Hannchen Lewin
* 1879

Hannchen Lewin, born on 8 May 1879 in Rogasen (today Rogozno in Poland), murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Without Stolperstein

Hannchen Lewin was born on 8 May 1879 in Rogasen (today Rogozno in Poland), 30 kilometers (some 18 miles) north of Posen (today Poznan in Poland), as the daughter of cap maker Louis Lewin and his wife Bertha, née Zastrow. The parents were of the Jewish faith.

No information is available about Hannchen Lewin’s childhood and adolescence or about the reasons for her admission to a psychiatric institution. We do not know how Hannchen Lewin arrived Hamburg, alone or with her parents, and where she lived in Hamburg. It is certain that she was admitted to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichberg) in March/April 1923 due to a mental illness. Her patient file card contains the entry “without profession.” This suggests that she had no occupation.

Hannchen Lewin was transferred from Friedrichsberg to the Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn) on 10 Dec. 1923. She spent almost 12 years there until she was transferred on 9 July 1935 with other patients from Langenhorn to Eichenkamp, a private institution founded in 1928/1929 in Thesdorf/Pinneberg for the elderly, the sick, and the handicapped, in the course of the numerous patient transfers resulting from the so-called Friedrichsberg-Langenhorn Plan. These Jewish patients were returned to Langenhorn on 15 July 1939.

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. After all Jewish patients from the North German institutions had arrived in Langenhorn, they were loaded onto a train at the Ochsenzoll freight station on 23 Sept. 1940 and transported to Brandenburg/Havel. 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 her 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.

Also, there was no German records office in Chelm/Cholm. Hannchen Lewin’s birth certificate contains a note indicating, “died on 5 Apr. 1941 in Cholm (St.A. [records office] Cholm II No. 312/41).” The fabrication of this records office 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 Hannchen Lewin 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.