Today I received from the Vienna Municipal Archives the death certificate (attached). I really cannot make much sense of it. I wonder if anybody here can help me understand it. Thank you.

Steven Turner

Thank you so much for this Corinna. This is some of my thinking:

• He is listed as a "Pflegling" which my friends thought was a foster child or an orphan. His mother died in 1931 and his father was arrested in 1938 and sent to Dachau. This then makes sense that he was listed as such and explains why he was buried in an unmarked grave, but my father and his mother (Leo's grandmother) used to visit him every Sunday. Wouldn't one expect they would have been informed upon his death and not to be told that nobody knows what happened to him when they showed up one Sunday to visit him?
• There is a prior address listed. My friend looked it up and saw that the building that was there at the time no longer exists and that there was a new building built on that spot in 1959. I wonder if there is any way to check what kind of building was at that location? Might it have been something like what we would call in the US a "group home" where disabled or disadvantaged children live? I know for a fact that Leo lived in some sort of institution his whole life.
• This is my thinking - Maybe Leo lived in some kind of group home run by a Jewish charitable association. He died just a few weeks after Kristallnacht. Maybe something happened to the home during that time where the children were harmed and some later died?

Interesting what you say about a planned cremation. He was eventually buried in an unmarked grave in the Jewish cemetery on the 6th.
--
Dr. Steven S. Turner
President, Gesher Galicia
www.geshergalicia.org

Steven, this is a sad story. However, the Nazi program to euthanize disabled people, known as T4, did not begin until October 1939. Hitler backdated the order to begin the program to Sept. 1. The Nazis did have a program of forced sterilization of mentally and physically disabled people from mid-1933 to 1939, and it is possible that your unfortunate cousin may have been subjected to a procedure like that which went wrong. (That is just speculation, please note; I’m not sure if the sterilization program was underway in hospitals in Vienna at this time.) It is also possible that he did in fact die of pneumonia. It was not a rare illness and more likely to be fatal for a disabled person, and in an institution he may or may not have been given the required care.

wishing you good luck with your research,
Miriam Bulwar David-Hay,

According to https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Zwangsarbeiterlager there were several residences for forced laborers in the Seitenberggasse during the war -- at nos. 6, 9, directly across the street at no. 15 and a few houses down at no. 16. However, no mention of no. 12. That forced laborers could be billeted there suggests that the flats had been emptied previously, perhaps after the deportation of Jewish residents.

Nothing else about the address came up in the City of Vienna's search engine.

Rick Pinard, Prague

Hi Steven

This is a very interesting website about the Steinhof with much information.

http://www.gedenkstaettesteinhof.at/en

Regards
Corinne Iten
Switzerland

So I received this reply today from Professor Herwig Czech who is an expert on the euthanasia program. So apparently the pathologist who signed Leo's coroner's report was one that did the autopsies for the euthanasia program and collected brains for research. Also, pneumonia was a common cause of death recorded in these deaths and many of them were from barbiturate poisoning or neglect.

I am going to have to figure out where my research should go from here. 

Herwig  
--
Dr. Steven S. Turner
President, Gesher Galicia
www.geshergalicia.org

I want to thank everyone that posted here and sent me private messages with kind words about this story and my cousin Leo.

That email from Professor Czech is really something that I need to digest. My thinking now is that it  is most likely that Leo was murdered but I will never be able to confirm it. The fact of who signed the report and that pneumonia was usually used as the cause of death in these cases is extremely suspicious along with the fact that when my father went to visit Leo in the group home and he was not there nobody knew what happened to him. If it was a natural death they would have known and told the family.

I think what I need to turn to next is the group home and try to find out what kind of institution that was. If it was a Jewish home I would want to know what happened to it on Kristallnacht. The address of the home was  Seitenberggasse 12. If anyone here can help me find out what kind of institution was at this address in 1939 I would be most appreciative.. 

The most disturbing part of the story to me is that the pathologist who signed the report, Barbara Uiberak, was a known Nazi and was part of the large program of forced euthanasia yet she was allowed to stay in practice at Steinhof well in the 1960's. Did people just not care. To me this is a severe indictment of the postwar community and government there.

If I learn anything significant I will post it here. Thank your you interest in this story.

Shavauh tov,
Steve

--
Dr. Steven S. Turner
President, Gesher Galicia
www.geshergalicia.org

Scroll down to page 50,

--
Andreas Schwab, Montreal, Canada

I have nothing to add to this conversation but shared horror and grief. Justice for Leo can only be achieved by this kind of research, as painful as it might be. Sending you strength to keep going. 

