Hadamar Killing Center

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Memorial in the memorial cemetery (2008)

In the Hadamar killing center in Hadamar , central Hesse , between January 1941 and March 1945, as part of the so-called Action T4 and the subsequent “decentralized euthanasia ”, around 14,500 people with disabilities and mental illnesses were let out in a gas chamber through lethal injections and medications and through deliberate starvation murdered. The institution was housed in what is now the old building of the Vitos Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Hadamar on Mönchberg. Today the Hadamar Memorial commemorates the crimes .

Hadamar Killing Center

Garage of the gray buses that were used to bring people to the killing center. Today part of the memorial.
Interior view of the bus garage

In 1940, the sixth Nazi killing center of the German Reich for the National Socialist euthanasia program (in post-war language use Action T4 ) was set up in a wing of the main building of the Hadamar State Hospital , after the province of Hessen-Nassau handed over the management of the institution to the central office T4 in Berlin in November . The Hadamar State Hospital was the last of the six later killing centers that were transferred from the respective regional authorities to the sovereignty of the empire. For this purpose, part of the institution was leased by the President of the Hesse-Nassau Province to the non-profit foundation for institutional care , a cover organization of the Führer’s law firm, which was commissioned to carry out the murders of the sick .

In 1940 an envoy from the Berlin Reich Chancellery with the code name Hase made the first preparations for the renovation of the institution. In addition to furnishing offices, bedrooms and lounges for the new staff, the gas chamber and the attached crematorium were built. The renovation work on the cellar was carried out by Fritz Schwerwing , a brother-in-law of the Provincial Councilor Fritz Bernotat , and other plumbers who preferred not to come from the region. Just before Christmas, then reached the selected specifically for the euthanasia program staff, consisting of doctors, nurses and caregivers, as well as three gray buses of Gekrat the Landesheilanstalt Hadamar. The previous staff was obliged to maintain secrecy about future events.

Origin of the victims

The origin of the victims was determined by the given catchment area of ​​the Hadamar State Sanatorium, which had existed since 1907. From 1941, people with disabilities and mental illnesses from sanatoriums in the Prussian provinces of Hesse-Nassau , Westphalia , Hanover and the Rhine Province as well as the states of Hesse , Baden and Württemberg were murdered in Hadamar .

Intermediate institutions

Hadamar were assigned to nine so-called intermediate institutions, to which the people to be murdered from the individual sanatoriums were transferred in collective transports without prior information to the relatives. From there, depending on the available capacity in Hadamar, they were retrieved and transported away for targeted murder.

designation today's name place circle country
Herborn State Sanatorium Vitos Herborn Herborn Dill circle Hessen-Nassau
State Sanatorium Weilmünster Weilmünster Clinic Weilmünster Oberlahnkreis Hessen-Nassau
State sanatorium and nursing home Eichberg Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Eichberg Eltville on the Rhine Rheingau district Hessen-Nassau
Kalmenhof private educational institution Kalmenhof Idstein Untertaunuskreis Hessen-Nassau
Healing Education and Nursing Institution in Scheuen Chafing Foundation Nassau Unterlahnkreis Hessen-Nassau
PHP Galkhausen LVR Clinic Langenfeld Galkhausen , Langenfeld (Rhineland) Rhein-Wupper district Rhine Province
PHP Andernach Rhein-Mosel-Fachklinik Andernach Then after Mayen County Rhine Province
PLK Wiesloch Psychiatric Center North Baden Wiesloch District of Heidelberg to bathe
Heilanstalt Weinsberg Klinikum am Weissenhof Weinberg Heilbronn district Württemberg

In the intermediate institutions, people were murdered in a decentralized manner after the end of the first phase of the T4 campaign on the responsibility of the prison doctors.

Number of victims in 1941

The gas chamber in Hadamar
The gas chamber and crematorium were located in this building.

According to internal T4 statistics that have been preserved, a total of 10,072 people were murdered by the gas carbon monoxide in just eight months between January 13, 1941 and September 1, 1941 , in the language of their murderers: disinfected . According to coincidental testimony, the burning of the 10,000th patient was celebrated in the summer of 1941, at which all employees received a bottle of beer. According to the updated list of victims of the Hadamar Memorial (as of 2010), the number of victims was 10,122. The people were murdered in a basement room disguised as a shower room and their bodies were burned in the adjacent crematorium. The clouds of smoke from the crematorium and the smell of burnt corpses, together with reports from the staff of the institution, meant that the residents of Hadamar and the surrounding area could at least suspect the systematic murders. The Hadamar-Mönchberg Special Registry Office sent death certificates to relatives with incorrect causes of death.

