Gert Treitelfeld (Treytelfeld)

Gert Treitelfeld was born under the most unfavourable conditions on January 3, 1937. Gert and his mother were Jewish – in National Socialist Germany. Apparently, his birth caused concern, because after being born in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, he initially spent three months, together with his mother Agnes Spörl (née Treitelfeld), at the Jewish children’s home in Niederschönhausen. Gert Treitelfeld, however, remained there for another 15 months before being released home “allegedly in good health”.

The domestic situation was not easy. This was primarily due to the increasing social and economic restrictions imposed on Jews in Germany up until mid-1938, which also affected Gert Treitelfeld’s mother: He was born out of wedlock – or rather, marriage was out of the question, and all that is known about his “Aryan” father is that he was imprisoned for one and a half years for “racial defilement” (Rassenschande). Agnes Treitelfeld, born October 10, 1911, or 1912 (there are different references to her birth date in the sources and literature), lived with her mother Rosalie Treitelfeld (née Herpe, born June 12, 1874) in an apartment at Weberstraße 34 in the northeastern part of Berlin (Friedrichshain).

As a child, Agnes Treitelfeld had suffered from Chorea minor, which meant that she had started school later than usual. In 1933, at the age of 21, she married an “Aryan,” as stated in the medical case record. However, she contracted Syphilis from her husband during her first pregnancy, and the marriage was dissolved. After the birth of her first child, Horst, Agnes Treitelfeld earned her living as a worker in a confectionery factory. This was likely one of the reasons why Gert was placed in the Jewish children’s home for an extended period.

The family background – or rather, the family’s fate – is reported in detail, laconically and dispassionately by “Nurse Lina” in Gert Treitelfeld’s medical file from the Psychiatric Hospital(s) Wittenau (Wittenauer Heilstätten): While her daughter was at work, the grandmother Rosalie Treitelfeld took care of the two brothers. According to the information provided by his grandmother, Gert Treitelfeld “was not developing mentally and physically in line with his age,” which is why she “made a great effort”: she regularly rubbed him down and administered nutritional supplements prescribed by the doctor. This led to some progress. Nevertheless, he required care, was unable to play, and suffered frequent severe seizures. Agnes Spörl, the mother, looked after her children after work.

On August 11, 1939 (according to the medical file; the memorial book BA records August 24), Agnes Spörl received a message early in the morning summoning her to the Gestapo. She “went unsuspectingly; her mother waited outside with her workday breakfast, but the daughter did not return. She was taken from there to a concentration camp near Magdeburg.” Relentlessly, Nurse Lina’s report continued with the family history: “The grandmother is now 65 years old and has become very frail due to grief and worry. Otherwise, like her husband, she was always healthy. A second daughter is also said to be healthy, employed, and very intelligent.”

Rosalie Treitelfeld was burdened not only by the recent imprisonment of her daughter but also, shortly before, her husband Moritz Treitelfeld must have died. The address book for Greater Berlin (1931) lists a Moritz Treitelfeld at the same address, born January 9, 1879, in Newcastle (Britain – possibly explaining the alternate spelling Treytelfeld), who died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1939. The exact date of his death is unknown. It can be assumed that he was one of the 6,300 Jewish men who were imprisoned in Sachsenhausen during or following the November pogroms of 1938, who, unless they were wealthy enough to pay for their release, remained in the concentration camp for a longer time and perished. Was Rosalie Treitelfeld already aware of this at the time of Nurse Lina’s report? Or was she still uncertain about the fate of her husband and daughter?

In any case, the grandmother no longer felt able to provide the demanding care for Gert Treitelfeld in November 1939, as she “still had the other grandchild [Horst Treitelfeld] with her.” A certificate declared that Gert Treitelfeld had a severe intellectual disability (note: the medical terminology at the time, as used in the German archival sources, is problematic and demeaning by today's standards and is therefore not reproduced here). His need for admission to the children’s clinic of the Wittenauer Heilstätten was issued by the Jewish paediatrician L. Mendelsohn and confirmed by the Horst Wessel Hospital (formerly and after 1945: Städtisches Krankenhaus Friedrichshain) in Berlin-Friedrichshain. On November 28, accompanied by a “younger lady”, the grandmother brought Gert Treitelfeld to the children's clinic of the Psychiatric Hospital(s) Wittenau, where she willingly provided information about his short life.

