HADAMAR

The Hadamar Memorial is located on the historic site of a former killing centre. Between 1941 and 1945, a total of around 14,500 people with mental illnesses or disabilities were murdered in the former state mental hospital in what was then the province of Hesse-Nassau in a gas chamber, by lethal injections and medication, and through deliberate malnutrition.

In just eight months, between January and August 1941, over 10,000 people fell victim to »Aktion T4«. The people were led into a basement room disguised as a shower room and suffocated with carbon monoxide. A few metres away was the crematorium where the bodies were subsequently burned. In April 1941, at least 352 patients from the Lüneburg mental hospital were transferred to the Hadamar killing centre via the Herborn transit centre as part of »Aktion T4«. Only two survivors are known to date.

After the official end of »Aktion T4«, the killings in Hadamar continued covertly. Around 4,500 more people were murdered as part of the so-called »decentralised euthanasia« programme, including Jewish children and, in 1944, patients of foreign origin. Individual patients from the Lüneburg mental hospital were also among the victims of this second phase of »euthanasia«.

To certify all deaths, a special registry office was operated in the killing centre, which sent forged death certificates to the relatives.

After the end of »Aktion T4«, some of the staff from the Hadamar killing centre were transferred to the German-occupied General Government in Poland to use their »expertise« to build and operate the three extermination camps at Sobibór, Bełżec and Treblinka. Over 1.8 million people, mainly Jews, Sinti and Roma, were murdered in these camps as part of »Aktion Reinhardt«.

After American soldiers liberated the institution, the crimes were documented on film. The footage was used to re-educate the German population. The prosecution of the perpetrators began as early as 1945. By 1947, there had been three trials dealing with the crimes committed in Hadamar (the Wiesbaden trial, the Nuremberg trial and the trial before the Frankfurt Regional Court).

In 1953, a wall relief was installed in the entrance area of the former killing centre as a memorial. In 1964, the cemetery with the graves of those murdered between 1942 and 1945 was converted into a memorial site. In 1983, the first exhibition was held in the basement rooms. This provided the impetus for the establishment of a memorial site. In 1991, a permanent exhibition was installed in a wing of the clinic and became a memorial site run by the Hessian State Welfare Office. The memorial site will be redesigned by 2025 with funding from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

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