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Edgar Neumark * 1886

Grindelallee 21–23 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

1940 Tötungsanstalt Brandenburg
ermordet am 23.9.1940

further stumbling stones in Grindelallee 21–23:
Anna Neumark, Walter Neumark, Richard Neumark, Karl-Heinz Neumark

Edgar Neumark, born 1.9.1886, murdered in the Euthanasia Centre, Brandenburg an der Havel on 23.9.1940
Karl-Heinz Neumark, born on 15.4.1913, murdered in the Euthanasia Centre, Brandenburg an der Havel on 23.9.1940
Richard Neumark, born 1.8.1918, murdered in the Euthanasia Centre, Brandenburg an der Havel 23.9.1940
Walter Neumark, born 1.8.1918, deported to Izbica in 1942, Date of Death unknown.
Anna Neumark, born 27.12.1886, deported to Minsk on 18.11.1941. Date of Death unknown

Stumbling Stones in Hamburg-Rotherbaum, Grindelallee 21–23

The fate of the Neumark family is characterized by the fact that the persecution of Jews, "the hereditary ill” and homosexuals overlap.

Edgar Neumark was born in Hamburg on 1 September 1886 as the youngest son of Meyer Neumark, born 1 May 1849 in Wittmund and his wife, Hanna, née Berwin. Meyer Neumark, who came from a large well established family in Wittmund/East Frisia, had moved to Hamburg with his wife in 1878. According to his communal religious tax record, he was active in the field of "agency and commission” work: in other words, he was a trader. The couple lived at Rappstrasse 10 with Edgar and his older sisters. Fanny Neumark, born on 30 January 1882, a shop clerk by profession, married the business man Max Levinson on 4 April 1919. She died in the State Hospital Friedrichsberg on 5 August 1934. Bertha Neumark, born on 20 June 1883 was a book keeper by profession and married the business man, Ernst Hauptmann, on 4 November 1919.

Some time before the First World War, Edgar Neumark married Anna Levy, the daughter of Louis and Julie Levy (née Hesse) who was about the same age as him. The couple had three sons, Karl-Heinz, born on 15 April 1913, and the twins Richard and Walter, born on 1 August 1918, all born in Hamburg.

The family initially lived for a lengthy period of time at Borgfelder Strasse 67 in the Hamburg district of Borgfelde. Borgfelde was a very new district of the city in which rapid construction work started only in the 1870`s after new streets had been established there. Large tenement blocks were built in closed block style. Whilst upper Borgfelde was bourgeois in structure, mostly socially underprivileged families found accommodation in lower Borgfelde. House No 67 was located more or less in the middle and thus the Neumarks lived exactly on the dividing line between the two parts of Borgfelder Strasse, which corresponded to their social status at the time. Edgar Neumark traded in second hand materials (also known as "raw products”) at Klaus-Groth-Strasse 35, a parallel street to Borgfelder Strasse i.e. he was a scrap dealer. It is not certain whether he owned the business. According to his communal religious tax record, Fanny`s husband, Max Levinson, worked for his brother in law as a dealer in raw products. As the head of the family, Edgar paid taxes to the Jewish Community for several years from 1914 onwards, a fact which indicates that the family had a good income during this period. The period of inflation did not fail to leave its mark on the Neumark family, however. On the contrary, on account of the financial disaster, Edgar suffered from an acute depressive psychosis from which he did not recover for the rest of his life. Starting from 1925, he spent nearly a year in the Friedrichsberg hospital.

It was probably around this time that Anna Neumark began to work as a shoe saleswoman at a shop called M. Rieder for she began paying taxes to the Jewish Religious Community from 1931. The owner of the business, Joseph Levy, may have been a relative. She worked there until the "Aryanisation” of the business and her subsequent dismissal on 30 September 1938. From 1938, she too bore the compulsory Jewish name, Sara

From 1935, the Neumarks lived at Grindelallee 23. However, the five person family probably did not live together at any stage.