The number of victims of more than 10,000 people only includes the first phase of Action T4 in Hadamar. This was discontinued on August 24, 1941 by order of Adolf Hitler . The protest of the Catholic Church had contributed to this. The Limburg bishop Antonius Hilfrich , in whose diocese Hadamar was, wrote to the Reich Ministry of Justice on August 13, 1941 that "planned actions are being carried out in Hadamar which are punishable by death according to Section 211 StGB".

At the end of this first phase of so-called adult euthanasia, over 70,000 sick people had been killed by gas. The Reich Commissioner for Hospitals and Nursing Centers, Herbert Linden , was therefore able to determine that the number of sick people had decreased by 25% since 1939. His target, however, was to clear another 60% of the hospital beds in the psychiatric hospitals for use by bomb victims and wounded soldiers. This was the task of the second phase of the euthanasia program, which was known as 'wild', 'decentralized', 'drug euthanasia' or Aktion Brandt . In contrast to the previous approach, gas was no longer used in a few central institutions, but in numerous institutions throughout the empire through targeted malnutrition up to starvation and through overdoses of drugs such as Luminal , Veronal or injections of morphine - scopolamine or simply air .

Period from 1942 to 1945

In the central office T4 was not known until the summer of 1942, whether the gas murders would be resumed after the stop. Until it was finally clear, the Nazi killing centers were kept on standby. The nursing staff was partly seconded to sanatoriums and nursing homes or used for the so-called Eastern deployment, i.e. in the extermination camps of Aktion Reinhardt .

In the summer of 1942, the final decision was made in Berlin that the gas murder campaign should no longer be continued and that the gassing plants should be closed. In Hadamar, the corresponding systems were therefore removed, used parts of the building were restored to their original state and the rooms were prepared for their previous use. The work in Hadamar was finished by the end of July, so that on July 31, 1942, the institution could be returned to the sponsorship of the Nassau district association in Wiesbaden , which from August 1, 1942, fully operated the state hospital again.

Wahlmann with auxiliary nurse Karl Willig (right) after her arrest in April 1945

At the behest of Provincial Councilor Fritz Bernotat , Senior Physician Adolf Wahlmann took over the medical management and Provincial Secretary Alfons Klein took over the administrative business. Under the responsibility of these two men, the murders of disabled and mentally ill people continued from August 1942, but now no longer in a gas chamber, but through injections administered by doctors and nurses, overdosed medication, and systematic and deliberate starvation. In contrast to the first phase, not only doctors were the culprits, but also nurses.

The circle of people to be murdered was expanded twice more in this second phase at the Hadamar killing center. In April 1943, on the instructions of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, an alleged “education home for underage Jewish mixed-race children ” and children from state welfare institutions of the Reich who were considered to be Jewish were set up there. On May 15, 1943, Bernotat ordered all children defined in this way to be reported to him in institutions of the Nassau district association. In principle, these children were protected from deportation and murder, in contrast to “full Jews”. Now they were included in the general extermination: 39 Jewish half-breeds were sent to Hadamar. 34 children were murdered by injections of poison, five children were released from the institution under vigorous - also legal - pressure from their relatives.

From the end of July 1944 allegedly incurable were tuberculosis diseased Eastern workers murdered by poison injections. There were 274 men, 173 women and 21 children under the age of 15, for a total of 468 people. 375 were Soviet citizens and 63 were Poles.

Between August 13, 1942 and March 24, 1945, 4,817 people with disabilities or mental illnesses were transported to Hadamar, most of them by the Gekrat , the transport organization of the T4. 4,422 of them died during this period, the vast majority of them by no natural causes.

It was not until the occupation of Hadamar by US troops on March 26, 1945 that the systematic killing of people, which continued until the end of the war, ended. The total number of victims at Hadamar Killing Center is at least 14,494 people.

Killing doctors

Hitler's letter of authorization of September 1, 1939

The T4 organizers Viktor Brack and Karl Brandt ordered that the killing of the sick could only be carried out by the medical staff, since Hitler's letter of authorization of September 1, 1939 only referred to doctors. The operation of the gas tap was therefore the task of the gassing doctors in the killing centers. However, in the course of the action it also happened that when the doctors were absent or for other reasons, the gas tap was also operated by non-medical staff. All doctors did not use their real names in correspondence with the outside world, but instead used cover names. The killing doctors in Hadamar were:

Work-up

Wiesbaden Trial and Nuremberg Trials

Questioning of head nurse Irmgard Huber, Hadamar May 1945.

