Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
Martha Helene Nestler
Martha Helene Nestler, née Bachmann
Born: 04.05.1895
Died: 08.08.1940
Godmother: Renate Baldyga
Installation location:
Leonhardtstraße 23Stumbling stone laying on:
6 May 2021
Life path
Helene Nestler was one of the many people who were discriminated against by the Nazi state due to mental illness or disability and murdered in one of the "euthanasia" centres. In 1931, she was a patient at the Chemnitz mental hospital.
Renate Baldyga remembers her grandmother, whom she was never able to meet: "She was born in Mildenau as the fifth of seven children. The family later moved to Annaberg. There, on 5 November 1921, her daughter was born out of wedlock. It was not until 12 May 1923 that she married Richard Nestler, thus legalising the marriage under pressure from her parents. Their son Erhard, my father, was born on 24 March 1924.
For the first few years, Richard was rarely with his family; he lived and worked as a police constable in Zwickau. My father and aunt recalled that they repeatedly accompanied my mother to a "neurologist" without ever knowing why. At home, she often sat sad and silent in the flat, unable to do the housework. On 3 May 1932, Helene was admitted to the Zschadraß sanatorium and nursing home at her husband's instigation.
My grandmother was one of the first patients to be transferred to the Sonnenstein killing centre for gassing in a collective transport ("Aktion T4") on 8 August 1940 and was most likely murdered on the same day.
My father stayed in the West after the war. Due to the founding of the GDR, I only visited my aunt in Chemnitz once a year. When my cousins and I were old enough to ask questions about our grandmother, it became clear that this was a taboo subject. Richard Nestler had divorced in 1934, remarried and had another daughter. For my father and his sister, everyday life with their stepmother and stepsister became increasingly problematic: more or less, both siblings had to look after themselves. They only remember one visit to Zschadraß - they were never spoken to about their mother's fate, they never asked any questions.
It wasn't until 1967 that Richard Nestler handed my father his birth certificate, with the following note on the back: "Mother Martha, died 22 Aug 1940, 4:25 am, in Hartheim near Linz". Although he knew what had happened, he had never informed his children of the cause of their mother's death, not even when they had long since started their own families. As a police officer, he certainly knew the sad truth. During a visit after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I wanted to investigate my grandmother's life and death, but was met with great rejection. I kept asking my father about memories from back then - but it was only when he was eighty that he was able to face up to this painful subject and finally agreed to my research."
Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
It is a project against forgetting: stumbling stones have been laid in Chemnitz every year since 2007.
Embedded in the pavement, the memorial stones commemorate the tragic fates of fellow citizens who were persecuted, deported, murdered or driven to their deaths during the National Socialist regime.
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