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Emmi Jönßon
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Emmi Jönsson * 1930

Wiesenstraße 48 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
EMMI JÖNSSON
JG. 1930
EINGEWIESEN 1941
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 16.8.1943
AM STEINHOF WIEN
ERMORDET 15.6.1944

Emmi Jönßon (also: Jönsson), born 28.6.1930 in Hamburg, admitted several times to hospitals and institutions, transferred to Vienna to the "Wagner von Jauregg- Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien" on 16.8.1943, died there on 15.6.1944

Wiesenstraße 48 (Eimsbüttel)

Emmi Henriette Olga Jönßon (also Jönsson) was the elder daughter of the cleaning woman Mathilde Eline Anna Hermine Jönßon, born on November 13 ,1894 in Lübeck. Emmi's biological father was the launchmaster Wilhelm Arthur Paul Ockelmann, born on August 25, 1882 in Hamburg. He died on October 18, 1931. Emmi's mother was described as "very nervous" and "of weak intelligence." She lived at Henriettenstraße 16 in Eimsbüttel. Emmi Jönsson, who was born out of wedlock, was placed under official guardianship, which was taken over by the head guardian Micaela Ruge.

Emmi Jönßon lived for a long time with her grandmother Mathilde Hinsch at Wiesenstraße 48, also in Eimsbüttel.

In July 1931, Emmi's sister Elfriede was born, who probably also lived with her grandmother for a long time. Neither Elfriede's fate nor that of her father are known to us.

Emmi Jönßon learned to speak at the age of one and to walk at 14 months. She was impaired by the unspecified effects of polio. Due to an inflammation of the kidneys and the auditory canal ("nehritis, otitis med. bös."), the girl was admitted to the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE) in October 1935 and discharged after about five weeks.

From April 1937, Emmi attended the elementary school for girls at Taubenstraße 2 in the St. Pauli district, but after a few months she had to stop attending school due to illness.

In mid-1937, Emmi Jönßon again became a patient at the UKE, this time because of suspected dysentery and polioencephalitis (inflammation of the brain caused by polioviruses). However, this suspicion was not confirmed. Instead, her seizures, which increased in frequency up to ten or twelve times a day, attracted attention. Nevertheless, the girl was released from the hospital on July 14, 1937, at the insistence of her grandmother.

Emmi Jönßon's attendance at the "Hilfsschule” (an outdated German term for special school orauxiliary school) in Schwenckestraße, which began on April 10, 1939, had to be interrupted on May 31, 1939, as a result of seizures. She had to stay in the University Hospital in Eppendorf for a third time, from which Emmi was released "unhealed and under medical treatment" on June 12.

The subsequent resumption of school attendance ended in May 1940, because Emmi Jönßon was now judged "not yet fit for school". During this school year, the family was examined "hereditarily". (Already since 1934, a "health passport archive" had been established in Hamburg for the purpose of "hereditary-biological inventory" of the population, which was used as an important element for the enforcement of National Socialist "hereditary and racial care"). We do not know the result of the investigation at that time.

Emmi's proposed institutionalization during another hospital stay in March 1940, this time at the St. Georg Hospital, was rejected by the "foster parents" - probably meaning the grandmother and the aunt E. Derner, who also lived at Wiesenstraße 48. Emmi returned to domestic care.

Shortly thereafter, on June 17, 1940, Emmi was admitted to the Alsterdorfer Anstalten (today: Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on the basis of the following expert opinion: "Need for admission to the Alsterdorfer Anstalten due to symptomatic epilepsy and mental deficits. Details: frequent seizures, is completely helpless. Now bedridden. Mentally dull, hardly understands what is said to her. No retentiveness. [...] Extraordinarily slowed down."

In addition, it was feared that Emmi Jönßon might endanger her younger sister Elfriede. This reason for incarceration was dropped when Elfriede Jönßon was sent to Saxony with the National Socialist People's Welfare Organization on November 21, 1940. The head welfare officer Micaela Ruge, who judged Emmi to be "completely harmless," successfully lobbied for the girl's release to her grandmother at Wiesenstraße 48.