Edgar continued to work as a "second hand goods wholeseller” until at least 1938. The father of three was 51 years old at that time. On 29 December 1939 he was admitted to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital again. From there he was transferred to the Langenhorn Nursing and Care Home. Allegedly, he was suffering from "depressive schizophrenia” which could have been the justification for his sterilization in the year 1935.

Karl-Heinz Neumark, Edgar and Anna`s eldest son, had been considered "feeble minded” from an early age. When he was a child he attended the at that time "curative education institution” Kalmenhof in Idstein in the Taunus, a home for handicapped children "capable of being educated”. He was sent back to Hamburg on 25 October 1928 and admitted to the former Alsterdorf institutions with the diagnosis of "congenital feeble mindedness”. He was fifteen years old at the time. He was judged "easy to manage”, well integrated and even able to carry out small masonry and unskilled labour tasks. The diagnosis "congenital mental deficiency” later on led to his being declared incapable of managing his own affairs ("Entmündigung”). After the National Socialists had passed the Genetic Health Law, the Genetic Health Court approved "the sterilization of the patient Karl-Heinz Neumark on 17 April 1935. The surgical intervention of sterilization was performed in June 1935 at the University Hospital Eppendorf. Karl-Heinz Neumark then returned to Alsterdorf.

The twins, Richard and Walter, completed the first few years of primary education at the elementary school in Ausschlägerweg. Because the curriculum there was too difficult for them, they were transferred to the school for backward children at Bülaustrasse 38. On 21 June 1932 Walter and Richard, now 14 years old, had to leave their family and were admitted to the school for backward children "Landheim Besenhorst” near Geesthacht for corrective training. Besenhorst had been built in 1918 as accommodation for unmarried employees of the Dünaberg Gunpowder factory and was then used as a department for backward children of the Hamburg Orphanage. Richard stayed there until 13 July 1935. In the meantime, Walter was transferred on to Landheim Ochsenzoll which was also a branch of the Hamburg Orphanage. On 3 May 1935, the Genetic Health Court approved Richard`s sterilization. Walter was also sterilized.

In the new youth home of the City of Hamburg in Wulfsdorf near Ahrensburg the two twin brothers met again. The City of Hamburg had acquired the Wulfsdorf estate in 1922 with the aim of accommodating all its youth centers there outside of the city. In the end, due to a lack of financial means, only the educational institutions of the Youth Welfare Office were finally relocated there. Within the estate it was hoped that the pupils could be used "beneficially and in an educational way" in workshops, cattle stables and a nursery. Up to 70 youths worked on the estate from 1926 until after the Second World War. The accommodation was barracks like and in line with the ideas of the time. In 1936, Walter and Richard were put to work on various farms. In 1937, Walter had to give up this work and was committed by the welfare office to the Alsterdorf Institutions after a short stay in the Friedrichsberg State Hospital. A dossier diagnosed "congenital feeble mindedness” which finally led to his being declared incapable of managing his own affairs ("Entmündigung”). In his file, it was noted "In his work performance initially less than satisfactory, recently more moderate, more willing though did no more than was absolutely necessary (…) attempted to entice a lower pupil into sexual acts by offering him a slice of bread.”

The Alsterdorf Institutions had developed since 1933 into a model national socialist establishment in which eugenic theories were promoted and, along with these, compulsory sterilization as "prevention of worthless life”. It was only a matter of time until the persecution of Jews in the German Reich also led to corresponding measures in the Alsterdorf Institutions. A judgement of the Reich Fiscal Court on 18 March 1937 served as the pretext to prepare the discharge of all Jews from the Alsterdorf Institutions. The Director of the establishment, Pastor Friedrich Karl Lensch, considered the judgement the danger of losing the charitable tax exemption if Jews stayed in the institutions in the future. A letter to the Hamburg Welfare Authority dated 3 September 1937 included 18 names of "Jewish pupils who are accommodated here at the expense of the Welfare Authority” among them the names of Karl-Heinz and Walter Neumark. Along with 13 other Jewish inhabitants of both sexes, they were initially transferred from Alsterdorf to the Oberaltenallee Care Home. Walter was then transferred on to the Farmsen Care Home on 31 October 1938 and Karl Heinz on 20 May 1940. In April 1940, the Alsterdorf Institutions were finally able to rid themselves of the last Jews living there.

