The Book
Annas Spuren: Ein Opfer der NS-“Euthanasie” (Anna’s Traces: A Victim of Nazi “Euthanasia”). Sigrid Falkenstein. Herbig, Stuttgart. 2012.
Introduction
A few months ago, I faced the uncomfortable possibility that Josef’s sister, my great aunt, may have met an unnatural fate at the Hufeland Hospital in Berlin-Buch. Maria Jakobs was sent to the hospital in July 1942, a hospital that would become notorious for being one of the places where the Nazi apparatus practiced involuntary euthanasia through Aktion T4.
While there were many people who went through the hospital and were not marked as being of no value to the State, I have been unable to find a death registration for Maria. The death records for Berlin are available up to 1955 on Ancestry and the family story is that she was deceased by the time her own mother passed away in 1951. It is a mystery, and one solution is that Maria was deported to one of the Nazi extermination centres, possibly the one at Brandenburg or Bernburg.
While researching the story of Maria, I got a crash course in Aktion T4, the Nazi program of involuntary euthanasia (mass murder) of individuals with mental or physical handicaps who had been deemed “unwertig” (worthless) by the State. I came across the story of Anna Lehnkering, written by her niece Sigrid Falkenstein. I ordered the book and muddled my way through the German.
Overview
Sigrid began her quest, as so many of us do, by searching for information on her family tree. She was looking for information on her grandmother (who was also named Anna) on the internet. She found a site that included a: “List of persons murdered by German medical doctors between 1939 and 1948” and was astonished to find “Anna Lehnkering” on the list. This Anna was born in 1915 and was obviously not her grandmother. Who was she?
Sigrid recounts the story as if she were writing to her aunt, Anna, telling her the news of how, little by little, she uncovered the facts of her life.
It is a sad story, a lively little girl who seemed quite normal up until the age of four and who then changed dramatically. She became nervous, suffered night terrors and tremors. Anna was taken to a series of doctors who rendered a diagnosis of “schwachsinnig” (feeble-minded, idiotic, moronic, mentally deficient). While her mother repeatedly stated that the little girl had been fine in her early years, eventually, a label was attached to Anna that this was a genetic disease that she had inherited from her parents. Part of the rationale lay in the fact that Anna’s father was an alcoholic who died from the disease in the early 1920s. There is, however, another possibility. According to Anna’s brother, Anna had been dropped by a neighbour when she was an infant. Perhaps she suffered a head injury.
According to her brother (Sigrid’s father), Anna was a loving, gentle person who loved little children and, at one point, wanted to care for children in a nursery. Unfortunately, Anna did not do well in school, needing much more time to learn things than the average child. Her schooling was therefore quite piecemeal, a factor that did not help her in the future when doctors were quite dismayed that she did not know who the president of Germany was, or other “well-known” facts.
One thing led to another and, in 1935, Anna underwent a forced sterilization. The following year, she suffered a kidney infection and the doctors convinced her mother that it would be much better if Anna were admitted to Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bedburg-Hau, a sanatorium and nursing facility for those with mental and physical handicaps/illnesses. Sigrid muses on what was going on for her grandmother, that she would have left her own daughter in such a place, but the answers are lost in history. According to the medical records which Sigrid consulted, Anna did not do well in Bedburg-Hau, refusing to work and being dreadfully homesick. The records would seem to indicate that Anna suffered from malnutrition which likely did not help her mental or physical state.
In December 1939, Anna was earmarked by the Nazi physicians as being “unwertig” (worthless). In March 1940, she, and hundreds of other residents from Bedburg-Hau were taken by train to Grafeneck (Baden-Württemburg) where those in charge of the euthanasia program had set up a gas chamber on the grounds of Grafeneck Castle. In groups of 50, the victims were ushered into a garage that appeared to be a shower room. Once they were inside, and the doors were locked, the room was pumped full of carbon monoxide. After 20 minutes, the deceased victims were hauled out and burned in on-site ovens. Over 10,000 victims were murdered at Grafeneck.
Anna was murdered on 7 March 1940 in Grafeneck. Several months later, Anna’s mother received a letter stating that Anna had died of peritonitis. Anna’s ashes are likely buried in a common grave on the Grafeneck property.
Review
I sympathize with Sigrid, it is never an easy thing to uncover dark family secrets, and this book is not just about family secrets, but about national secrets as well. Sigrid touches on the lack of awareness in her own family as to what happened to Anna. All that her father knew was that his sister (Anna) had gone into a facility and she had died sometime during the war.
I rather liked the way in which the book was written, as if Sigrid were writing to her aunt. And Sigrid does not end with Anna’s death. She follows the trail to the present day, through the black holes in her family’s memory to the collective national ignorance about what transpired. Even today, there are people who argue that those with mental/physical disabilities/illnesses are a drain on the health care system. Such arguments are a slippery slope and, from Anna’s story (and the 100,000s of thousands like her), we know where that ends.
It’s also hard to learn that so many of the officials involved in Aktion T4 went unpunished. In the post-war years, they found jobs in various hospitals and facilities. Even when some were prosecuted in the 1960s, many were acquitted on technicalities. It’s a sad story. Even more disturbing when one learns that many of those involved in Aktion T4 went on to administer concentration camps in the East. Really, Aktion T4 was a training ground for the Holocaust where the methods of mass murder were taken to a whole other level.
I would hope that Sigrid’s book is required reading for all German high-school students. I highly recommend the book (to those who can read German) and wish that it were translated into English.
Review Score
5/5 – a must read.
Additional Resources
Further information on Anna’s story (in English!) can be found at these sites:
Never Such Innocence site – information on Anna Lehnkering
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust – has a pdf as well as a link to a short film about Anna
Aktion T4 Memorial site with a page (including photos) of Anna Lehnkering
Stolperstein for Anna Lehnkering
IAAPA site (International Association Against Psychiatric Assault) – Has the original list of individuals murdered by Nazi doctors between 1938 and 1946 – compiled by Hagai Aviel
Bundesarchiv – has the list of individuals murdered by Nazi doctors (copy of Hagai Aviel’s list)