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Heinrich Zöhrens mit seiner Mutter
© Privatbesitz

Heinrich Zöhrens * 1910

Gravensteiner Straße 3 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
HEINRICH ZÖHRENS
JG. 1910
SEIT 1937 MEHRERE
VERSORGUNGSHEIME
"VERLEGT"
LANDESHEILANSTALT
MESERITZ-OBRAWALDE
ERMORDET 5.2.1943

further stumbling stones in Gravensteiner Straße 3:
Hans-Erich Breng

Karl Heinrich Zöhrens, born on 30 Dec. 1910, committed on 19 Nov. 1937 to the care home on Norderstrasse, transferred on 9 July 1938 to the care home on Oberaltenallee, transferred to the Meseritz-Obrawalde State Mental Institution, murdered there on 5 Feb. 1943

Gravensteiner Strasse 3, Eimsbüttel (formerly Altona)

Karl Andreas Heinrich Zöhrens was born on 30 Dec. 1910 in Altona as the son of the baker Karl Andreas Heinrich Zöhrens and his wife Erna Maria, née Itensohn. The father, born in 1885, came from Eckernförde, the mother was born in Heide/Holstein in 1889. On 29 May 1909, the couple had married at the Altona records office. Heinrich Zöhrens was disabled from birth. He had three sisters; in Aug. 1909, his older sister Alice was born, followed by sisters Lilly and Lieselotte in 1912 and 1914.

Starting in Dec. 1917, the family lived at Gravensteiner Strasse 3 in Altona near Alsenplatz square (today Eimsbüttel).

On 22 Sept. 1936, Erna Maria Zöhrens passed away. About one year later, on 19 Nov. 1937, Heinrich, by then 26 years old, was committed to the care home at Norderstrasse 23, which was accommodated in former barracks in Altona. At this place lived 350 men and women in need of care.

On 9 July 1938, Heinrich Zöhrens was transferred from there to the Oberaltenallee state care home.

Mar. 1941 saw the beginning of transports of several hundred people from the public care homes to external asylums and nursing homes. After the first phase of "euthanasia” mass murders in killing centers of the "T4 operation” ("Aktion T4”) equipped with gas chambers – named after the address of the Berlin main office at Tiergartenstrasse 4 – was terminated in Aug. 1941 following public protests, the state-organized murder of disabled and mentally ill women, men, and children considered "unworthy of life” ("lebensunwert") according to Nazi ideology was continued in 1941 in a decentralized way at state mental hospitals by means of malnutrition and lethal doses of medications. The Meseritz-Obrawalde State Mental Institution near the chief district town of Meseritz in the West Prussian Province of Brandenburg was converted into a killing center in late 1941/early 1942. Patients committed there were murdered predominantly with drugs such as Phenobarbital (Luminal).

From the home on Oberaltenallee, too, people were transported off to the killing centers. Heinrich Zöhrens came to Meseritz-Obrawalde. It is on record in the registers of death of the Meseritz-Obrawalde State Mental Institution, where Heinrich Zöhrens was on file under no. 101/43, that he died there on 5 Feb. 1943 at 1 p.m., allegedly of "pneumonia.” The sleep-inducing drug Phenobarbital (Luminal), used specifically for killing, in combination with the systematic malnutrition initiated at the same time, resulted in the patients dying of pneumonia within a short time. Heinrich Zöhrens was murdered at the age of 32.


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

Stand: April 2018
© Birgit Gewehr

Quellen: Landesarchiv Berlin, F Rep. 119 Dokumentation zu den Sterbeeinträgen des Standesamtes Meseritz-Obrawalde; AB Hamburg und Altona; Diercks, "Euthanasie", S. 36 f.; Gespräche und Korrespondenz mit Ronni Pickenpack, Nichte, 2013; Harald Jenner, Die Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Mesetz-Obrawalde – Der unbekannte Tötungssort, in: "Euthanasieverbrechen"-Verbrechen im besetzten Europa, Hrsg. Osterloh, Schulte, Steinbacher, Göttingen 2022, S. 97 ff.