Grafeneck killing center

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Front view of Grafeneck Castle (2010)

In the Grafeneck killing center near Gomadingen in the Baden-Württemberg district of Reutlingen , 10,654 people with disabilities, mainly from Bavaria , Baden and Württemberg , but also from the Nazi period , were systematically killed during the Nazi era , known as Aktion T4 Hesse and today's North Rhine-Westphalia , murdered.

Action T4

Grafeneck (2007)

Location

Grafeneck Castle was built around 1560 as a hunting lodge by the Dukes of Württemberg and expanded into a Baroque palace between 1762 and 1772. In 1929, the Samaritan Foundation bought the castle, set up a home for the handicapped, and in 1930 set up its own cemetery.

The castle is located about 25 kilometers southeast of the district town of Reutlingen between Engstingen and Münsingen .

Beginnings

In the planning phase of the T4 campaign, the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior in Stuttgart, which worked closely with the Berlin “ Central Office T4 ”, proposed the Grafeneck Samaritan Monastery, as it met most of the requirements for the renovation. There are several reasons for choosing Grafeneck as the location for the first killing center in Germany: The castle grounds are secluded in the forest and are easy to shield as there are only two driveways. The castle also served as an administrative building for the staff, as it offered rooms for work and accommodation.

On October 13, 1939, Richard Alber , from 1938 to 1944 District Administrator of the Münsingen district , ordered the evacuation of Grafeneck Castle the following day. On October 14, 1939, it was officially confiscated “for the purposes of the Reich”. Four omnibuses from the so-called “ Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH ” (Gekrat) brought the approximately one hundred foster children together with the home manager couple Frank, their daughter and ten employees to the Reute monastery . The von Reute sisters had been informed four days earlier by the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior that they had to vacate their St. Elisabeth retreat house immediately. All the patients who were housed in Reute survived the T4 campaign.

modification

From October 1939 to January 1940 the former Samaritan Monastery Grafeneck was purposefully transformed into a murder facility:

Residential and administrative rooms, a registry office and a police office were set up in the castle building. A wooden barrack with around 100 beds, a parking space for the gray buses , a crematorium oven and a gassing shed were built on the castle grounds .

In addition, staff from Stuttgart and Berlin were recruited: doctors, police officers, office workers, nursing and transport staff, economic and domestic staff as well as guards and corpse burners. While there were only 10 to 20 people in the castle between October and December 1939, in the course of 1940 there were almost 100 men and women.

Assassinations

The systematic murders began on January 18, 1940 in Grafeneck in a gas chamber disguised as a shower room , which was located in a "garage": the prison doctor let carbon monoxide flow into the gassing room. The gas came from IG Farbenindustrie at the Ludwigshafen plant (BASF). The first murdered patients came from the Eglfing-Haar sanatorium . The victims came from 48 facilities for the disabled and the mentally ill: 40 from almost all districts of Baden-Württemberg , six from Bavaria and one each from Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia .

On December 13, 1940, the last victims were cremated in the crematorium .

closure

The closure of the Grafeneck killing center in December 1940 had various reasons. The attempt to keep the murders a secret failed, but protests from the church and the institutions were also increasing in frequency. After the closure, the staff was transferred to the Hadamar killing center in Hesse near Limburg an der Lahn . There and in other killing centers, the murders continued unhindered until August 1941. In the years that followed, the castle building served as a so-called Kinderland transport .

In 1945 the home was used by the French occupation authorities and returned to the Samaritan Foundation in 1946/47. The disabled people who were expelled from Grafeneck at the beginning of the war and who survived the war moved back to the castle.

Number of victims

There are various figures about the total number of victims in Grafeneck; According to the so-called Hartheim statistics , a total of 9,839 people were murdered in a gas chamber in the Grafeneck killing facility in the twelve months between January and December 1940:

Jan. February March April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec All in all
95 234 500 410 1,119 1,300 1,262 1,411 1,228 761 971 548 9,839

The Württemberg Grafeneck trial found a total of 10,654 victims in the summer of 1949.

Perpetrator

Some of the staff employed here took on important posts in the mass extermination camps of the National Socialists.

Administrative level

  • Ludwig Sprauer , Baden's highest medical officer, responsible for the administrative implementation of the “euthanasia” program in Baden. After evaluating the registration forms, Sprauer authorized the transport lists of the inmates destined for transfer to Grafeneck on behalf of the Baden Ministry of the Interior.
  • Otto Mauthe , the highest medical officer in Württemberg, responsible for the "euthanasia" administration in Württemberg.
  • Eugen Stähle , Medical Director in the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior, played a key role in the selection of Grafeneck as the killing facility for "Aktion T4". The department headed by him in the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior played the role of a regional T4 central office.

