Bernburg killing center

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The Bernburg killing center was located between November 21, 1940 and July 30, 1943 in a separate part of the state sanatorium and nursing home in Bernburg an der Saale ( Saxony-Anhalt ). In the context of the murder of the sick under National Socialism in the so-called Aktion T4, 9385 sick and handicapped people from 38 welfare and care facilities as well as around 5000 prisoners from six concentration camps were murdered with carbon monoxide in a gas chamber . The killing center in Bernburg dissolved the Brandenburg killing center , which was closed on October 28, 1940from. Most of the staff moved to the Bernburg facility. After their closure, the “ euthanasia ” was continued decentrally with the Brandt campaign .

Today the memorial for the victims of the Nazi "euthanasia" Bernburg is located here .

Killing Wing (2006)
The gas chamber

Origin of the victims

The origins of the victims of the Bernburg killing center were clearly defined by the given catchment areas. It comprised the sanatoriums and nursing homes of the Prussian provinces of Brandenburg , Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein , the states of Anhalt , Braunschweig and Mecklenburg as well as the cities of Berlin and Hamburg , from which the disabled and sick were transported to Bernburg partly directly and partly via so-called intermediate institutions were to be murdered here with gas.

Intermediate institutions

Name old Name today place Murdered patients
State hospital Jerichow AWO specialist hospital Jerichow 390
Uchtspringe State Hospital Uchtspringe Specialist Hospital Uchtspringe , Stendal district 864
Altscherbitz State Hospital Saxon Hospital Altscherbitz Altscherbitz , today Schkeuditz. 1385
Asklepios Specialist Hospital Brandenburg Görden near Brandenburg 1110
State lunatic asylum Neuruppin Neuruppin 1497
Teupitz State Institution Teupitz , Teltow district 1564
State sanatorium and nursing home Königslutter AWO Psychiatry Center Königslutter 423

Number of victims in the first killing phase

According to an internal compilation that has been preserved, the so-called Hartheim statistics , 9,385 people were murdered in the Bernburg killing center between November 1940 and August 1941. These statistics only include the first phase of the murder of Aktion T4 , which was concluded on August 24, 1941 by order of Hitler . The first transport with 25 patients reached Bernburg on November 21, 1940 from Neuruppin.

1940 Nov Dec 1941 Jan. February March April May June July Aug total
(784) 397 387 (8601) 788 939 1004 1084 1316 1406 1426 638 (9385)

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, 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 following were active as killing doctors in Bernburg:

The alleged "euthanasia stop" in Bernburg

Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary on January 31, 1941: “ Discussed with Bouhler the question of the tacit liquidation of the mentally ill. 40,000 are gone, 60,000 still have to go. It's hard work, but also necessary. And it has to be done now. Bouhler is the right man to do this. ”According to the Hartheim statistics mentioned above, the planning target of 100,000 victims mentioned here was not achieved and the diary entry is cited as evidence that action T4 was prematurely terminated.

It is controversial whether the numerous public protests of high clergymen and other dignitaries, the public knowledge or the dropping of English leaflets about the murder of sick and handicapped people were the decisive factors for the termination of the gas murder phase and the continuation in the form of the decentralized " Euthanasia ”through food deprivation or medication. Bernburg and the Hartheim killing center near Linz remained places of mass murder until 1944 .

Action 14f13 in Bernburg

The Action 14f13 was used to select unable to work or undesirable for other reasons inmates and murder. The victims included Jewish men and women, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, anti-social people, Jehovah's Witnesses and forced laborers. The action began in the spring of 1941 when many prisoners in the concentration camps were unable to work. At that time, the T4 system was the only one by which people could be selected based on their performance and, if necessary, effectively killed. Therefore, medical commissions from the “euthanasia” went to the concentration camp. It was not until a few months later that the group was expanded to include the other group of prisoners mentioned above, who were subject to persecution by the Nazi regime not because of incapacity for work, but mainly for so-called racial and religious reasons. Transports from Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, Flossenbürg, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps came to Bernburg. In the early summer of 1943, bodies from the Wernigerode subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp were still burned in Bernburg. Then the facility was closed and in August 1943 the building was returned to the hospital's owner.

Action Reinhardt

As a doctor, Irmfried Eberl was the medical director of the Nazi killing center in Brandenburg and then with the same killing staff in Bernburg. From the summer of 1942 Eberl was in command of the Treblinka extermination camp as part of Aktion Reinhardt in Poland.

After 1945

see main article: Bernburg Memorial

In the early years of the GDR, the subject of "euthanasia" was raised in Bernburg, but it was not until the 1980s that hospital staff slowly began to deal with the content. In the course of the fall of the Berlin Wall , a memorial was opened that became state property in 1994. The director of the memorial is Ute Hoffmann. Since January 1, 2007, the memorial has been sponsored by the Sachsen-Anhalt Memorials Foundation. On November 29, 2006, the Friends of the Memorial for the Victims of Nazi “Euthanasia” Bernburg e. V. founded in the rooms of the memorial.

literature

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

Web links

Commons : Kötungsanstalt Bernburg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Report of the AWO on the 110th anniversary ( memento of January 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 7, 2012.
  2. ↑ This number in the Hartheimer Statistics page ( memento from October 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 160 kB) as well as in Henry Friedlander's: Der Weg zum NS-Genozid. From euthanasia to the final solution. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 , p. 190, and Ernst Klee (Ed.): Documents on "Euthanasia". Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag Nr. 4327, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-24327-0 , p. 232.
  3. ↑ The quote can be found with other figures from Ralph Georg Reuth: Joseph Goebbels - Tagebücher, Volume 4, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-492-21414-2 , p. 1525. In the new edition, published in 1998 by Elke Fröhlich, are the Numbers corrected as reading errors and as stated here. See: Heinz Faulstich : Goebbels' diaries and the termination of "Action T4". In: Christian Gerlach (Ed.): "Average offender" - action and motivation. ( Contributions to the history of National Socialism , vol. 16), Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-922611-84-2 , p. 211.
  4. ↑ Heinz Faulstich: Goebbels' diaries and the termination of "Action T4". , P. 211.
  5. ↑ so with Henry Friedlander: The way to the Nazi genocide. From euthanasia to the final solution. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 , p. 191.

Coordinates: 51 ° 47 ′ 14 "  N , 11 ° 43 ′ 44.5"  E