Postcard of the Pfafferode institution and nursing home, after 1945.

ArEGL 99.

PFAFFERODE

In April 1943, Theodor Steinmeyer took over as director of the Pfafferode sanatorium and nursing home in Thuringia. Prior to that, he had been medical director in Niedermarsberg while the »children’s ward« was still in operation there. He then served as an expert at the headquarters of »Aktion T4« and acted as deputy director of the Bernburg killing centre. At the latest when Steinmeyer took up his post in Pfafferode, patients there not only died from malnutrition, but were also murdered with medication. He boasted about this to his colleagues.

Although Pfafferode was already overcrowded in the summer of 1944, the provincial administration in charge offered to bring »mentally ill Eastern workers from central Germany« to Pfafferode. In doing so, it pre-empted the decree to establish collection points. Pfafferode became an important hub for the »euthanasia« of Eastern workers. There were even plans to build a crematorium for this purpose.

A total of around 365 foreign patients were in Pfafferode during the Second World War. The patients came from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, France and Italy. More than half of them, at least 190, died in Pfafferode, most between June 1944 and March 1945.

On 4 April 1945, Pfafferode was occupied by the Americans. The admission register notes the discharge of around 80 foreign patients over the following days. It is unclear whether those who had already died were still registered as »discharged«.