In the Wiesbaden trial before a military court from October 8 to 15, 1945, the murder of 476 Russian and Polish forced laborers by Leon Jaworski was charged. Alfons Klein and the nurses Heinrich Ruoff and Karl Willig were sentenced to death, the doctor Adolf Wahlmann to life imprisonment due to his old age. Two administrative employees received prison sentences of 35 years and 30 years and the only female defendant Irmgard Huber received 25 years. The death sentences were carried out on March 14, 1946. An indictment of the murder of about 15,000 other people was not possible under martial law.

In the Nuremberg trial against the main war criminals , Hadamar was shown in the film of evidence from the Nazi concentration camp , and Bishop Hilfrich's letter to the Ministry of the Interior was cited as evidence against the defendant, former Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick . Frick was u. a. Sentenced to death for responsibility for numerous euthanasia murders. The killing of the allegedly tuberculous slave laborers was brought forward by the lawyers at the Nuremberg doctors' trial as an extension and continuation of the euthanasia murders.

Trial before the Frankfurt Regional Court

Because of the murders of German patients between 1941 and 1945, a total of 25 defendants were tried in Frankfurt, 11 of whom were convicted. The doctors Gorgaß and Wahlmann were sentenced to death and the sentence was changed to life imprisonment by the Hessian Prime Minister. The other sentences against mostly nurses were 2 years and 6 months to 8 years in prison. The sentences of Wahlmann and Gorgass were then commuted and in 1956 Gorgass was released as the last convict at Christmas by the Hessian Prime Minister Zinn .

Exploration and memory

The memory of the systematic murder of the sick on the Hadamarer Mönchberg began in 1953 with the installation of a memorial relief in the entrance area of ​​the former killing center. In the 1960s the topic was u. a. taken up in the mirror , but not systematically researched. The Frankfurt journalist and scientist Ernst Klee researched and published extensively on the murders on the Mönchberg in Hadamar. In March 2018, his widow Elke Klee handed over her husband's journalistic and scientific estate to the Hadamar Memorial. There it should be made accessible as soon as possible and made accessible to research.

The legal successor to the institution responsible for the murders, the State Welfare Association of Hesse , showed little interest in dealing critically with the crimes. In 1985 the social worker Gerhard Kneuker and the medical director Wulf Steglich published a non-scientific report. The book is based in part on research in the Hessian main state archive, in particular the files on the Hadamar trial from 1946/1947, as well as on our own conversations with contemporary witnesses.

At the beginning of the 1980s, 18 students and two professors founded a working group at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences , whose defined goal was the thorough research into the murder of the sick on Mönchberg. Under the working title “Psychiatry in Fascism: The Hadamar Asylum 1933–1945”, the researchers began to evaluate the files on the Hadamar trial in the Hessian main state archive and to sift through and systematically process the previously unprocessed files in the basement of the former killing center. Up to this point in time, the approximately 5,000 patient files stored in the cellar of the former murder facility had not been taken into account or archived. Rather, they were "dusty and damp ... completely unsupplied from the archives" in a cellar room that was not locked. The research work, which lasted over three years, was not supported by the State Welfare Association, but hindered. The research group, supported by the Hessian state government, formulated this very clearly in their foreword to a publication after completing their work.

The "handicap strategies ... were essentially determined by the motive to defuse the political explosive stored in the archives as much as possible." Despite the institutional and political resistance, the first fundamental study of the role of the Hadamar asylum arose because the project was supported by the Hessian state government and the Minister for Social Affairs Armin Clauss was supported. Up to the present, the resulting scientific study by Roer / Henkel is not listed in the literature references of the Hadamar memorial on the LWV website, although the first exhibition in the basement of the murder facility was based on this study and thus the cornerstone for the establishment of the memorial Hadamar was laid. Only in 2002, this time under the leadership of the State Welfare Association of Hesse , did a fundamental research into the role of the district association in the context of Action T4 and the subsequent 2nd phase of the murder of the sick. Since the files on Action T4, i.e. the 1st phase of the murder, previously stored in the Berlin Document Center have been generally accessible in the Berlin Federal Archives since the mid-1990s, the systematic processing, including and especially of victim biographies, is the subject of numerous studies.