Richard Neumark was sent to the farm of Johannes Schlüter in Tornesch–Ahrenlohe near Pinneberg where he remained until 26 July 1937. Afterwards, according to his own account, he had to leave the farm on account of the Race Laws. He returned to his parents at Grindelallee 23 II.

Richard`s position in the family was difficult because of his long absence and his different religious perceptions. When he appeared in court in 1938 accused of violent abuse, he went on record as saying: "I don`t even look like a Jew. When I say this at home, there is a huge row. These are not my parents at all (..). I was brought up as a Christian and I feel like one. When I was in the institution, I was rebaptized on my own initiative. This is no longer recognized today”. Nonetheless, his parents supported him and, through the Jewish attorney, Max Heinemann, let the court know that, although the intellectual capacities of their son were limited, he was otherwise orderly and domestic. Evidently, they wanted to achieve a mild sentence for him through this. The result of the proceedings is not known.

Richard Neumark worked after that as a scrapworker for various employers and finally, until his arrest, for Höppner ("who collects waste paper at the Alsterhaus department store”). He earned there, as he himself stated, RM 10 per week. He was arrested on 9 August 1938, spent a week in the police jail in Fuhlsbüttel and was committed to pretrial detention on 18 August.

The admission form gives information about his physical appearance. Richard was 1,56m tall, had blonde hair and gray eyes. An appendectomy scar and his sterilization were considered distinguishing marks. He had with him only a wristwatch, a notification to report for military service and 65 pfennigs. He was arrested because he was alleged to have repeatedly accosted a 15 year old school boy and touched him with sexual intentions. The medical officer in attendance, Dr. Pecht, testified that the Neumark family had "three more or less defective sons” and diagnosed Richard as intellectually deficient. At his main hearing on 22 November 1938, Richard was sentenced to five months in jail (less two months for pretrial detention) for an offence under § 185 of the German Penal Code. He spent the remaining three months in the Hamburg-Harburg prison from which he was released on 22 February 1939. His mother visited him once in jail on 2 December 1938. Her son had a very close relationship to her; in a letter whilst he was in pretrial detention, he wrote to his parents: "Please write again. I think so much about Mummy hopefully she is doing well” (ed. Note the brief note has many spelling and punctuation errors).

After his release, Richard worked as an earthworker "in a Jewish labour gang run by the contractor Karl Vogt” until he was again arrested on 29 May 1939. He was supposed to have accosted a 13-year-old schoolboy at Landungsbrücken, embroiled him in an intimate conversation and finally having prevented him from leaving by grabbing him from behind. This time, he was charged with a sex crime under § 176 Abs. 1 Ziff. 3 II StGB and condemned to one year in jail on 18 December 1939 as the "lustful intention” of his behavior was deemed to have been proven. Furthermore, public safety was endangered by his "impulsive lack of inhibition", so that accommodation in a sanatorium and nursing home was ordered. The files repeat the statements from the first trial concerning the defendant Neumark but the formulations had become explicitly sharper; for example, the "character traits of a psychopath” were attested to him. He was said to be "lazy, lacking in self-control, argumentative, thought only of his own advantage, and dirty”. "He could not tolerate reprimands”. The image was drawn of an antisocial, feebleminded Jewish "parasite on the nation” "who came from a hereditarily biologically inferior family” and suffered from "moderately severe imbecility”.

