Eva Justin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eva Justin measuring a Sinto for the Racial Hygiene Research Center in the premises of the Karlsruhe Criminal Police Office

Eva Hedwig Justin (born August 23, 1909 in Dresden , † September 11, 1966 in Offenbach am Main ) was a German racial researcher at the time of National Socialism . She worked under Robert Ritter both in the Reich Ministry of Health and, after 1948, in the Frankfurt City Health Department. She carried out examinations on prisoners in youth concentration camps and made sure they were assessed. With interventions with the police she contributed to the Porajmos , the genocide of a large part of the European Roma, categorized as " Gypsies " .

Life

Eva Justin sitting in front of a building with two old women and a boy as part of her work for the Racial Hygiene and Forensic Biology Research Center of the Reich Health Office. Photo from 1936.
Eva Justin doing "field research" in Stein in der Pfalz in 1938 . These surveys were incorporated into the breed reports.
Eva Justin assists Ritter with a blood sample in Stein in der Pfalz in 1938.

Eva Justin was born as the daughter of the Reichsbahn official Karl Justin and his wife Magarethe. Ebinger born in Dresden. In 1925 she became a member of the Young German Order .

She graduated from high school in 1933 at the age of 24 at the Luisenstift in Kötzschenbroda - Niederlößnitz . From 1934 she took part in a course for nurses and was brought to the University Psychiatric Clinic in Tübingen by Robert Ritter . In 1936, when Ritter was appointed head of the “ Racial Hygiene and Population Biology Research Center in the Reich Health Office ” (RHF), he took Justin with him and made her his deputy. She matriculated in Berlin on November 2, 1937 .

Justin, who knew Romani , earned the trust of some Roma and Sinti .

promotion

Justin didn't have a college degree. In order to enable her to do a doctorate nonetheless , formalities were ignored several times in her case.

She ignored a topic originally suggested by her university professor Kurt Gottschaldt and also broke off attending his lectures. Instead, at the beginning of March 1943, she presented a work entitled “Life fates of alien raised gypsy children and their descendants” - a topic that had not been agreed with any professor at the university. Your doctorate therefore required prominent support. With the support of Robert Ritter, she visited Eugen Fischer , the retired eugenicist and former Nazi rector of the Berlin University, during a spa stay in Baden-Baden. In a letter of March 4, 1943 to "his" old university, Fischer described Justin psychology student as an anthropologist. On March 12, the university accepted the dissertation . Ritter, who was not authorized to supervise dissertations, stepped in as an indirect doctoral supervisor. Richard Thurnwald and Ritter, and finally Fischer, were reviewers for the dissertation .

In her doctoral letter, Justin referred to further protection from Hans Reiter , the head of the Reich Health Office, Herbert Linden from the Reich Ministry of the Interior and Paul Werner , who was responsible for preventive crime prevention in the Reich Criminal Police Office.

The oral exam took place on March 24th between 9:15 and 10:15 in Ritter's private apartment; Fischer, who studied Justin in anthropology a. a. checked over redheads , interrupted his cure for it. Wolfgang Abel conducted an “ ideological ” discussion, the ethnologist Thurnwald asked them about “African wild-hunter peoples”. Fischer gave her a “scarce good”, Abel: “very good”, Thurnwald: “good”.

During her studies, she said she attended lectures by prominent Nazi professors and advocates of the hereditary pathological paradigm: Wolfgang Abel , Eugen Fischer , Kurt Gottschaldt , Hans FK Günther , Günther Hertwig , Paula Hertwig , Fritz Lenz , Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann , Hans Reinerth , Hans Reiter , Robert Ritter , Rupp, Bruno Kurt Schultz , Eduard Spranger , Richard Thurnwald and Otto Wuth .

The "ethnological field research" (Thurnwald) for her dissertation took place in the early autumn of 1942 for six weeks in the Catholic children's home St. Josefspflege in Mulfingen , where a total of around 70 children were living. Among them were 40 Sinti children from Mulfingen between the ages of seven and 16 who had been brought in together due to various official coercive measures. Justin ignored the “ German-blooded ” children of the home. The basis for the reunification in this home was the Württemberg home decree for "gypsy children" of November 7, 1938.