Weighing 12 kilograms at a height of 86 cm, Gert Treitelfeld was a well-nourished child and appeared to have been well cared for by his grandmother. In Wittenau, where numerous diagnostic tests were conducted (among others to detect infectious diseases also the extraction and investigation of spinal fluid and a Wassermann Test to detect syphilis), the child gained even more weight (and grew 6 cm). He was restless but often lay in bed asleep; it is unclear whether he was given sedatives. Following an initial psychological evaluation by assistant physician Gertrud Reuter – who would later participate in the "child euthanasia" program at the Kinderfachabteilung Wiesengrund (children's clinic) of Wittenau – Gert Treitelfeld was recommended for transfer to the Psychiatric Hospital Görden (Landesanstalt Görden) on January 5, 1940. Although such a procedure was routine within the system of Berlin and Brandenburg institutions – following an initial evaluation in Berlin, a long-term (and cheaper) stay in a Brandenburg institution was arranged – Gert Treitelfeld's fate was effectively sealed.

Gert Treitelfeld was transferred to the Psychiatric Hospital Görden on January 18, 1940, as part of a group transport. There, he had to undergo another round of physical examinations. The admitting physician was Friederike Pusch (1905–1980), who, as a doctor in Görden’s Kinderfachabteilung, would later be responsible for and participate in the deaths of hundreds of children. Gert Treitelfeld underwent a pneumoencephalography – a painful procedure in which cerebrospinal fluid was extracted and replaced with air to visualize the brain structures via X-ray. It is not surprising, then, that the boy seemed disturbed by touch and cried whenever he was handled, as Pusch noted reproachfully. On February 5, 1940, Pusch concluded the initial observation period by labelling him as a high-maintenance patient. In a standard procedure, he was re-evaluated six weeks later, on April 16 – or rather, Pusch summarized his “development” on the day of his death (or later, with the date of April 16): nothing had changed since the previous report. In recent days, he had coughed occasionally, and the evening before, his appearance had allegedly changed suddenly. “His skin turned noticeably pale, he refused food, and he lay completely apathetic in bed. In the early hours of this morning, exitus letalis [death] occurred.” This brief medical note points to a likely killing through high doses of the barbiturate Luminal, which ultimately lead to respiratory arrest or pneumonia and making “cardiac muscle weakness” appear as a plausible cause of death.

Gert Treitelfeld’s emaciated body – he had lost weight since his arrival at Görden – was dissected, and his brain was thoroughly examined by the psychiatrist and neurologist Werner-Joachim Eicke (1911–1988). Eicke found no significant cerebral abnormalities. Samples of brain tissue were sent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch, where they were most likely destroyed later. No records indicate that the samples were moved when the head of the institute’s Department of Neuropathology, Julius Hallervorden (1882–1965), relocated his specimen collection from Berlin-Buch to Dillenburg in 1944.

The dissection of his body and brain was carried out with the same thoroughness as the initial medical exams – a thoroughness that was lacking in his care. On April 22, 1940, Gert Treitelfeld’s remains were buried in an “institution coffin” in the institution’s cemetery (grave no. 44). A grave of his own was more than was granted to his mother, grandmother, brother, or aunt.

His mother, Agnes Spörl, was not – as Rosalie Treitelfeld had been informed – taken to a concentration camp near Magdeburg, but rather deported to Ravensbrück on August 24, 1939, and in February 1942 she was transferred to the Psychiatric Hospital Bernburg, one of the six Euthanasia Centres in Nazi Germany. There, she was murdered on February 28, 1942. Gert Treitelfeld’s grandmother, Rosalie Treitelfeld, continued to care for his brother Horst (born April 19, 1934). However, Horst Treitelfeld survived his younger brother by only two years. On August 15, 1942, he and his grandmother were deported to Riga, where they were murdered three days later, on August 18, 1942. Moritz and Rosalie Treitelfeld’s second daughter, Doris (born October 22, 1911, married name Plass), was deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered on February 3, 1943. Three generations of a family were wiped out within a few years.