Richard served his sentence in the Altona prison until 29 May 1940; he was then committed to the Langenhorn Nursing and Care Home where his father was already living.

In the spring/summer of 1940, the "Euthanasia" headquarters in Berlin, Tiergartenstraße 4, planned a special campaign against Jews in public and private sanatoriums and nursing homes. It had the Jewish people living in the institutions recorded and moved together in so-called collecting institutions. The Langenhorn Nursing and Care Institution was designated the Collection Institution for Northern Germany. All establishments in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg were instructed to transfer all the Jews living in their institutions to Langenhorn by 18 September 1940. On this date, Karl-Heinz Neumark arrived there from the Farmsen Care Home, too. On 23 September 1940, Karl Heinz, his brother Richard and their father, Edgar, were brought to Brandenburg an der Havel together with 133 other patients of both sexes from Northern German institutions. The transport reached Brandenburg on the same day. In the part of the former prison that had been converted into a gas extermination center, the patients were immediately herded into the gas chamber and murdered with carbon monoxide. Only Ilse Herta Zachmann initially escaped this fate (see separate entry on her).

We do not know whether and/or when relatives were informed of the death of the three men from the Neumark family. In all other communications which have been documented, it was claimed that the person concerned had died in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German). Richard`s criminal file contains the following note: "On 23 September 1940, according to a communication from the Langenhorn Nursing and Care Institution, Neumark has been transferred by order of the Reich Interior Ministry to Chelm near Lublin, Deposit Box 822. Hamburg, 5 March 1943. The Chief States Attorney of the District Court.”

However, the people murdered in Brandenburg had never been in Chelm / Cholm, a city to the East of Lublin. The Polish nursing home that had been there before no longer existed after SS units had murdered almost all the inhabitants on 12 January 1940. In addition, there was no German Registry office there. Its invention and the use of dates of death later than the real ones served to cover up the murders and at the same time to enable the claiming of cost of living expenses for a correspondingly longer period of time.

In March 1943, the Hamburg City Prosecutors Office considered whether the purpose of Richard Neumark`s commitment to Langenhorn had been achieved. It was noted in an annotation: "Since N. was already brought to a Collection Camp in Chelm near Lublin on 23/9.40, we can refrain from any further measures here to determine whether the object of the commitment has been achieved (or not).”

Unlike his father and his two brothers, Walter Neumark was not involved in the 23 September 1940 deportation to Brandenburg. In the course of the relocation from Alsterdorf, Walter finally landed in the Farmsen Care Home via the Oberaltenallee Care Home. From there, he was released to home on 15 May 1939 and worked, according to his own account, in a scrap products warehouse and later in Schnelsen. On 29 November 1940, he was admitted by ambulance to the Alsterdorf Institutions where he stayed until his transfer to the Nursing and Care Home Langenhorn and the onward transfer to the Jewish Nursing and Care Home Bendorf-Sayn near Koblenz on 21 April 1941.

As the result of a decree from the Reich Ministry of the Interior on 12 December 1940, Jews suffering from psychological illness or mental disability who had so far survived were taken in and cared for centrally by the Reich Association of the Jews in Germany in Bendorf-Sayn. The patients of this institution were deported to the East in spring 1942, amongst them Walter Neumark who was brought to the Transit Camp Izbica on 22 March 1942 and murdered either there or in one of the extermination camps (e.g. Sobibor).

On 16 September 1940, the Department of Twin Research at Eppendorf University Hospital was still interested in Richard and Walter Neumark, but the fate of the two brothers had already been sealed, and the request was no longer considered.

