Stumbling stones in Chemnitz
Elisabeth Monika Hecht
Elisabeth Monika Hecht
Born: 14 November 1940
Died: 25.03.1941
Installation location:
Flemmingstraße 2Stumbling stone laying on:
14 June 2023
Photos of the laying of the Stumbling Stones
Life path
Elisabeth Monika Hecht was one of at least 5,000 girls and boys who fell victim to National Socialist "euthanasia" in over 30 "specialised children's wards". Due to a lack of research, it is not possible to give a figure for Chemnitz and the surrounding area.
She was born the illegitimate daughter of 20-year-old typist Gerda Elisabeth Hecht at the State Women's Hospital in Chemnitz. Her father was the lorry driver Richard Walter Graichen, who acknowledged paternity on 20 December 1940. The child was physically disabled and blind from birth.
On the basis of a circular issued by the Reich Minister of the Interior on 18 August 1939. On the basis of a circular issued by the Reich Minister of the Interior on 18 August 1939, doctors and midwives as well as maternity clinics, obstetrics departments and children's hospitals were obliged to submit a notification form to the responsible health authority if a newborn child was suspected of having serious congenital conditions.
The health authority had to forward the reports to a specially established "Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Diseases", which then decided which children were eligible for "euthanasia". The "Reich Committee" informed the responsible health authorities and the designated "specialised children's departments" of its decision and allocation.
In Monika's case, it was clear from the outset that only special care in a children's home was an option. Whether the child was initially cared for in the state infant clinic in Chemnitz or whether she was temporarily placed in the care of her unmarried mother, who lived with her parents at Rudolfstraße 65, can only be surmised. The child was committed to the "specialised children's ward" in Brandenburg-Görden, which meant her death sentence, and no further details can be given about her time in Brandenburg-Görden. Elisabeth Monika Hecht "died" on 25 March 1941 in the "children's ward" there. The Chemnitz registry office was informed. The child's parents married on 10 May 1941 in Chemnitz. Gerda Elisabeth Hecht gave birth to two more children in 1942 and 1943. She died on 5 February 2009 in Chemnitz; her husband had already died in 1975.
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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