Grafeneck Memorial

Gedenkstätte Grafeneck

From 1940 on, a »euthanasia killing centre« was located on the premises of the Grafeneck castle, in the Württembergian town of Gomadingen. Thousands of mentally handicapped and ill people were murdered here by poison gas upon orders of the National Socialist authorities. The Grafeneck Memorial keeps alive the memory of the victims' fates.

History

Under the National Socialist regime the term »euthanasia« stood for the murder of thousands of mentally and physically handicapped people. The murder was planned and organised by a central office which directly reported to Adolf Hitler. The office was code named »T4« in reference to its postal address in Berlin's Tiergartenstraße. At first, toddlers up to the age of three fell victim to »euthanasia«, later older children and youths were affected. Beginning 1940, handicapped adults and ill people were included in the scheme under the new code »Action T4«. During the initial phase, people were killed by malnourishment, poison or medications. From January 1940, more and more »T4« killing centres began operating gas chambers.
The killing of patients in Gomadingen began on January 18, 1940. The »T4« authorities had previously ordered the installation of the appropriate facilities on the premises of castle Grafeneck. The castle had been used as a home for handicapped people by the evangelical Stuttgart Samaritan Foundation since 1928/1929. Ten years later, in October 1939, the entire institution, including the plot of land on which it stood, was confiscated upon orders of the Stuttgart Ministry of Interior. Those who had been designated for killing were brought to the »T4« centre in grey buses and led onto the premises by local personnel. The complex consisted of a reception barrack, a building which housed a gas chamber disguised as a shower room, and most probably three incinerators. It was separated from the rest of the castle premises by a high fence made of wood planks. The people who were murdered here came from homes for the disabled and hospitals in the area. After almost all of the patients of these care facilities had been murdered at Grafeneck by the end of 1940, the »T4« authorities shut down the »euthanasia killing centre« and had all of the evidence removed.

Gomadingen, 1935, Aerial view of the Grafeneck castle, Gedenkstätte Grafeneck

Gomadingen, 2005, The memorial's documentation centre, Bildarchiv Gedenkstätte Grafeneck

Victims

Between January and December 1940, over 10,600 people were asphyxiated by poison gas at Grafeneck. They came from about 48 homes for the disabled and psychiatric wards at hospitals in south-west Germany. Some of the victims were transferred to Grafeneck from the region of Berlin. Only few were deferred by the doctors during their last medical inspection, thereby being rescued from certain death.

The entry to power of the National Socialists in 1933 heralded the state persecution of opponents of the regime, Jews, Roma – who were classed as »gypsies« -, the sick and many other groups. For the first time, anti-semitism became part of the government policy of a modern state and the persecution of all groups was progressively heightened. The process was characterised by the interplay between state regulation, violence from supporters of the regime and rabble-rousing propaganda from the press. The acts of terror against the Jews in November 1938 (»The Night of the Broken Glass«), culminating in around one hundred deaths, marked the prelude to the complete exclusion and murder of the Jewish minority. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, large parts of Europe fell under German control. In Eastern Europe in particular a multi-tiered system of camps and extermination sites was established, in which the SS murdered up to six million Jews, among them around 165,000 German Jews. It is estimated that around seven million Germans lost their lives in the war, including almost 3.5 million civilians. Around 28 million residents of the occupied Soviet Union (both soldiers and civilians) and three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death. These groups are still barely commemorated in Germany. Germany came under Allied occupation in 1945 and 1949 saw the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), who had very different cultures of remembrance. The GDR profiled itself as an »antifascist« state. The former concentration camps at Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen became »National Memorials« and primarily documented the communist resistance during the war. In the Federal Republic, the dominant memory was initially of the victims of Allied bombing raids and those who had fled or been expelled from their homes in the former territory of the Third Reich. It was left to specific groups to remember Nazi persecution, the Holocaust or the resistance. With the exception of the war crimes trials, there was no public discussion of perpetrators or involvement in crimes. However, the situation was to change in the mid-1960s, when the statute of limitations for murder was lifted following a lengthy debate. Also during this period, memorial sites were established at former concentration camps (1965: Dachau and Neuengamme; 1966: Bergen-Belsen) and the German Resistance Memorial Centre was opened in 1968 in West Berlin. However, it was not until the 1980s that a diverse and often small-scale landscape of memory developed as the result of local initiatives. Following German unification in 1990, a national memorial site concept was developed and there was a major review of German sites of memory. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was inaugurated in 2005. The Topography of Terror, a comprehensive documentation of National Socialist crimes and perpetrators, has opened with a new centre in May 2010; the documentation centre »Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation« followed suit in 2021. In the meantime, central memorials in Berlin have been erected to commemorate further groups of Nazi victims as well: the murdered Sinti and Roma, the patients murdered in the context of the Nazi’s »Euthanasia« killings and the persecuted homosexuals. The German victims of National Socialist terror in the former Eastern territories of the Third Reich were forgotten by both German states after the end of the war. For decades, memory of these victims was only preserved by West German associations for Germans born in these territories and it mainly excluded the period from 1933 to 1945.

Remembrance

After being returned to the Samaritan Foundation after the end of the war, Grafeneck became a home for the disabled once again. In 1989/90, the Grafeneck Memorial was established under the motto »Commemoration needs a place«. A stone threshold integrated into the entrance of the memorial lists the names of the approximately 48 institutions and homes in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria from which people were brought to their deaths at Grafeneck. The memorial has been extended by a documentation centre on the castle premises. Presented at the documentation centre is a two-part exhibition entitled »»Euthanasia« Crimes in South-West Germany/Grafeneck in 1940 – History and Remembrance«. In 1994, the »Grafeneck Memorial« association was founded; since then it has put on display a memorial book listing the names of the approximately 8,000 victims of the mass murder.

Gomadingen, 2005, View of the exhibition at the documentation centre, Bildarchiv Gedenkstätte Grafeneck

Gomadingen, 2012, Memorial book, Stiftung Denkmal

Possibilities

Guided tours, seminars, travelling exhibition, lectures

Open

Monday to Sunday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Contact

http://www.gedenkstaette-grafeneck.de

info@gedenkstaette-grafeneck.de

+49 (0)7385 966 206

Samariterstift
72532 Gomadingen

Gomadingen, 2012, Memorial chapel, Stiftung Denkmal

Gomadingen, 2005, Memorial book, Bildarchiv Gedenkstätte Grafeneck

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