Killing doctors

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 the gas tap was operated by non-medical staff when the doctors were absent or for other reasons. All of Grafeneck's doctors only used cover names in external correspondence.

The killing doctors in Grafeneck were:

  • Head, “Medical Director”: Horst Schumann (“Dr. Klein”): January 1940 to late May / early June 1940; later the Pirna-Sonnenstein killing center and camp doctor in Auschwitz-Birkenau
  • Deputy: Ernst Baumhard ("Dr. Jäger"): January 1940 to April 1940, from then on head physician until December 1940; January – June 1941 in the same position at Hadamar killing center.
  • Deputy: Günther Hennecke : April 25, 1940 to December 1940; then in the same position in the Hadamar euthanasia center ("Dr. Fleck").

Administration and other staff

  • "Office manager": Christian Wirth , the most important non-medical director of the killing center, responsible for security, the Grafeneck special registry office, where death certificates were officially forged, the staff and the monitoring of the murder itself.
  • Deputy "Office Manager": Gerhard Kurt Simon ("Dr. Ott", "Keil"); also drawing as "registrar" ("anger")
  • First head of the special registry office Grafeneck: Jakob Wöger , from December 1939 to June 1940 ("Haase")
  • Deputy head of the special registry office : Hermann Holzschuh , after Wöger's departure his successor ("Lemm")
  • “Brenner”: Josef Oberhauser , responsible for the cremation of the corpses in the specially installed crematorium ovens.
  • “Transport manager”: Hermann Schwenninger , headed the “Gekrat” transport team that brought victims to the Grafeneck killing center.

Work-up

The memorial and name book

Before the circuit court Freiburg were Ludwig Sprauer , chief Medical Officer in Karlsruhe Interior Ministry, and Arthur Schreck , director of nursing homes Rastatt , Illenau and Wiesloch , indicted in 1947 and sentenced 1948th

The Grafeneck trials in Tübingen in 1949 led to eight further charges.

In 1982 a “Working Group on Euthanasia” was set up to expand a memorial and to enable a permanent exhibition.

The court files of the processes have meanwhile been digitized.

memorial

The Grafeneck Memorial

Since the 1950s and 1960s, two urn graves and a memorial site in the cemetery with an open chapel have been commemorating the murders during the Nazi era.

The memorial was artistically designed by the sculptor Rudolf Kurz from Stimpfach. A crack in the back wall of the memorial, which has existed since 1990, is intended to symbolize the pain caused by the inhumane processes .

At the entrance to the memorial there is a stone threshold sunk into the ground, which names over forty Baden-Württemberg and Bavarian institutions and homes from which people were brought to Grafeneck to be killed.

In 1995 the "Memorial and Name Book" was presented for the first time. Since October 1998, this memorial book with over 8,000 names of the victims has been housed near the memorial and freely accessible to all visitors. The research for the other unknown names is still in progress. In August 1998, an “alphabet garden” was laid out for these victims whose name was unknown; the idea for this comes from the American artist Diane Samuels .

Grafeneck has housed a documentation center since October 2005 : Since then, the memorial has been visited, including the permanent exhibition Grafeneck 1940 - Sick Murder during National Socialism. History and memory contains between 15,000 and 20,000 people annually.

Stumbling block for the Grafeneck victim Marie Christiane Haug in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim, Schlotterbeckstrasse 4

