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Ernestine Levy (née Hirsch) * 1863

ohne Hamburger Adresse

ermordet am 23.9.1940 in der Tötungsanstalt Brandenburg an der Havel

further stumbling stones in ohne Hamburger Adresse :
Dr. Hans Bloch, Felix Cohn, Moraka Farbstein, Erland Walter Friedmann, Richard Guth, Martha Havelland, Albert Hirsch, Auguste Hirschkowitz, Sophie Kasarnowsky, Richard Levy, Hannchen Lewin, Bronislawa Luise Dorothea Mattersdorf, Karl Friedrich Michael, Lucie Rothschild, Dorothea Dorthy Silberberg, Wilhelm Süsser, Anna Luise (Louise Hedwig) Weimann, Salo Weinberg

Ernestine Levy, née Hirsch, born on 24 Oct. 1863 in Glogau, murdered on 23 Sept 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Without Stolperstein

No information can be found about Ernestine Levy except her date of birth. We do not know anything about her parents or other relatives, about her living conditions in Hamburg, about her marriage or her husband.

Ernestine Levy was born as Ernestine Hirsch on 24 Oct. 1863 in Glogau (today Glogow in Poland) about 100 kilometers (some 62 miles) northwest of Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland). In 1920 or 1921, she was admitted twice to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg). An entry on her patient file card in the occupation column indicated "restroom attendant’s wife” ("Toilethauswärtersfrau”). This might refer to the occupational designation of her husband, about whom nothing else is known. From her presence at the Friedrichsberg State Hospital, one can conclude that she was mentally ill. The job title indicates that she lived in poor circumstances.

On 31 Jan. 1925, Ernestine Levy was transferred from Friedrichsberg to the Langenhorn State Hospital. We do not know if she was a patient there in the following years. Her Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) file card shows that in the summer of 1935, she stayed for about two months in the diaconal Anscharhöhe Asylum (Anstalt Anscharhöhe) at Tarpenbekstrasse 107, at the time in the Prussian town of Lokstedt, today Hamburg-Eppendorf. Ernestine Levy returned to Langenhorn in Oct. 1935. It can be assumed that she remained in the Langenhorn State Hospital without interruption until 1940.

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 State Hospital, by then renamed 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. One of them was Ernestine Levy. On the same day, they 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 Ernestine Levy’s death. In all documented death notices, it was claimed that the person concerned had died in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German), a town east of Lublin. The murdered persons, however, were never in Chelm/Cholm. 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.

An address of Ernestine Levy in Hamburg is not known, so that no individual place can be determined where she could be commemorated with a Stolperstein.

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

© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 9; 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); 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.1939 bis 27.1.1941; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Ernestine Levy der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg.
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