Hadamar Memorial

Exterior view of today's main building

In 1953, a wall relief was placed in the entrance hall of Hadamar Psychiatric Hospital . In 1964, the cemetery on which the dead from 1942 to 1945 lay, was redesigned and opened to the public by the church president of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau , Pastor Martin Niemöller . A memorial and symbolic gravestones remember the victims.

In 1983, four students from Giessen developed a first exhibition on the murders of the sick, which was shown in the basement of the former killing center. This voluntary initiative is seen as the founding impetus for the Hadamar Memorial, which is recognized only hesitantly in the official historiography of the State Welfare Association of Hesse up to the present day . In 1991 the State Welfare Association of Hessen presented a newly designed permanent exhibition to the public, which has since been housed on the ground floor of the building. The state welfare association is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the memorial.

In addition to the exhibition, the memorial includes an archive (branch of the archive of the State Welfare Association of Hesse in Kassel), a library and seminar rooms. A friends' association supports the work of the memorial. Around 15,000 people visit the memorial each year, most of them as part of a three-hour tour. In addition to the protection of monuments , the memorial has been granted protection status in the event of war under the Hague Convention . In September 2019 it was announced that the memorial would be enlarged and modernized by 2025.

In 2007 the Hadamar Memorial received the Award for Innovation in Adult Education for We are discovering our story. People with learning difficulties work on the subject of Nazi 'euthanasia' crimes at the Hadamar Memorial.

The historian Jan Erik Schulte has been the director of the memorial since April 2014 .

Victim database

A digital victim database has been available since 2006, the completeness of which is unique for the six killing centers. With their help it is possible to support relatives in uncovering the disguised circumstances of death. She makes an important contribution to commemoration.

Stumbling blocks

Stumbling blocks by the artist Gunter Demnig are laid decentrally at the last place of residence of the murder victims and remember the victims there.

The first clues about the victims of the Hadamar killing center are provided by transport lists and the Hadamar database of victims. In addition, the lives of the victims are researched, documented and reveal the actions of the perpetrators and the traumatization and disadvantage of family members and descendants.

Known fatalities

See also

literature

  • Lilienthal, Georg: Der Gasmord in Hadamar , in: New studies on National Socialist mass killings by poison gas. Historical significance, technical development, revisionist denial. Edited by Günter Morsch and Bertrand Perz with the assistance of Astrid Ley (series of publications by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, Volume 29), Berlin 2011, pp. 140–152. ISBN 978-3-940938-99-2 .
  • Dorothee Roer, Dieter Henkel (Ed.): Psychiatry in Fascism. Hadamar institution 1933-1945 Psychiatrie Verlag, Bonn 1983, ISBN 3-88414-079-5 .
  • Wulf Steglich, Gerhard Kneuker (ed.): Encounter with euthanasia in Hadamar , Psychiatrie-Verlag 1985, ISBN 978-3-88414-068-0 / new edition Heimdall Verlag 2013, ISBN 978-3-939935-77-3 .
  • Gerhard Baader , Johannes Cramer, Bettina Winter: “Relocated to Hadamar”. The story of a Nazi "euthanasia" institution . Accompanying volume for an exhibition by the State Welfare Association of Hesse; Historical publication series of the Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen, catalogs volume 2; State Welfare Association Hessen, Kassel 1991, ISBN 3-89203-011-1 .
  • Peter Chroust et al. a. (Ed.): "Should be transferred to Hadamar". The victims of the euthanasia murders 1933 to 1945 (exhibition catalog), Mabuse, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-925499-39-3 .
  • Uta George, Stefan Göthling (Ed.): What happened in Hadamar during the Nazi era? A catalog in easy language , exhibition catalog of the Hadamar Memorial 2005. (= Understanding History , Volume 1)
  • Uta George et al. a. (Ed.): Hadamar. Sanatorium - killing facility - therapy center , Marburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-89445-378-7 . (Historical series of publications by the State Welfare Association of Hesse: Sources and Studies, 12)
  • Uta George: Collective Memory in People with Intellectual Disabilities . The cultural memory of the National Socialist handicapped and sick murder in Hadamar. A study of the sociology of memory. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2008. ISBN 978-3-7815-1649-6 , (also dissertation at the University of Giessen 2007).
  • Marcus Stiglegger (Ed.): Birthe Klementowski: Stille / Silence. Euthanasia in Hadamar 1941–1945. Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86505-195-0 .
  • Peter Sandner: Administration of the murder of the sick. The district association Nassau under National Socialism , Psychosozial-Verlag, Gießen 2003, ISBN 978-3-89806-320-3 (= historical publication series of the State Welfare Association Hessen : Hochschulschriften, 2)

Movie

  • Thomas Koerner: "Was Hitler a bastard" - A visit to the Hadamar Memorial. Germany, 2007; 30 min.