Some of the parents were sent to the concentration camp on the basis of Heinrich Himmler's “ Asocial Decree ” of December 14, 1937, other parents were deported as a result of the “ Auschwitz Decree ” of December 16, 1942 , or children were their parents because of the denunciation of an NSV welfare worker withdrawn and taken to home education. Himmler's Auschwitz decree was initially not applied to the Sinti children of Mulfingen.

The rough drafts of the dissertation were sent on November 5, 1943, the final print version on March 9, 1944. Justin's doctoral process was thus completed. A few days later, "Justin could now be sure that she no longer needed her 'test material'" (Gilsenbach), the police announced to the children's home that the children were to be transported to a "gypsy camp". The 39 Sinti children were deported on May 9, 1944; they arrived at the Auschwitz gypsy camp on May 12, 1944 . In August 1944, all but four of these children were killed in the gas chamber in Auschwitz .

In her dissertation, Justin came to the conclusion that "Gypsies" due to their "inadequate adaptability are usually more or less anti-social". "Almost all gypsies and mixed-race gypsies are endangered by a more or less severe weakness [...]". New "inferior genetic material" would always seep into the German " national body ". "The German people, however, need reliable and ambitious people and not the numerous offspring of these underage primitives." For these reasons, she vehemently advocated the compulsory sterilization of Sinti and Roma women.

Expert opinion and work in the RHF

After 1943 Eva Justin continued to work as a research assistant in the RHF. There she signed 1,320 breed certificates between February and October 1944 alone. So she wrote to the state criminal police in Berlin on July 10, 1944 about the racial classification of a family of five musicians from Hungary :

“While the appearance of the family members is not exactly typical Gypsy, but - apart from the mother - suggests Negro bastards, gestures, affectivity and overall behavior spoke not only for alien, but also for Gypsy origins. The inauthentic nature of apparently urban appearance, the adaptation of shallow emotional impulses to the respective environmental impact, the lack of insight and weakness in judgment with regard to factual considerations and conclusions, the lack of standpoint and instability of inner opinion, despite all the cunning and cunning, testify to a high degree of naivety and primitiveness at its core as one does not find it in this relaxed way in sedentary Europeans with a cultivated sense of work. "

Work in youth concentration camps

In 1943, due to the war, knights and employees moved from Berlin to Fürstenberg / Havel , where they found new quarters in the Drögen Security Police School . At the other end of Fürstenberg was the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp . In the “ youth protection camps ” Moringen for male and Uckermark for female prisoners, Ritter and Justin were responsible for assessing the young people.

After the end of National Socialism

After the end of the Nazi regime, Justin described himself in the denazification process questionnaire as "not politically burdened" and only admitted membership in the Red Cross and the Labor Front .

In March 1948 she was employed as a child psychologist in Frankfurt am Main , although she had never worked psychologically with children and had no exam or any other degree in psychology . Her superior was again Robert Ritter, who had worked for the city of Frankfurt since December 1, 1947. In the following years she created psychological reports on difficult to educate children. At this time, Justin and Ritter also used their labor to pass on the files of the Reich Health Office that they had suppressed, i.e. the planning documents for the genocide of the European Roma, to police authorities and former employees of the research center.

In 1958 the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office investigated Justin. The public prosecutor's office, under the personal responsibility of the Hessian public prosecutor Fritz Bauer , announced that the proceedings should “clear up the Nazi extermination measures against Gypsies”. After extensive evidence gathering, the public prosecutor stated that the "racial hygiene reports" prepared by Eva Justin about Roma of the groups "Sinte" , "Gelderari" , "Lallerie" , "Lowari" , "Roma from Hungary" were the basis for their deportation Auschwitz and the subsequent murder, but could not prove that Justin knew the consequences of their actions. Other unequivocally proven acts such as compulsory sterilization were classified as statute-barred. In December 1960, the prosecution closed the investigation against Justin.

Until 1962, Justin examined "Gypsies" for the city of Frankfurt and in this function was also responsible for people who she had examined for the Racial Hygiene Research Center before 1945. She was transferred because of a television film by Irmgard and Valentin Senger .

