Hadamar — The Killing Center – Our Frankfurt Germany Mission

This is Hadamar, a Killing Center. We visited here this week and felt sadness as we thought about the atrocities took place here.

From Wikipedia:

The Hadamar killing center was a killing facility involved in the Nazi involuntary euthanasia program known as Aktion T4. It was housed within a psychiatric hospital located in the German town of Hadamar, near Limburg in Hessen.

Beginning in 1939, the Nazis used Hadamar and five other sites as killing facilities for Aktion T4, which performed mass sterilizations and mass murder of “undesirable” members of German society, specifically those with physical and mental disabilities. In total, an estimated 200,000 people were murdered at these facilities, including thousands of children. These actions were in keeping with Nazi ideas about eugenics. While officially ended in 1941, the programme lasted until the German surrender in 1945. Nearly 15,000 German citizens were transported to the hospital and murdered there, most by gas chamber and the rest by lethal injection and starvation. In addition, hundreds of forced labourers from Poland and other countries occupied by the Nazis were murdered there.

The hospital continues to operate. It holds a memorial to the euthanasia murders as well as an exhibit about the Nazi program.

I’ve read this book (sold for 3 Euro at the hospital) and learned the stories of the people who were brought to this tragic place. My notes from the book are packed away, but when I find them when we get home, I’ll add them here.

This hospital is still a working hospital today, caring for mentally ill patients.

This is the memorial wing, where you can learn the story of what happened here during the war. This first room (where the displays are now) is where the people were brought after being bussed here. In this room they were stripped and taken to the “showers” which was really the gas chamber. Most died the day they arrived.

Photo taken in 1941 of the chimney with the smoke from the crematorium that burned day and night.

This Stolperstein is outside the hospital.

You can read the story of Selma Klein (pictured above) here.

Between January and August 1941, more than 10,000 people were killed here. Another 5,000 were killed in 1942.

An “ideal” German family: “Healthy parents, healthy children!”

This map shows where the sterilization and killing centers were located in Germany:

Here are the 6 killing centers in Germany. Schloss Hartheim is in Austria.

Here are some of the stories of people who were killed here.

There were so many.

This book contains all of their names.

Each gemstone represents a person killed here.

After the people were stripped naked, they were taken down these steps into the basement where the gas chamber was.

In this “shower” room (12 meters square), more than 10,000 people were murdered between January and August 1941.

This is the corridor that led to the crematorium at the far end. The bodies were taken on gurneys.

This is a photo of one of the crematoriums at Dachau. The two crematoriums here were built in the same manner and were destroyed by the allies after the war.

The foundations where the ovens stood. You can see the places where the ashes were scooped out under them.

The table where gold teeth were extracted, or were organs were harvested for study.

Basement window hardware.

Another corridor in the basement.

The barn where the patients were brought from care centers all around the area.

The big gray buses that brought people here had their windows painted so no one could see who was inside.

There was room for 3 busses to pull into the barn.

The people were unloaded from the buses in this barn, out of sight of the neighbors.

From the barn, they were taken straight into the hospital room where they were stripped before going downstairs to the “showers.”

Behind the hospital on the hill is the cemetery. The hospital created fake death certificates to send to the families. Usually the cause of death was listed as TB. Sometimes an urn of ashes was sent to the family, telling the family their loved one had been cremated.

Sometimes they invited a family here for a “funeral.” Deep pits were dug and the coffin had a drop door underneath so the (random) body could be dropped into the mass grave pit after the family left. The families never saw the bodies of their loved ones.

After 1941, the killings stopped for a time, then resumed, but this time the patients were not gassed, they were killed by lethal injection or starved to death. The patients were considered “unworthy of living” or a drain on society.

After the war, a ledger book was found at Schloss Hartheim showing calculations made for how much money was saved by killing rather than by feeding or caring for these patients.