But at the end of July 1941, Emmi Jönßon was once again declared "in need of an institution" and readmitted to the Alsterdorf institutions. Apparently she was no longer able to live at home, and in Alsterdorf, too, she had to wear a protective jacket, the doctor Professor Schäfer explained to the municipal social administration. She spat on objects, which she then polished for hours with the apron, tearing the protective jacket in the process. (With a "protective jacket," colloquially called a "straitjacket," extensive restriction of movement could be enforced).

Emmi Jönßon's grandmother, with the support of the head guardian Micaela Ruge, tried persistently, but in vain, to end the placement of her grandchild in the Alsterdorf institutions and to bring Emmi home to herself.
During the heavy air raids on Hamburg in July/August 1943 ("Operation Gomorrha"), the Alsterdorf institutions also suffered bomb damage. The director of the institution, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, took the opportunity, after consulting with the health authorities, to transfer some of the residents who were considered "weak in labor, in need of care or particularly difficult" to other sanatoriums and nursing homes. On August 16, 1943, a transport with 228 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 women and girls from the Hamburg-Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home left for Vienna to the "Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien" (also known as "Am Steinhof Wien"). Among them was Emmi Jönßon, now thirteen years old.

The transport reached Vienna on August 17. Emmi was assigned to the Women's Department, Pavilion 24. Its director Wilhelm Podhajsky told Emmi Jönßon's mother, who by then was living in Lübeck, that Emmi had settled in well to the changed circumstances and then continued - without any empathy - "Since it is a case of high-grade imbecility with epileptic seizures, an improvement is hardly to be expected."

In April 1944, Emmi is said to have suffered from diarrhea, which was treated with animal charcoal and then a starvation diet. Her weight had been a good 40 kg in Hamburg in October 1941, it declined rapidly in Vienna: January 1944: 30 kg, April 1944; 26 kg.

An attempt by the head social worker Micaela Ruge to find a home for Emmi Jönßon was rejected by the Viennese institution in May 1944 with the remark: "There has been no change in the condition of your ward E. J.. There is still a severe idiocy in addition to rare epileptic seizures. Seizures. A transfer to home care would be associated with high-grade demands on the caregiver."

On June 3, 1944, the patient's record shows the entry, "Patient is exceptionally weak, severely emaciated. Severe hematoma on left eye. [...] Patient is given Luminal for pain relief."

Luminal is a barbiturate that was also used to treat convulsions in epileptics. Even a slight overdose, however, could be fatal. Children then died only after numerous complications lasting days, such as accumulation of water in the lungs, often combined with circulatory failure. This made it easy to certify "natural death" as a result of "heart failure" or "pneumonia," for example. Conversely, epileptic children were deprived of the drug, whereupon death occurred as a result of continuous convulsions.

On June 15, 1944, Emmi Jönßon allegedly died of pneumonia with severe emaciation, heart failure, and entererocolitis (inflammation of the intestines).

In the "Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien" (Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna), patients were systematically murdered by overdosing on medication, by not treating illnesses, and above all by depriving them of food. Of the 228 girls and women from Alsterdorf, 196 had died by the end of 1945.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Sonderakte V 189 (Emmi Jönßon). Harald Jenner, Michael Wunder, Hamburger Gedenkbuch Euthanasie – Die Toten 1939-1945, Hamburg 2017, S. 282; Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 331 ff.; Peter von Rönn, Der Transport nach Wien, in: Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 425 ff.; Waltraud Häupl, Der organisierte Massenmord an Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Ostmark 1940-1945, Wien 2008, S. 64f.; https://jugend1918-1945.de/portal/jugend/lexikon.aspx?typ=lexikonID&id=4659&iframe=true (Zugriff am 14.7.2021).