NS-Tötungsanstalt Hadamar (Hadamar Euthanasia Centre) (1 Viewer)

[Hel]

The Hadamar Institute, near Wiesbaden in Hessen-Nassau, was one of six hospitals and sanitoria in Germany and Austria in which the Nazi euthanasia program was carried out. Founded in 1883 as a correctional institution for released prisoners, Hadamar converted into a mental health facility in 1906. During the early years of the Nazi regime, conditions steadily deteriorated due to overcrowding, poor food rations and reduced nursing care. In late August 1939, Hadamar ceased operating as a mental health facility and was turned into a military hospital. The following year, in November 1940, it was remodeled for use as a euthanasia facility. Code-named Anstalt E (Facility E), Hadamar went into operation as a killing center in mid-January 1941 under the direction of Dr. Ernst Baumhard. For the next eight months busloads of patients arrived daily at the facility and a staff of approximately 100 ran the killing operation. After the victims were offloaded, they were ushered into a reception room where they were weighed and photographed before being led to the gas chamber, disguised as a shower room, in the cellar of the Institute. Between January and August 1941, more than 10,000 disabled adults were gassed and cremated at Hadamar. The gassings stopped abruptly on August 24 following an order by Hitler. The installations in the cellar were dismantled and the rooms converted back to sickrooms. However, after a hiatus of one year, the facility was reactivated as a euthanasia-killing center in August 1942. For purposes of concealment, it also operated as a normal sanitorium. During this phase of the euthanasia program, death was inflicted by lethal overdose of medication or by starvation. The bodies were buried in mass graves disguised as single graves located behind the building. The staff of the Hadamar Institute continued to put its patients to death until shortly before liberation by American troops on March 26, 1945. In addition to the mentally and physically disabled, who were its chief victims, thousands of others met their end at Hadamar, including healthy Jewish Mischling children (the children of mixed marriages), tubercular Eastern European forced laborers (Ostarbeiter), German geriatric patients, and disabled German soldiers.

The corpse of a woman lies in an open coffin at the Hadamar Institute where she was put to death as part of the Operation T4 euthanasia program.

The corpse of a woman lies in an open coffin at the Hadamar Institute where she was put to death as part of the Operation T4 euthanasia program.

Major Herman Bolker, a member of the war crimes investigation team, performs an autopsy on an exhumed Polish victim who was put to death at the Hadamar Institute.

View of the exhumed bodies of Polish and Russian forced laborers who were put to death at the Hadamar Institute and buried in a mass grave behind the euthanasia facility.

Lt. Alexander J. Wedderburn, photographer with the 28th Infantry Division, First US Army, views the cemetery at the Hadamar Institute, where victims of the Nazi euthanasia program were buried in mass graves.

Two SS survivors of the Hadamar Institute sit on a bed at the former euthanasia facility.
These German SS had been committed to Hadamar after suffering mental breakdowns in the last year of the war.

A female survivor lies in bed at the Hadamar Institute. 23-year-old Elizabeth Killiam, the mother of twins, was sterilized at a health care facility in Weilburg before being transferred to the Hadamar Institute.

Close-up of a female survivor at the Hadamar Institute. She had been committed to the euthanasia facility five years before after being judged insane for having a Jewish boyfriend.

Lt. Alexander J. Wedderburn, photographer with the 28th Infantry Division, First US.Army, questions elderly survivors who are lying in bed at the Hadamar Institute.

An emaciated survivor stands naked between rows of beds at the Hadamar Institute.

American war crimes investigators question chief nurse Irmgard Huber about the mass killings that occurred at the Hadamar Institute.

View of a corridor at the Hadamar Institute called "Death Row".
Victims in rooms leading off this corridor were marked for immediate death.

A Son Tells His Mother’s Story(from T4 documentary by Catherine Mary Macias)

Mrs. Rosa Schillings was a young mother of two who was murdered at Hadamar in 1941. I interviewed her son, who told her tragic story: She had reluctantly uprooted her two young children to live in India at the insistence of her husband, who wanted to mine in that destination. He was killed in an accident shortly after and she was left to care for her children alone. Upon returning to Germany, she had very little family support. About a year later, her young daughter died of an illness. Gradually, Mrs. Schillings succumbed to depression and was sent to a mental health institution. That was the last her family saw of her. A fake death certificate was issued stating she had died of “leukemia.” Years later, the family finally learned that she had been gassed at the Hadamar Mental Institution.

 

[Stall01]

Great post, well done!

 

[tl;dr]

I cant believe some still say the Nazis were right, I wasn't aware that they killed their own troops too...great post.

 

[Wombat]

Shows what disgusting things an over reaching,tyrannical government will do..Eat their own too.