Esther Landau

There is nothing in the coroner's report about cremation, just interment (Beerdigung). 
Aufschub über Parteiansuchen.
Aufschub der Beerdigung für 6.I. bewilligt.
Sarg verkitten und verschrauben, Metallsarg einfach/doppelt verlöten.
Die Leiche ist in der Leichenkammer beizusetzen.

--
Andreas Schwab, Montreal, Canada

Thank you so much Andreas for your help here. Of course your additional explanation yields more questions.

• Why was there a delay in the internment? To me the most obvious answer is that the pathology department wanted more time to prepare slides of Leo's brain or other body parts to study. And what were they studying? Might it be how the barbiturates worked to kill Leo to help them plan the more massive killing that was to come?
• What's the story with the metal coffin that was to be cemented and screwed with double soldering? Leo's remains were given to the Jewish cemetery for burial not to the family. Why such an unkosher coffin? Could it possibly be prevent some exhumation of the remains in the future?

Thank you also for finding out the name of the institution. Does anybody know what happened to that institution, Zental-Krippenverein and whether it survived the war?

On the coroner's report at the bottom there is a comment that my friend found impossible to read to translate. Maybe somebody here can make out what this says?
 
Again thank you all for the help and the kind comments both posted here and sent to me privately. My family sincerely appreciates them.
--
Dr. Steven S. Turner
President, Gesher Galicia
www.geshergalicia.org

The coffin story is on the stamps it was standard practice. I should have pointed out in my previous post that the text that I quoted and translated was from the stamp at the left of the document. So, the coffin story is on the stamp, so it was standard practice for remains to be kept in the mortuary.
The note at the bottom says "Aufschub befürwortet" - postponement approved.
I give you again the link for the history of the Zentral-Kroppenverein here:
https://docplayer.org/17478546-Www-heilstaettenschule-at-rohue-rohue_kalender-2011-kalender_2011-htm.html


Here is a translation:

The B I W A K Association introduces itself
How it began
Child protection and youth welfare were not always the responsibility of society as a whole. Only since the twenties of our [the 20th] century has there been a social consensus about this, which is also reflected as a legal obligation of the general public. Until then, children had to rely on the voluntary charity of private associations.
One of the first of these associations in the Vienna area was the Zentral-Krippenverein, founded on November 29, 1847 under the protection of Archduchess Maria Josepha. According to some sources, the association may even be the oldest welfare association in Austria.
In 1847, the Centralverein für Kostkinder-Beaufsichtigung und Krippen, as it was initially called, opened the first Viennese nursery, which was soon followed by others. In the early days, 400 children of poor parents were cared for and fed daily, and, as the chronicle notes, without distinction as to nationality or religion. At the beginning of the 20th century, the association already ran eight nurseries, four of which were housed in its own houses and four in rented apartments.
After the First World War, a home for healthy infants was opened in Seitenberggasse in the 16th district. The home was already run as a day and night operation and cared for wards of the Vienna municipality and some private children, but also took in mothers with their babies; to ensure their supply of breast milk, the association even founded its own nurses' school.
From 1930 onwards, disabled children up to the age of 14 were also admitted; those who were wards of the Vienna municipality were taken over by the National Socialist Volksfürsorge. During the war, the staff was then also deployed in other care areas.
After the war, the Zentral- Krippenverein was re-established and cared for 100 healthy infants up to the age of two. In August 1945, children and caregivers moved into the house at Lainzer Strasse 172, and the association left the property in Seitenberggasse to the City of Vienna, which set up a day school there.
In 1966 the house in Lainzer Straße was bought by the municipality of Vienna and rented to the Zentral-Krippenverein. Since 1973, at the request of the municipality of Vienna, handicapped infants have been admitted. Since the name of the association repeatedly led to misunderstandings in the public, it was renamed in 2003. The new association name BIWAK stands for - CARE AND INTEGRATION OF CHILDREN, JOINT LIVING, ACCEPTANCE in society and COMPETENCE in work. Since the relocation of the association in 2004 to Vienna 10, Collmanngasse 5, the association name is BIWAK- Kinderwohngemeinschaft Laaerberg.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

I suggest you contact BIWAK- Kinderwohngemeinschaft Laaerberg to see if they have more information.
The other link I gave you is for the files of the Zentral-Krooppenverein at the Austrian State Archive
https://www.archivinformationssystem.at/detail.aspx?ID=1283851
The seem to have material up to 1938.


Andreas Schwab
145 Madsen Ave
Beaconsfield, QC
H9W 4T9
Canada
Tel 514-695-8574
email: andreas.j.schwab@...
Skype: midscientist

--
Andreas Schwab, Montreal, Canada