BONN

In 1936, the »Rhineland Provincial Institute for Psychiatric-Neurological Hereditary Research« was opened at the Bonn Mental Hospital under the direction of Friedrich Panse. His colleague Kurt Pohlisch, chief physician at the University Psychiatric Clinic and director of the Bonn Mental Hospital, had brought Panse to Bonn. From 1940 onwards, both worked as experts for the headquarters of »Aktion T4«. As part of »Aktion T4«, more than 600 patients were transported from the Bonn institution and murdered.

During the war, mortality rates at the institution rose steadily.
Foreign patients were admitted to Bonn as early as 1940. In total, there were at least 213 people from Poland, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Croatia and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Many of them had previously been forced to work in industrial plants in Cologne or at Zellwolle AG in Siegburg.

If they were able to work, they were released back to their place of employment. In some cases, applications for compulsory sterilisation were submitted beforehand. Many forced labourers who were unable to work were »returned to their homeland« in individual and collective transports or (from spring 1943) transferred to »special institution«. In both cases, it must be assumed that those affected were murdered.

The initiative for the transports often came from the employment offices. One in six of the Soviet and Polish forced labourers who remained in Bonn died in the institution.

In September 1944, Bonn became a »collection centre for foreigners« for the Rhine Province, Westphalia and Lippe. As the director of the institution raised objections, he was promised that Polish and Soviet forced labourers would be given priority for transport. However, there were no more large-scale collective transports.