It is a black and white, slightly yellowed postcard. It shows three buildings surrounded by a stone wall. The one on the left has three storeys and looks stately. There are many bay windows in its roof. Narrow chimneys are turrets on the roof. The middle building has two storeys. There are also many bay windows in its roof. The building on the right is smaller and has a kind of church tower. It could be a small chapel. There is an illegible inscription on one side of the building. There are some bare trees outside the stone wall. There is an official postmark at the top right of the postcard. It reads, among other things: "Plebiscyt. Vote".

Postcard of the Loben (Lubliniec) institution and nursing home, 1920.

ArEGL 99.

LOBEN | LUBLINIEC

The Loben institution (Silesia) was established in 1894. During the Second World War, it housed around 1,500 patients. In mid-September 1939, Ernst Buchalik took up his post as director of the Loben sanatorium and nursing home. Under his leadership, a »Children’s ward« was established there in 1941.

From September 1944 onwards, there was also a »foreigners« collection point’ in Loben. Its catchment area covered the Sudetenland, Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia. It is not known how many foreign patients were admitted to the collection point and murdered.

Ernst Buchalik fled westward at the end of the Second World War. He went into hiding in Greiz (Thuringia). From the beginning of September 1945, he practised there as a neurologist. In 1957, he became senior physician at the Westfälische Klinik in Niedermarsberg. The public prosecutor’s investigation against him was dropped in 1974.

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