Web links

Commons : Hadamar Nazi Euthanasia Center  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Klee (Ed.): Documents on "Euthanasia" . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-24327-0 .
  2. ^ Hadamar Killing Center. In: gedenkstaette-hadamar.de. Retrieved December 4, 2018 .
  3. ^ Nuremberg Trial, January 16, 1946 . Zeno.org, accessed December 9, 2018.
  4. ↑ Gerhard Kneuker, Wulf Steglich: September 19, 1983: Dr. Adolf Wahlmann. In: Encounters with euthanasia in Hadamar. Pp. 33-41.
  5. ↑ Document VEJ 11/22 In: Lisa Hauff (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (collection of sources), Volume 11: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, April 1943–1945 . Berlin / Boston 2020, ISBN 978-3-11-036499-6 , pp. 156–157.
  6. ^ The Hadamar Trial. In: encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Holocaust Encyclopadia, USHMM , accessed December 4, 2018 .
  7. ↑ a b Should be transferred to Hadamar . Catalog for the memorial exhibition in Hadamar, Mabuse-Verlag 1989, ISBN 3-925499-39-3 , p. 108 ff.
  8. ^ Robert MW Kempner : The murder of the "useless eaters" , Kritische Justiz, Volume 17 (1984), Issue 3, p. 336 f.
  9. ^ Paul Julian Weindling: Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials: From Medical Warcrimes to Informed Consent . Palgrave 2004, ISBN 978-0-230-50700-5 , p. 100.
  10. ↑ Commemorative speech by Regional Councilor Dr. Friedrich Stöffler on the occasion of the unveiling of a memorial for the victims of "euthanasia" in the Hadamar State Hospital on March 13, 1953.
  11. ↑ Die Kreuzelschreiber (Der Spiegel No. 19/1961 p. 35 ff.)
  12. ↑ Pitt von Bebenburg: "We need people like Ernst Klee". The widow of the journalist Ernst Klee hands over the estate to the Hadamar Memorial. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. March 16, 2018, accessed September 18, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Dorothee Roer , Dieter Henkel (Ed.): Psychiatry in Fascism. Hadamar institution 1933-1945 , Psychiatrie-Verlag, Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-88414-079-5 .
  14. ↑ Dorothee Roer, Dieter Henkel (Ed.): Psychiatry in Fascism. Hadamar Institute 1933-1945 , Psychiatrie-Verlag, Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-88414-079-5 , p. 7.
  15. ↑ Dorothee Roer, Dieter Henkel (Ed.): Psychiatry in Fascism. Hadamar Institute 1933-1945 , Psychiatrie-Verlag, Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-88414-079-5 , p. 9.
  16. ↑ Sandner, Peter. Administration of Sick Murder (2003)
  17. ↑ Students laid the foundation stone for the memorial in Hadamar. In: FNP.de (Frankfurter Neue Presse). March 16, 2018, accessed August 18, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Archive. In: gedenkstaette-hadamar.de. Retrieved August 1, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Prize for Innovation in Adult Education 2007 - “Learning from History”. In: die-bonn.de. November 30, 2007, accessed December 4, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Christopher Plass: The Hadamar Euthanasia Memorial is being modernized: “Such sites give horror a face”. In: hessenschau.de. September 14, 2019, accessed September 14, 2019 .
  21. ↑ DIE celebrates its anniversary and awards the prize for innovation in adult education 2007. In: DIE-Bonn.de. German Institute for Adult Education , Collegium Leoninum (Bonn) , November 30, 2007, accessed on December 4, 2018 .
  22. ↑ Employees. In: gedenkstaette-hadamar.de. Retrieved December 4, 2018 .
  23. ^ Victims database / memorial book. In: gedenkstaette-hadamar.de. Retrieved December 4, 2018 .
  24. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Konstanz for victims of the T4 / "Euthanasia" campaign. In: stolpersteine-konstanz.de. Retrieved December 4, 2018 .
  25. ↑ Uwe Ebbinghaus: If you are not good, you come to Hadamar. In: FAZ.net . July 29, 2015, accessed December 4, 2018 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 27 '3 "  N , 8 ° 2' 30.4"  E