See also

literature

  • Günter Schmitt : Burgenführer Schwäbische Alb , Vol. 2: Alb Mitte-Süd: Hiking and discovering between Ulm and Sigmaringen . Biberacher Verlagsdruckerei, Biberach an der Riß 1989, ISBN 3-924489-45-9 , pp. 133-142.
  • Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life" . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-10-039303-1 . - Standard work to this day with a lot of information about Grafeneck.
  • Karl Morlok: Where are you taking us? Secret Reich affair Grafeneck . Quell-Verlag, Stuttgart 1985. - First small monograph.
  • Ernst Klee (Ed.): Documents on "Euthanasia" . Document 87. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-24327-0 , pp. 232 f .
  • Klaus-Peter Drechsel: Judged - measured - murdered. Practice of euthanasia until the end of German fascism . Duisburg Institute for Language and Social Research, Duisburg 1993, ISBN 3-927388-37-8 .
  • Roland Müller u. a .: Sick murder under National Socialism - Grafeneck and the "euthanasia" in southwest Germany . Published by the Stuttgart City Archives. Hohenheim Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-89850-971-0 .
  • Henry Friedlander : The Road to Nazi Genocide. From euthanasia to the final solution . Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 . - addition to clover. Based mainly on files from preliminary investigations and trials, the close connection between the murder of the sick and the murder of the Jews is worked out in "Aktion Reinhardt".
  • Thomas Stöckle: Grafeneck 1940. The euthanasia crimes in southwest Germany . Silberburg-Verlag, Tübingen, 3rd edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-87407-507-7 .
  • Jörg Kinzig, Thomas Stöckle (Ed.): 60 years of the Tübingen Grafeneck Trial: Considerations from a historical, legal, medical-ethical and journalistic perspective . Psychiatry and History Publishing House, Zwiefalten 2011, ISBN 978-3-931200-17-6 .
  • Henning Tümmers: Justitia and the murders of the sick: The "Grafeneck trial" in Tübingen . In: Stefanie Westermann, Richard Kühl, Tim Ohnhäuser (eds.): Nazi “Euthanasia” and remembrance: coming to terms with the past - forms of remembrance - perspectives for those affected (= medicine and national socialism , vol. 3). LIT Verlag, Münster 2011. ISBN 978-3-643-10608-7 , pp. 95-122.
  • Werner Blesch, Konrad Kaiser a. a .: They want to get us on the side. Deportation and murder of 262 disabled people from the Johannesanstalten Mosbach and Schwarzach in 1940 and 1944 . In: Mosbach in the Third Reich. Issue 2, Mosbach 1993. Available in self-publishing from the city administration, Rathaus, 74821 Mosbach
  • Hans-Werner Scheuing: "... when human lives were weighed against material assets." The Mosbach asylum in the Third Reich and the euthanasia discussion today . Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg, 2nd edition 2004, ISBN 3-8253-1607-6 . To the victims from the Johannes-Anstalten Mosbach
  • Franka Rößner: Victims of state violence - memorial work using the example of Grafeneck . In: Siegfried Frech, Frank Meier (Hrsg.): Teaching topic state and violence. Categorical approaches and historical examples . Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach am Taunus 2012, ISBN 978-3-89974-820-8 , pp. 117-137.
  • Susanne C. Knittel: Eerie story. Grafeneck, Triest and the Politics of Holocaust Remembrance . transcript, Bielefeld 2018, ISBN 978-3-8376-3994-0 .

For further references, see the main article: The euthanasia murders in the Nazi era or Action T4

Web links

Commons : Schloss Grafeneck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Grafeneck - Past and Present , accessed on February 16, 2018.
  2. ^ Chronicle , accessed February 16, 2018.
  3. ↑ grafeneck.finalnet.de: terminus Grafeneck. Euthanasia in the Swabian Alb during the Nazi era ( Memento of the original dated February 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.grafeneck.finalnet.de
  4. ↑ http://www.schule-bw.de/unterricht/faecheruebergreifende_themen/landeskunde/modelle/epochen/zeitgeschichte/ns/grafeneck/1grundinfo.htm
  5. ↑ a b c badische-zeitung.de: Beginning of the organized mass murder Badische Zeitung , January 17, 2015.
  6. ^ Letter exchange book - Himmler (Nuremberg Document NO 002)
  7. ↑ Ernst Klee (Ed.): Documents on "Euthanasia" . Document 87. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-24327-0 , pp. 232 .
  8. ↑ http://www.landesarchiv-bw.de/web/52078
  9. ^ The perpetrators of Grafeneck - page of the Landesarchiv BW, Mannheim
  10. ↑ https://www.leo-bw.de/highlights/akten-des-grafeneck-prozesses-1949
  11. ^ Public prosecutor's office in Tübingen: criminal files.
  12. ↑ http://s522790709.online.de/265.htm
  13. ↑ Franka Rößner: Victims of state violence - memorial work using the example of Grafeneck . In: Siegfried Frech, Frank Meier (Hrsg.): Teaching topic state and violence. Categorical approaches and historical examples . Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach am Taunus 2012, pp. 117–137, here p. 121.

Coordinates: 48 ° 23 ′ 33 "  N , 9 ° 25 ′ 45.4"  E