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Max Zucker in Anstaltskleidung, 1922
© UKE/IGEM

Max Zucker * 1891

Schwenckestraße 3 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
MAX ZUCKER
JG. 1891
EINGEWIESEN 1940
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

Max Zucker, born on 18 Aug. 1891 in Berlin, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel "euthanasia” killing center

Stolperstein in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel, at Schwenckestrasse 3

Max Zucker was born in Berlin as the second youngest child of the Jewish married couple Baruch, called Bruno, and Minna Zucker, née Altmann. The merchant Baruch Zucker and Minna Altmann had married in 1882. Their marriage produced seven children: Sara Selma, born on 27 July 1883; Hermann, born on 10 Sept. 1884; Franz, born on 16 Oct. 1885; Eva, born 31 Aug. 1886; Margarete, born on 23 Mar. 1889; Max, born on 18 Aug. 1891; and Gertrud, born 4 Aug. 1896.

Max Zucker suffered as a child from the "English disease” (also known as rickets). He learned to walk and talk late. He was also impaired in his development by stuttering. At about the age of 12, a permanent curvature of the spine occurred. After seven years of schooling in a public municipal school, he changed to a private school to finish his one-year graduating class ("Einjähriges”), the former term for the intermediate school-leaving certificate ("mittlere Reife”). When he was later admitted to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg), Max Zucker attributed the onset of epilepsy to excessively strict school requirements. The seizures occurred about every four weeks. At the age of 18, Max Zucker began his odyssey through hospitals and sanatoriums. He was treated at the Berlin Charité and admitted to the Brandenburg Provincial Institute for Epileptics in Potsdam. There he worked in the fruit tree nursery. At his request, his parents took him out of the institution and sent him to stay with his brother Hermann in Hamburg.

The Hamburg directory listed Hermann Zucker since its 1910 edition, so that he must have lived in Hamburg as early as 1909. He had a stake in the Fränkel, Huber & Co. export company, which he later took over completely. In 1920, he had married the Lutheran Anna Amanda Lüth. The couple lived at Schwenckestrasse 3 in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel for many years.

Around 1911, Max Zucker was employed as an apprentice by the Hamburg-based Luft, Maack & Co. import and export company, but he lost that position after a short time due to a dispute with a fellow apprentice. As a result, Hermann Zucker accepted his brother Max into his own company, but even this employment did not seem to have lasted long. In Nov. 1911, Max Zucker was admitted for 12 days to hospital, the Lohmühlenkrankenhaus (later Allgemeines Krankenhaus St. Georg, today Asklepios Klinik St. Georg). He suffered from seizures at intervals of four to five weeks, which resulted in unconsciousness, tongue bites, and impaired memory. On 6 May 1912, he was once again admitted to the Lohmühlenkrankenhaus. A few days later, another patient mocked Max Zucker for his Jewish religion. The conflict ended in a brawl with the result that both patients were discharged on 20 June 1912.

By this time, Max’ mother, Minna Zucker, had already passed away (on 23 May 1911); his father, Baruch Zucker, died on 14 Feb. 1913.

At this point, Hermann Zucker sent his brother to stay with a relative in Manchester. There Max attended several further education institutions. New seizures were treated on an outpatient basis. The stay in Britain lasted about nine months. Back in Germany, Max Zucker performed hard physical labor. After another seizure, he was admitted for half a year to the Dr. Leubuscher & Unger private sanatorium in Hoppegarten near Berlin, then briefly to the Brandenburg "lunatic asylum” (Irrenanstalt) in Teupitz. The following years, he lived in the private clinic of Dr. Wiener in Bernau, first in the open ward, from 1914 to 1922 in the closed ward.

In Aug. 1922, Max Zucker’s state of health was deemed to have improved and he was discharged. He went to Hamburg to look for work and resided there as a subtenant. When he had another seizure, his landlady would not keep him in the house. He was then taken to the St. Georg hospital. According to the doctors, Max was not aware of the severity and hopelessness of his suffering. Toward the end of his stay in St. Georg, epileptic seizures were no longer observed. A further treatment in an acute-care hospital did not appear helpful, but because of the further need for care, he was transferred to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital on 22 Sept. 1922. He spent nearly six years there. Nothing was recorded about changes in his clinical picture.

