Nursing facility costs / Warthegau

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Main building of the old institution

The care facility Kosten / Warthegau , founded as Provincial Insane and Idiots Asylum , later Provincial Institute Kosten , was located in Kościan (German: costs) in what was then Wartheland .

Today the Wojewódzki Szpital Neuropsychiatryczny imienia Oskara Bielawskiego , a neuropsychiatric hospital, is located here .

history

founding

It was opened on April 1, 1883 under the auspices of the Poor's Association of the Province of Poznan , about five minutes' walk from the train station. Initially, a monastery building of the Saint Bernard was used, which had served as a farmhouse since 1838. In 1910 the entire facility consisted of the mental hospital and idiot institution, the director's house and officials' houses. An avenue of lime trees divided the area. A vegetable garden belonged to the area. There was a school building for the children. The main entrance was on Breslauer Strasse.

Nazi murders at costs

The Nazi killings at costs took place in January 1940 on Polish sick people and in February on evacuated Reich German patients in a gas truck by the Lange special in forest areas near the town of Kościan (German costs) in the Warthegau .

background

The lawyer Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche had already written in 1920 about the death of grace for the mentally or terminally ill in their work The Release of Destruction of Unworthy Life . The idea found its way into eugenics and National Socialist racial hygiene . The National Socialists regarded such people as ballast existences and superfluous eaters , so that in autumn 1939, with a letter from Hitler backdated to the beginning of the war, preparations were made for the murders of the sick in Germany as part of Operation T4 .

The systematic killing of inmates of institutions for the mentally handicapped had already begun with the German occupation of Poland in the Reichsgauen Wartheland , Danzig-West Prussia and Pomerania . In all likelihood, the actions went back to local initiatives by Albert Forster (Gauleiter Danzig West Prussia), Franz Schwede-Coburg (Gauleiter Pomerania) and Arthur Greiser (Gauleiter Posen and Warthegau). So they were not planned by those responsible for T4 euthanasia in the Reich.

In Pomerania, four of the six large sanatoriums and nursing homes were gradually dissolved and handed over to the SS and the Wehrmacht , namely the Stralsund sanatorium , the Lauenburg provincial sanatorium , the Kückenmühler Anstalten near Stettin and the provincial sanatorium in Treptow / Rega (Greifenberg district) . Only the sanatorium and nursing home Obrawalde (Prov. Brandenburg, Meseritz district) and Ueckermünde remained. Of the approximately 7600 patients previously cared for in Pomerania, 4600 (around 60%) were affected by the dissolution of the institution. They were mostly transferred to other Pomeranian hospitals that were still admitting at the time or killed in Neustadt / West Prussia (Wejherowo) or Kosten (Koscian) in the Reichsgau Wartheland.

In the Wartheland, the Lange Sonderkommando stationed in Poznan began for the first time in history to kill with gas stationary in a gas chamber of Fort VII in Poznan and mobile in a gas truck. The district self-administration under SS-Oberführer Robert Schulz was a compliant instrument and received its instructions directly from Greiser. Department III (People's Welfare) under Werner Ventzki was responsible for the care of the mentally and physically frail such as the mentally ill , deaf-mute , blind and crippled . In 1939, the authorities very likely set up a central office for the transfer of sick persons under Walter Grabowski in Koscian , which was later relocated to Kalisz . There was a special registry office in Poznan , which processed the killings administratively and issued death certificates with falsified causes of death.

These murders were not only caused by the racist and social Darwinian thinking of National Socialism, but also by considerations of usefulness such as clearing rooms for the SS, Wehrmacht, resettlers, authorities and hospitals. The state-controlled or sanctioned acts of terrorism against the civilian population reached a new dimension. They were also the beginning of the " destruction of life unworthy of life ": the intelligentsia , the mentally handicapped and the Jews .

Polish patients killed

From January 15 to 22, 1940, all mentally ill patients living in the Kościan state psychiatric institution were killed by SS-Sonderkommando Lange. For this purpose, they were immobilized under the pretext of being relocated with a mixture of morphine and scopolamine and taken to a forest near Jarogniewice north of Koscian. There they were murdered by carbon monoxide in a gassing car and left in mass graves. The number of victims was more than 500 people.

Killing of evacuated patients from the Altreich

From February 1940, mainly German and Jewish mentally or terminally ill patients from various institutions in Treptow / Rega, Lauenburg, Ueckermünde and Stettin were transferred to Koscian in several transports. The patients were first provided with food in the large hall, while the attending nurses were sent back. They were then murdered in a gas truck in the woods near Stęszew about 25 km from Koscian.

The number of victims cannot be determined, Ernst Klee assumes 1200 patients, while the death certificates found with probably falsified causes of death come to 2750 patients.

The institution itself was dissolved and then served an infantry - reserve battalion of the Armed Forces as a military barracks .

In June 1940 officers from the "Central Office for Sickness Transfer" stationed in Kalisz arrived and issued notifications to the family members of those killed with the wrong cause of death.

post war period

On April 2, 1945, the first department of the restored sanatorium was opened. Today it is called Wojewódzki Szpital Neuropsychiatryczny imienia Oskara Bielawskiego.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johannes Bresler: German sanatoriums and nursing homes for the mentally ill in words and pictures. Volume 1, 1910, pages 247 to 256
  2. ↑ Artur Hojan, Cameron Munro: Overview of Nazi "euthanasia" program in occupied Poland (1939-1945)
  3. ↑ Udo Benzenhöfer: The good death ?: History of euthanasia and euthanasia. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-30162-3 , p. 107.
  4. ↑ Ute Hoffmann, Dietmar Schulze: "... will be moved to another institution today" - National Socialist forced sterilization and "euthanasia" in the state sanatorium and nursing home in Bernburg - a documentation. (pdf) Regional Council Dessau
  5. ↑ Peter Langerich: Politics of Destruction. Piper, 1998, ISBN 3-492-03755-0 , p. 236 ff.
  6. ^ Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-447-05167-1 , p. 332f.
  7. ↑ Michael Alberti: Parade ground of National Socialism - The Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1941. In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Bogdan Musial (Ed.): Genesis des Genozids - Poland 1939–1941. Scientific Book Society, ISBN 3-534-18096-8 , pp. 120 ff.
  8. ↑ Artur Hojan, Cameron Munro: Overview of Nazi "euthanasia" program in occupied Poland (1939-1945). on Tiergartenstrasse 4 Assoc., accessed May 23, 2016.
  9. ↑ Götz Aly: "Final Solution". S. Fischer Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-104-90498-6 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  10. ↑ Artur Hojan, Cameron Munro: Overview of Nazi "euthanasia" program in occupied Poland (1939-1945). on Tiergartenstrasse 4 Assoc., accessed May 23, 2016.
  11. ↑ Volker Rieß: Central and decentralized radicalization. In: K – M. Mallmann, B. Musial (Ed.): Genesis des Genozids - Poland 1939–1941. Scientific Book Society, 2004, ISBN 3-534-18096-8 , p. 136.
  12. ↑ Artur Hojan, Chris Webb: Koscian - Executions and Euthanasia. Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, 2008, accessed May 18, 2016.
  13. ↑ http://sanatorium.dobrycms.eu/1797_en.html History of the "Wojewódzki Szpital Neuropsychiatryczny imienia Oskara Bielawskiego"

Coordinates: 52 ° 5 ′ 4.5 ″  N , 16 ° 38 ′ 12.9 ″  E