KONRADSTEIN | KOCBOROWO

As early as autumn 1939, 130 children and adolescents from the branch of the institution in Mewe (Gniew) had been transferred to the Konradstein mental hospital. The medical director was Waldemar Siemens.

In 1942, a »Children’s ward« was officially established. The girls were housed in Building X, and the boys in Building XI. Approximately 360 children and adolescents were murdered there.

The head of the »Children’s ward« and the person primarily responsible for the murders was the deputy medical director Hans Arnold Schmidt. He is said to have transferred children’s corpses to the anatomical institute in Danzig, where the director Rudolf Spanner conducted human experiments. Among other things, he developed a process for making soap from human bodies.

After the war, the investigation into the murder of children was largely overshadowed by the much more extensive murders of sick people in occupied Poland. In 1946, Johann Aberg, a nurse in the »Children’s ward«, was sentenced to death in absentia. Investigations against two other doctors were dropped in 1967 due to lack of evidence.

The former medical director Walter Siemens went into hiding after the war. Hans Arnold Schmidt worked as a doctor in Hamburg. He escaped criminal proceedings in the 1960s despite the evidence against him. Due to his alcoholism, he was declared unfit to stand trial.