grandmother. Only sparse information is available about Betty’s life. Her father died when she was four years old, on 17 Nov. 1879 in the Friedrichsberg "lunatic asylum” ("Irrenanstalt Friedrichsberg”). He had asked his wife to have guardians appointed for Betty in the event of his death. Betty’s mother agreed, especially since she did not want to become her daughter’s guardian herself. In 1882, the merchants Hermann Simonsen and Julius Cronheim, who resided at Alter Wall 48, took over the guardianship of Betty Meyer. Mother and daughter had no assets whatsoever. Mathilde Meyer traded in lottery tickets. But this earned her so little money that both had to be supported by their family. The guardianship relationship ended in 1896 with Betty’s coming of age.

Mathilde Meyer, Betty’s mother, died on 23 July 1914 in her apartment at Grindelallee 110, where she had lived since around 1905.

Fourteen years later, in June 1928, Betty Meyer became a patient of the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg). Her patient file card contains the note indicating "without profession.” This meant that she had no occupation or, respectively, was not employed. We do not know the reason and duration of the stay in this institution. Nor do we know where she had lived from her mother’s death until her admission to Friedrichsberg.

Betty Meyer remained in Friedrichsberg for seven years until she had to change to the Langenhorn State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn) on 7 June 1935. She lived there for the next five 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. After all Jewish patients from the North German institutions had arrived in Langenhorn, they were taken to Brandenburg/Havel on 23 Sept. 1940, together with the Jewish patients who had lived there for some time. Among them was Betty Meyer. On the same day, the patients were killed with carbon monoxide in the part of the former penitentiary converted into a gas-killing facility. Only one patient, Ilse Herta Zachmann, escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

It is not known whether, and if so, when relatives became aware of Betty Meyer’s death. It was noted on the birth register entry of Betty Meyer that her death had been registered on 11 Feb. 1941. The records office "Cholm II (General Government [in Poland])” allegedly registered the death under no. 304/1941. Those murdered in Brandenburg, however, were never in Cholm (Polish Chelm), a town east of Lublin. The former Polish sanatorium there no longer existed after SS units had murdered almost all patients on 12 Jan. 1940. 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.

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

© 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); 232-1 Vormundschaftsbehörde Serie III_1206 Betty Meyer; 332-3 Zivilstandsaufsicht A 213 Geburtsregister Nr. 7818/1875 Betty Meyer; 332-5 Standesämter 8020 Sterberegister Nr. 336/1914 Mathilde Meyer geb. Wolffsohn; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.1939 bis 27.1.1941; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Betty Meyer der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg.
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