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Wanda Hoffmann (née Malinowsky) * 1894

August-Krogmann-Straße 100 (Versorgungsheim Farmsen) (Wandsbek, Farmsen-Berne)

HIER WOHNTE
WANDA HOFFMANN
GEB. MALINOWSKY
EINGEWIESEN 1940
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

further stumbling stones in August-Krogmann-Straße 100 (Versorgungsheim Farmsen):
Ludwig Döpking, Richard Elkeles, Martin Lentfer, Gustav Remi

Wanda Hoffmann, née Malinowski, born on 24 May 1894 (1890) in Leibitsch (today Lubicz Dolny in Poland), murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Stolperstein in Hamburg-Farmsen, August-Krogmann-Strasse 100 (former Farmsen care home)

Wanda Hoffmann was born in Leibitsch near Thorn (today Torun in Poland) on 24 May 1894 (1890 according to other sources) as the daughter of the farmer and sawmill owner Joachim Malinowski and his wife Monika, née Geschanske. The parents were of the Jewish faith.

Wanda Hoffmann’s school education ended with attendance of the third grade (at that time, the first grade was the highest). At the age of 17, she married Emil Hoffmann, a Protestant road worker (construction worker) 34 years her senior, who allegedly earned a good income. Wanda had two children with him. When she was 22 years old, she left her husband and children. She is said to have roamed the markets and lived with a trader for five years. Wanda Hoffmann repeatedly came into conflict with the law. Between 1910 and 1937, she was convicted more than 50 times for fornication, fraud, embezzlement, theft, defamation, resistance, bodily harm, damage to property, and unauthorized sale in taverns. She contracted sexually transmitted diseases and became an alcoholic. As a result of alcohol poisoning, she was transferred to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg) in 1929.

In 1931, Käthe Petersen of the Hamburg welfare authority pushed for Wanda Hoffmann’s incapacitation, which was decided on 24 June 1931 by the District Court (Amtsgericht) on the grounds of "feeblemindedness” ("Geistesschwäche”) during a prison term in the Fuhlsbüttel women’s prison. Until the end of the Nazi regime, Käthe Petersen, who had already worked in the Hamburg social administration before the National Socialists came to power, placed "mentally frail” or "socially adverse” women and girls in closed institutions. In more than 600 cases, she pushed for their forced sterilization in accordance with the "Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” ("Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses”) dated 14 July 1933.

After serving her sentence, Wanda Hoffmann was transferred to the Hamburg-Farmsen care home (Versorgungsheim) on 9 Sept. 1931. In Apr. 1933, after a stay at the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg), she was transferred to the Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn). From there, she was discharged on 16 June 1933. Nothing is known about her life until her subsequent readmission to Langenhorn in Sept. 1937. On 22 Nov. 1937, Wanda Hoffmann was transferred to the Lübeck-Strecknitz "sanatorium” ("Heilanstalt”). Apparently, she made herself so useful in Strecknitz that staff did not want to manage without the performance of the "working patient.” The institution in Strecknitz submitted the following application to the Langenhorn State Hospital on 12 Apr. 1938:

"The pat.[ient] has a dental bridge that replaces all missing lower incisors and that has loosened considerably recently. She is a working patient. As the ingestion of food is therefore considerably more difficult, we consider it necessary to repair the bridge and ask for the costs to be covered.” After some back and forth, Langenhorn turned the application down.

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.

Wanda Hoffmann arrived in Langenhorn from Strecknitz on 16 Sept. 1940. On 23 Sept. 1940 she was transported to Brandenburg/Havel together with 135 other patients. In the part of the former penitentiary converted into a gas-killing facility, the patients were driven into the gas chamber on the same day 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 Wanda Hoffmann’s death. In all documented death notices, it was claimed that the person concerned had died in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German). Those murdered in Brandenburg, however, were never in Chelm/Cholm, 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.

For Wanda Hoffmann no freely chosen address in Hamburg is known. Therefore, her Stolperstein is located in the area of the former Farmsen care home, at August-Krogmann-Strasse 100, where she spent several years.

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

© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 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); 242-4 Kriminalbiologische Sammelstelle 427 Wanda Hoffmann; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1 1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.39 bis 27.1.1941; Abl. 1 1995 18971 Wanda Hoffmann; IMGWF Archiv, Patientenakte Wanda Hoffmann; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig.
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