Memorial and Information Point for the Victims of National Socialist »Euthanasia« Killings

Gedenk- und Informationsort für die Opfer der nationalsozialistischen »Euthanasie«-Morde

Since autumn 2014, there is a memorial located on the square in front of the Berlin Philharmonic dedicated to the tens of thousands of people who fell victim to the crimes of the National Socialist »Euthanasia« campaign. This is the historic site on which the National Socialists planned the murder of mentally and physically handicapped people in an operation codenamed »T4«.

History

From April 1940, the headquarters of the operation that initiated, coordinated and carried out the mass murder of patients from clinics and care homes in the Third Reich were located in Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. The operation was codenamed »T 4« or simply »Aktion« (»Operation«). Over 70,000 people died as a result before the killings were halted on 24 August 1941 following public unease. The murders began with the outbreak of war in September 1939 and continued throughout the German Reich and in many occupied territories, especially in Eastern Europe, both after the »euthanasia stop« in August 1941 and after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The classification, »selection« and murder of these patients made this the first centrally organised and systematic process of mass murder carried out by the National Socialists. »T 4« was however only one aspect of the violent crimes carried out against patients from clinics and care homes. Researchers estimate that a total of 300,000 people were murdered as a result of the so-called euthanasia programme in Europe. However, there are still no reliable figures, especially for Eastern Europe.

Berlin, about 1935, Tiergartenstraße 4, Landesarchiv Berlin

Schwäbisch Hall, undated, Patient of the Gottlob Weißer hospital, Evangelisches Diakoniewerk Schwäbisch Hall

Victims

Over 70,000 mostly mentally and physically handicapped people were murdered by medical staff and physicians in six killing centres in 1940/41. When the »T4« programme was officially shut down, it is estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 more people were killed as part of »Sonderbehandlung 14f13«. Historians estimate that there were 200,000 victims of the »euthanasia« programme in Germany alone. This number includes not only murdered patients but also concentration camp prisoners who were deemed unfit for labour or »undesirable«, sick forced labourers, Jewish patients, Jehovah's witnesses, alcoholics, prostitutes and people deemed »unadjusted«. From 1934, thousands of women were sterilised on the grounds of the »Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring«.
The number of patients murdered outside of Germany is still unclear.

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

The building in Tiergartenstraße 4, which housed the headquarters of the »T4« authorities, no longer exists. The ruins of the villa, which was severely damaged in air raids, were torn down in the 1950s. Standing on the site today is the chamber music hall of the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1987, Richard Serra's sculpture »Berlin Curves« was brought to Berlin as part of a larger exhibition. It consists of two curved walls of steel erected parallel to each other, leaving a narrow passage. In 1988, the Berlin Senate purchased the sculpture with the aim of dedicating it as a monument to the victims of the »euthanasia« killings. The »Berlin Curves« monument has since then stood on the square in front of the Berlin Philharmonic. In direct vicinity is a memorial and information plaque set in the pavement, explaining the re-dedication of the sculpture to the victims of »T4«. Plans for redesigning the site of remembrance have been debated since the 1990s.
Plans for redesigning the site of remembrance have been debated since the 1990s. In November 2011, the German Bundestag voted to establish a »Memorial to the Victims of National Socialist ›Euthanasia‹ Killings« on the historic grounds of the administrative headquarters of the T4 programme. The state of Berlin subsequently launched a competition to design the memorial. The winning entry by the architect Ursula Wilms and the landscape architects Nikolaus Koliusis and Heinz W. Hallmann consists of a 24-metre-long wall made of clear light blue glass and set into a dark grey concrete surface that gently slopes towards the centre. An outdoor exhibition provides information about the history of the ›euthanasia‹ killings and their legacy up to the present-day. The Memorial was opened to the public on 2nd September 2014. The Topography of Terror Foundation and the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe were involved in planning the memorial site.

Berlin, 2008, Steel sculpture by Richard Serra, Stiftung Denkmal, Anne Bobzin

Berlin, 2014, Memorial and information point, Stiftung Denkmal, Marko Priske

Open

The memorial site is accessible at all times

Contact

https://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/denkmaeler/gedenk-und-informationsort-fuer-die-opfer-der-nationalsozialistischen-euthanasie-morde/

besucherservice@stiftung-denkmal.de

+49 (0) 30 263 943 36

Tiergartenstraße/Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße
10785 Berlin

Berlin, 2008, Information tablet at the bus stop, Stiftung Denkmal, Anne Bobzin

Berlin, 2008, The travelling »Grey Buses« memorial also came to Berlin, Stiftung Denkmal, Anne Bobzin

Berlin, 2014, View of the outdoor exhibition, Stiftung Denkmal, Marko Priske

Berlin, 2014, The Memorial and information point with the Philharmonic to the right, Stiftung Denkmal, Marko Priske

Berlin, 2014, Memorial plaque from 1989, Stiftung Denkmal, Marko Priske

Berlin, 2014, View of the memorial complex, Stiftung Denkmal, Marko Priske

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