Old pathology pains

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Entrance to the Ancient Pathology

The old pathology on the grounds of the Karl Jaspers Clinic in the Bad Zwischenahn district of Wehnen is a memorial and documentation center for victims of the Nazi murders .

history

The sanatorium and nursing home in Wehnen (today's Karl-Jaspers-Klinik Wehnen ) has long been considered a psychiatric facility in Germany that did not carry out euthanasia. However, this does not correspond to the facts: already about three years before the start of the T4 campaign , a euthanasia program began in Wehnen through starving patients and presumably also through the administration of medication. In addition, there was the overcrowding of the facility from 1939, when the facility, which was designed for 400 beds, gradually had to care for up to 1200 patients. The patient death rate peaked in 1945 when it reached six times normal. It is estimated that a total of around 1500 patients were deliberately killed in the Wehnen sanatorium during the Third Reich.

In the 1960s, one of the later founders of the Wehnen memorial group consulted a psychiatrist to inquire about the diagnosis of the illness of her mother, who had once died in Wehnen. In doing so, however, she came across Dr. Paul Moorahrend, one of the doctors responsible for killing this woman. He withheld the information from the medical record. It was only decades later that the daughter learned that her mother had starved to death and that she had shared this fate with numerous other patients. After research on the processes in Wehnen had initially been initiated on a private initiative and the historian Ingo Harms opposed some resistance e.g. B. had accepted the topic from the regional hospital, a research project was set up in 2005 at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, which is dedicated to deepening the research and dealing with the cases.

Around 2000 euthanasia registration forms from Wehnen from 1940 to 1944 could be evaluated, because the initially handwritten forms were retyped in this facility to be sent to Berlin. While the forms sent to the central registration office in Berlin no longer exist, the handwritten originals in Wehnen have been preserved along with the other medical files.

memorial

Memorial sign in front of the ancient pathology

The processes in the institution Wehnen during the time of National Socialism are documented and presented in the Alte Pathologie . The fates of the patients who died between 1933 and 1947 are presented, and information about sterilized persons in the area of ​​the “genetic health court” in Oldenburg and general information about “genetic health care” in the Weser - Ems region is offered. The former prosecution of the institute has been transformed into a place of remembrance.

This brick building with the cross-shaped floor plan on the site of the former Lower Saxony State Hospital was built in 1880 or 1890 and initially served as a morgue. From 1936 it was used as a pathology. Remains of the dissection table and drains in the floor from this period are still preserved. In 2002 the state government gave the initiators of the memorial the prosecution as a rental property; On April 17, 2004, the Old Pathology Memorial was opened and opened in the summer of the same year. It is regularly open to the public.

Movie

A 2017 television film about the euthanasia cases in Wehnen is entitled I will not be silent . Nadja Uhl plays a surviving patient of the sanatorium in the lead role.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ M. Roth, P. Tornow: Essays on the medical history of the city of Oldenburg . Isensee, Oldenburg 1999, ISBN 3-89598-539-2 , p. 247 .
  2. ↑ Memories | Memorial Circle Wehnen eV | Wehnen Memorial. February 20, 2015, accessed February 28, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Euthanasia in Wehnen. In: newspaper for work, peace, environmental protection. September 15, 1999, accessed September 10, 2017 .
  4. ↑ http://www.presse.uni-oldenburg.de/einblicke/46/harms-flessner.pdf
  5. ↑ Wehnen Memorial | Memorial Circle Wehnen eV | Wehnen Memorial. Retrieved on February 28, 2020 (German).
  6. ↑ I will not remain silent in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Coordinates: 53 ° 10 ′ 10.3 ″  N , 8 ° 8 ′ 19.1 ″  E