In 1963 Justin converted to the Catholic faith . In 1964 she carried out field research in a caravan or so-called " Gypsy camp " near Frankfurt-Bonames and then worked as an employee of the University Psychiatric Clinic in Frankfurt am Main. She died of cancer in September 1966.

literature

  • Horst-Peter Wolff: Biographical lexicon for nursing history. Elsevier, Urban & FischerVerlag, 2001, ISBN 3-437-26670-5 .
  • Reimar Gilsenbach : How Lolitschei got a doctorate. In: Wolfgang Ayaß, Reimar Gilsenbach, Ursula Körber u. a. (Ed.): Enemy declaration and prevention. Forensic biology, gypsy research and anti- social policy (= contributions to National Socialist health and social policy, vol. 6). Rotbuch, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-88022-955-4 .
  • Jessica Hoffmann: Dahlem places of remembrance. Frank & Timme, 2007. ISBN 3-86596-144-4 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Johannes Meister: The "gypsy children" from St. Josefspflege in Mulfingen. In: 1999. Journal for Social History of the 20th and 21st Century. No. 2 (1987), pp. 14-51.
  • Ute Bales: Requests of the birds in winter . Rhein-Mosel-Verlag, Zell / Mosel 2018, ISBN 978-3-89801-402-1 . Biographical novel about Eva Justin

Web links

Commons : Eva Justin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reimar Gilsenbach: How Lolitschei got a doctorate. P. 103.
  2. ^ Reimar Gilsenbach: How Lolitschei got a doctorate. P. 103 f.
  3. ↑ Horst-Peter Wolff: Biographical Lexicon for the history of care. Elsevier, Urban & Fischer, 2001, ISBN 3-437-26670-5 , p. 112.
  4. ^ Reimar Gilsenbach: How Lolitschei got a doctorate. P. 112.
  5. ^ Reimar Gilsenbach: How Lolitschei got a doctorate. Pp. 112-115.
  6. ^ A b Reimar Gilsenbach: How Lolitschei got a doctorate. P. 117.
  7. ^ Annette Schäfer: Forced laborers in the Diocese of Rottenburg 1939-1945 (= Hohenheim Protocols, Vol. 58). Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, ISBN 3-926297-87-5 , p. 306 ( digital copy - PDF file; 2.98 MB).
  8. ↑ Printed by Wolfgang Ayaß (arr.): “Community foreigners”. Sources on the persecution of "anti-social" 1933–1945. Koblenz 1998, No. 50 ( digitized version ).
  9. ↑ Stefan Janker: Otto, Sonja, Thomas and Albert Kurz: Four Cannstatter Sinti children. In: stolpersteine-cannstatt.de. April 29, 2006, accessed August 14, 2020 .
  10. ^ Reimar Gilsenbach: How Lolitschei got a doctorate. P. 117 f.
  11. ^ Reimar Gilsenbach: How Lolitschei got a doctorate. P. 118.
  12. ↑ Johannes Meister, after Reimar Gilsenbach: How Lolitschei got a doctorate. P. 117 f.
  13. ↑ Dissertation topic: Life fates of alien raised gypsy children and their descendants ( digitized version , accessed on August 14, 2020)
  14. ↑ Tilman Zülch : Gassed in Auschwitz, persecuted to this day - on the situation of the Sinti and Roma in Europe , Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1979, with a foreword by Ernst Tugendhat , pp. 189–190.
  15. ^ Reimar Gilsenbach: How Lolitschei got a doctorate. P. 121.
  16. ↑ Peter Sandner: Post-war careers of Robert Ritter and Eva Justin in Frankfurt 1947-1966. In: frankfurt1933-1945.de. January 1, 2006, accessed August 14, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Speech by Federal Council President Hans Eichel : Address by the President in memory of the victims of the National Socialist genocide of the Sinti and Roma. Federal Council: Plenary minutes 733, December 18, 1998, p. 523 , accessed on August 14, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. 3. Edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1997, pp. 80f., ISBN 3-596-14906-1 .
personal data
SURNAME Justin, Eva
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Justin, Eva Hedwig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German racial researcher at the time of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 1966
Place of death Offenbach am Main