Wassergasse 9 (laid 2011)
Emma Poppinger
Murdered in an institution
Emma Poppinger, born on 19 December 1907 in Wiener Neustadt, unmarried.
Admitted on 25 July 1939 to the district old-age home in Ungargasse in Wiener Neustadt, transferred on 10 July 1941 to the mental and care institution in Gugging, and died there on 4 April 1943.
Emma Poppinger had been disabled from birth. She grew up with her parents at Wassergasse no. 9. Her father died in 1926. In 1939 she was admitted as a ward to the district old-age home in Wiener Neustadt, Ungargasse 20. The institution was far too small and hardly suitable for people needing care.
In 1941 Emma Poppinger, together with four other residents of the home, was transferred to the Gugging mental and care institution. In the medical records she is described as “calm, harmless,” “takes good care of herself,” “keeps herself clean,” and “is satisfied with everything.” But it is also repeatedly noted that she was “not fit for any work” — a dangerous statement at a time when “useless eaters” were being eliminated.
Meanwhile, the starvation diet introduced centrally in all care institutions took its full effect. Emma Poppinger, who had been transferred at a body weight of 53 kilograms, grew thinner and thinner. By September 1942 she weighed only 32 kilograms. By then, her married sister had also been appointed her guardian.
At the beginning of 1943 Emma Poppinger was moved to the infectious diseases ward. There her sister was no longer allowed to visit her because, as the sister learned in a letter, “an infectious disease had broken out.” She tried several times to visit again. Each time the institution refused — until Emma Poppinger died.
What had happened? At the beginning of 1943 the care institutions were hopelessly overcrowded. Gugging too had no room left. Nevertheless, the central authorities in Berlin ordered nearly 300 patients to be transported from Mauer-Öhling to Gugging within one month. Gugging was thereby forced to eliminate patients.
The institution’s doctor, Dr. Karl Oman, testified in the people’s court trial against staff members of the Gugging and Mauer-Öhling institutions on 19 June 1948, in excerpt: “Dr. Rudolf Lonauer [medical director of the Hartheim killing facility and the institution in Niedernhart] and two attendants were in Gugging from 28 March to 8 April 1943. Dr. Lonauer stayed in the institution the whole time and also lived there. There was talk of a typhus epidemic in the infectious diseases house. For two to three weeks I was forbidden to enter it. During that time a total of 112 patients died in the infectious diseases house.”
Emma Poppinger died on 4 April 1943 of “sudden heart failure” — one of the officially prescribed causes of death in “euthanasia” cases.
Emma Poppinger’s fate shows many facets of so-called “wild euthanasia,” the decentralized institutional euthanasia carried out in the institutions but directed by the central authorities in Berlin and the regional government in Niederdonau and other administrative offices.
Anton Blaha