On 16 Mar. 1928, Max Zucker was transferred to the Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn), another three years later, on 18 June 1931, to the Hamburg department of the Lübeck-Strecknitz "sanatorium” ("Hamburgische Abteilung der Lübischen Heilanstalt Strecknitz”). Based on an agreement with Lübeck, the Hanseatic City of Hamburg had financed new buildings in the Lübeck-Strecknitz "sanatorium” in 1930 on a loan basis and secured the extensive right to occupy these "Hamburg houses.”

The Strecknitz documents on Max Zucker show that he had been incapacitated in 1923. His brother Hermann had been appointed as his asset custodian, and a Hamburg banker had been appointed as his legal guardian. In 1933, the Lübeck Rabbi Winter took over the guardianship, in 1938 the banker Simson Carlebach.

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.

Max Zucker arrived in Langenhorn on 16 Sept. 1940. On 23 September, he was taken to Brandenburg/Havel with a further 135 patients from North German institutions. The transport reached the city in the March (Mark) on the same day. In the part of the former penitentiary that had been converted into a gas-killing facility, the patients were immediately driven into the gas chamber and murdered with carbon monoxide. Only Ilse Herta Zachmann escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

It is not known when relatives became aware of Max Zucker’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.

On the birth register entry of Max Zucker it was noted that the records office I Berlin (West) registered his death under number 4155/1959. According to this, he allegedly died on 2 Feb. 1941 in Chelm near Lublin/Poland. A Berlin records office issued a death certificate in 1959, which also still contains the false information found on the birth certificate.

We know that at least four of Max Zucker’s siblings died in the Holocaust: Sara Selma and Margarete Zucker were deported from Berlin to Auschwitz on 3 Mar. 1943, with them probably Gertrud Zucker as well. However, the Memorial Book of the Federal Archives mentions a different year of birth for Gertrud Zucker besides the same residential district and the same date of deportation. Eva Zucker, married name Kempner, was deported to Theresienstadt on 3 Oct. 1942 and to Auschwitz on 23 Jan. 1943. Franz Zucker fled to the Netherlands. From there, he was deported to Auschwitz on 6 Mar. 1944. Through his marriage to a Christian woman, Hermann Zucker lived in a so-called "non-privileged mixed marriage” ("nichtprivilegierte Mischehe”), which probably protected him from deportation for years. We have no information about his fate. His wife, Anna Amanda Sophie, née Lüth, survived.

A Stolperstein in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel at Schwenckestrasse 3 commemorates Max Zucker.

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

Stand: June 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 7; 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); 332-5 Standesämter 2334 Geburtsregister Nr. 829/1894 Anna Amanda Sophie Lüth, 6576 Heiratsregister Nr. 476/1920 Hermann Zucker/Anna Amanda Sophie Lüth; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.1939 bis 27.1.1941; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Max Zucker der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patientenakte Max Zucker der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; IMGWF Lübeck, Archiv, Patientenakte Max Zucker der Heilanstalt Lübeck-Strecknitz; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig; Landesarchiv Berlin, Heiratsregister Nr. 367/1882 Baruch Zucker/Minna Altmann, Geburtsregister Nr. 829/1883 Sara Selma Zucker, Geburtsregister Nr. 885/1884 Hermann Zucker, Geburtsregister Nr. 1033/1885 Franz Zucker, Geburtsregister Nr. 782/1886 Eva Zucker, Geburtsregister Nr. 291/1889 Margarete Zucker, Geburtsregister Nr. 631/1891 Max Zucker, Geburtsregister Nr. 891/1896 Gertrud Zucker, Sterberegister Nr. 905/1911 Minna Zucker, Sterberegister Nr. 102/1913 Baruch Zucker. Bresler, Johannes, Deutsche Heil- und Pflegeanstalten für Psychischkranke in Wort und Bild, Bd. II, Halle a. S., 1912, S. 120ff. https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/171287/franz-zucker (Zugriff 6.11.2016).
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