Anna Neumark continued to live at Grindelallee 23 until her deportation to Minsk probably alone at the end. She came to Minsk with the second transport from Hamburg leaving on 18 November 1941 and arriving there on 23 November. In Minsk, a special ghetto existed for Jews from Germany. Each person was allotted approximately 1.5 sq. meters; the sanitary and hygienic conditions were catastrophic. Physically able Jews were put to hard labor in the Minsk ghetto. At the time of her arrival in Minsk, Anna Neumark was almost 55 years old. Whether she was put to hard labor, we do not know. Presumably, she was killed not later than 8 March 1943 during the mass execution by firing squad in which a large part of the Jews from Hamburg died. Her sister in law, Bertha and her husband, Ernst Hauptmann, were deported to Minsk on 8 November 1941, already ten days before Anna Neumark. They probably died there.

The couple Anna and Edgar Neumark are entered in the Memorial Book of Hamburg together with their three sons, Karl-Heinz, Richard and Walter. During their lifetimes, they spent only short periods of time together.

We know from Edgar Neumark that he was treated for psychological problems even before the National Socialists came to power. His sons, born in the decade after 1910, were apparently mentally impaired. With the rise of the NSDAP, the authorities' view of family members changed: They no longer saw persons in need of help but rather Jews who ought to be excluded from the German Race Community and as mentally ill people who were "useless mouths to feed” and a homosexual, who, in the view of the ruling powers represented a danger to the community. This family had no chance of survival in Nazi-led Germany. The mental handicaps of the three sons which would have required a special support were declared in a deliberately overstated and excessively exaggerated way as "a danger to the people” and "incurable”. Richards`s convictions too must be seen in this context. Generally, it can be stated that not even the most serious "illness” would have given anyone the right to deport and murder the Neumark family.

Stumbling Stones have been laid for Anna, Edgar, Karl-Heinz, Richard and Walter Neumark in Hamburg-Rotherbaum, Grindelallee 21 -23

Translator: Richard Levy
Updated by Steve Robinson
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.


Stand: September 2019
© Nelly Birgmeier/Sigurd Brieler/Anika Reineke/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); 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht Strafsachen 10611/38 Richard Neumark, 238/40 Richard Neumark; 242-1 II Strafvollzugsanstalten 22594 Richard Neumark; 332-5 Standesämter 2025 Geburtsregister Nr. 509/1882 Fanny Neumark, 2055 Geburtsregister Nr. 2931/1883 Bertha Neumark, 2131 Geburtsregister Nr. 4254/1886 Neumark Richard, 2592 Heiratsregister Nr. 1391/1878 Meyer Joseph Meyer Neumark/Hanna Berwin, 7156 Sterberegister Nr. 790/1934 Fanny Levinson, 8059 Geburtsregister Nr. 349/1920 tot geboren, Eltern Max und Fanny Levinson, 8728 Heiratsregister Nr. 111/1919 Max Levinson/Fanny Neumark, 8730 Heiratsregister Nr. 619/1919 Ernst Hauptmann/Bertha Neumark; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26. 8. 1939 bis 27. 1. 1941; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Nr. 28013 Walter Neumark; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Edgar Neumark der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; Patienten-Karteikarte Walter Neumark der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg, Patientenakte Walter Neumark der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Aufnahme- und Abgangsbücher, Patientenakten V 316, Walter Neumark, Erbgesundheitskarteikarte Karl-Heinz Neumark, Erbgesundheitskarteikarte Walter Neumark; Mitteilung Michael Wunder vom 18.1.2008; Auskunft E-Mail vom 26.1.2008 Hildegard Thevs. Friedlander, Henry, Der Weg zum NS-Genozid. Von der Euthanasie zur Endlösung, Berlin 1997. Dokumentation zur Geschichte der jüdischen Bevölkerung in Rheinland-Pfalz von 1800 bis 1945, S. 265ff. Wunder, Michael, Die Auflösung von Friedrichsberg-Hintergründe und Folgen, in: Hamburger Ärzteblatt (HÄB) 1990 (44). Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen, Erinnern und Gedenken, Kassel 2008, S. 30. http,//www.stgeorg-borgfelde.de/seiten/geschichte/der-stadtteil-borgfelde.php (Zugriff 20.1.2008).
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