HANS (1932 – 1942), ERIKA (1936 – 1944) aND MARGRET BUHLRICH (1941 – 1945)

Hans Buhlrich, born on 1 May 1932, was the eldest child of Johanne Caroline (née Hartmann) and Wilhelm Johann Heinrich Buhlrich. He grew up with his parents until he was ten years old. According to his cousin Kurt Homburg, Hans had no control over his right arm and was also somewhat slow-witted. Hans‘ sister Erika Buhlrich was born on 21 May 1936, and his sister Margret Buhlrich on 3 March 1941.

When his father was drafted into military service, his mother Johanne had to cope with everything on her own. Her newborn baby was only six months old. Presumably due to his mother being overwhelmed, Hans was admitted to the state-run Gertrudenheim on 20 September 1941. Hans was transferred from Gertrudenheim to the Kutzenberg (Upper Franconia) sanatorium and nursing home that same month. Hans died there a year later on 17 October 1942. The official cause of death was »heart failure«. He did not receive enough food and drink.

When Hans‘ sister Erika was about a year old, she contracted meningitis. As a result, she suffered from developmental delays. When Erika was five years old and her little sister was six months old, she learned that her brother had to go to Gertrudenheim. From then on, she grew up without him and only with her sister Margret, who was five years younger.

When Bremen was bombed, Johanne sought refuge in a bunker with her girls. Neighbours felt disturbed by the girls and reported them. Three years after her brother had already been admitted to the institution, Erika and Margret Buhlrich were also admitted to the »children’s ward« in Lüneburg on 6 September 1944 as needing institutional care. Johanne took the opportunity to inquire about the cause of her children’s developmental delays and disabilities. In letters, she asked the medical director to examine her children for this purpose. She thought that Margret was also delayed and had a disability, but she only had »crooked legs.«

She was told that tests would have to be carried out on the brain to determine the cause, which would only be possible after death. Both sisters were then murdered within a few weeks of each other in the »children’s ward« in Lüneburg – first Erika, then Margret. Johanne had thus lost her three children to »child euthanasia«.

The medical director of the Lüneburg sanatorium, Dr Max Bräuner, examined the brains of Erika and Margret Buhlrich. He discovered that Erika had had meningitis. He found nothing wrong with Margret. Nevertheless, he recommended that her parents should not have any more children. As a result, she and her husband Wilhelm adopted a boy. Friedrich Buhlrich only learned that he had three siblings after the death of his adoptive parents.

Friedrich Buhlrich was the child of a Polish forced labourer and a German woman. A romantic relationship between a forced labourer and a German woman was forbidden during the Nazi era and was punishable by law. That is why Friedrich’s mother was sent away when she was heavily pregnant. When Friedrich was born, he was immediately put up for adoption. When he was 18 years old, he learned that his parents were not his biological parents. They did not tell him about his siblings.

Then his adoptive parents died. Friedrich Buhlrich sorted through their belongings and found three death certificates. He wondered who these children were and set out to discover their fate. He visited the memorial in Lüneburg and, with the help of a researcher, learned the true story of his parents and siblings, whom he never had the chance to meet. Because he himself had experienced injustice as a child and his siblings had been murdered, he has been campaigning for the reappraisal of the »euthanasia« crimes and crimes of National Socialism as a whole ever since he learned the truth.