Sally and Berta Blumenfeld’s third child, Karl Blumenfeld, was born in Adelebsen on 1 February 1869.¹ Karl attended the Jacobson-Schule in Seesen am Harz for four- and one-half years. School records report: “The following 19 students ended their training after the tests on the 24^th and 25^th of March 1884, three of whom (Blumenfeld, Feist and Laue) with the grade ‘very good’”² The Jacobson School, founded by Rabbi Israel Jacobson in October 1801, was conceived with the idea of improving the coexistence of Christians and Jews.³

At some point, Karl Blumenfeld was admitted as to the Dr. Ferdinand Wahrendorff Private Sanatorium and Nursing Home in Ilten, Sehnde. As a psychiatric patient, he became a victim of the euthanasia program “Aktion T4.”

“The euthanasia program commenced officially in September 1939 and consisted of the systematic killing of mentally-ill and physically disabled by gassing, injection, rug overdose and starvation The operation was code-named T4 (reference to street address in Berlin of a confiscated Jewish villa.”⁴

“The Jewish patients [from the Dr. Ferdinand Wahrendorff Private Sanatorium and Nursing Home] were taken to the Wunstorf Sanatorium and Nursing Home on September 21, 1940. From there they were deported together with a total of 158 people from 25 North German and Westphalian institutions and hospitals to the killing center Brandenburg/Havel [one of six gassing installations for adults] and murdered. The transport to Brandenburg was carried out by a front organization, the Charitable Foundation for the Transport of Patients. The deportation was carried out on orders of the Reichsminister of the Interior. The official justification for the transport was that it could no longer be tolerated that Jews and Germans be housed together.”⁵

“Beginning in December 1939, a large part of a prison complex in the center of Brandenburg was converted into a euthanasia facility as part of the so-called Aktion T4. A gas chamber was installed in the former prison barn. The euthanasia facility in Brandenburg an der Havel was the only one of a total of six T4 killing facilities that was not set up in a hospital but in an empty prison. For reasons of deception it was given the name ‘Landes-Pflegeanstalt Brandenburg an der Havel’ [State Hospital Brandenburg an der Havel]. Between February and October 1940, more than 9,000 patients from northern and central Germany were murdered there with poison gas.”⁶

Karl Blumenfeld was murdered in Brandenburg on 27 September 1940.⁷

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1. Dr. Arnheim, Zur allgemeinen Geschichte der Jacobson-Schule in Seesen am Harz, 1884, p. 12; Gedenkbuch, German Federal Archives. ↩︎
2. Dr. Arnheim, Zur allgemeinen Geschichte der Jacobson-Schule in Seesen am Harz, 1884, p. 11. ↩︎
3. https://www.jacobson-gymnasium.de/unsere-schulgeschichte.html. ↩︎
4. Rael Strous, Extermination of the Jewish Mentally-Ill during the Nazi Era – the “Doubly Cursed”. ↩︎
5. Roll-up Wahrendorf, in: http://www.sehnde.de>downloads. ↩︎
6. Brandenburg, Euthanasie https://www.brandenburg-euthanasie-sbg.de/geschichte/toetungsanstalt/. ↩︎
7. Gedenkbuch, German Federal Archives. ↩︎