Zofiówka Sanatorium

Ruins of the Zofiówka sanatorium, 2017

The Zofiówka sanatorium was operated in the town of Otwock near Warsaw from 1908 to 1942 as a mental hospital for Jewish patients. The carrier was a Jewish organization for needy nervous and mentally ill people. On August 19, 1942, the patients there were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp or murdered on site by the SS.

history

The institution was founded in 1908 by a Jewish organization for needy nervous and mentally ill people and was named after its director and sponsor Zofia Endelmann. The leaders were Samuel Goldflam (until 1926), Gotlib Kremer, Rafał Becker , Jakub Frostig (1932–38) and most recently Włodzimierz Kaufmann. Originally created for 95 patients, the facility was expanded to become one of the largest in Europe with over 300 places by the beginning of the Second World War.

German occupation and ghetto

With the German occupation in 1939, all the sanatoriums in the General Government were placed under the supervision of the National Socialist doctor Jost Walbaum . The economic situation of the institution and the care of the patients deteriorated and on December 5, 1940, the social insurance company in Warsaw confiscated the movables (including hospital beds).

On January 15, 1941, the Otwock ghetto , where the institution was located, was founded, and from May 28, 1941 it was forbidden to leave the ghetto due to an alleged typhus epidemic . Jewish social self-help could only help to a limited extent, so that the sick and the staff suffered from hunger. From June 1 to November 16, 1941, an estimated 210 of 406 patients died from hunger and cold. Even so, the Germans were still admitting patients.

On August 19, 1942, the Germans, supported by Ukrainian SS volunteers, deported the approximately 8,000 ghetto residents to Treblinka . On the day before the deportation , some residents and three doctors from the institution committed suicide , while others tried to escape. 108 patients were murdered on site under the direction of Untersturmführer Karl Georg Brandt , head of the Jewish department at the commander of the Security Police and SD (KdS) Warsaw, and the rest were deported to Treblinka. The institution was renovated by the end of 1942 and then used as a home for German war orphans.

Web links

Commons : Sanatorium Zofiówka - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Otwock & the Zofiowka Sanatorium - A Refuge from Hell Chris Webb, 2009, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
Images in Psychiatry: Zofiówka Sanatorium
Zofiówka Sanatorium: History

literature

Andreas Jordan: The annihilation of the mentally ill in Poland 1939–1945. (Translation of the text by Tadeusz Nasierowski: The Extermination of the Mentally Ill in Poland During World War II), on Gelsenzentrum
Mary V. Seeman: The Jewish psychiatric hospital, Zofiówka, in Otwock, Poland , 2014, in History of Psychiatry, March 2015
Rael Strous: Extermination of the Jewish Mentally-Ill during the Nazi Era - The "Doubly Cursed" , 2008, Isr J Psychiatry Relat Sci Vol 45 No 4, pp. 247-256.

Individual evidence

↑ Nasierovsky and Strous name Dr. Miller as head, while Seemann clarifies that this was head of an area.
↑ Klaus-Peter Friedrich (edit.): The persecution and murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection), Volume 9: Poland: Generalgouvernement August 1941–1945 , Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-71530 -9 , p. 388 in note 4.

52.114131 21.289321Coordinates: 52 ° 6 ′ 50.9 ″ N , 21 ° 17 ′ 21.6 ″ E

[1] Nasierovsky and Strous name Dr. Miller as head, while Seemann clarifies that this was head of an area.

[2] Klaus-Peter Friedrich (edit.): The persecution and murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection), Volume 9: Poland: Generalgouvernement August 1941–1945 , Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-71530 -9 , p. 388 in note 4.