Sonnenstein Nazi Death Institute
Encyclopedia
The Sonnenstein Euthanasia Clinic was a Nazi killing centre located in the former fortress of Sonnenstein Castle
near Pirna
in East Germany, where a hospital had been established in 1811.
In 1940 and 1941, the facility was used by the Nazis to exterminate around 15,000 people in a process that was labelled as euthanasia
. The majority of victims were suffering from psychological disorders and mental retardation
, but their number also included inmates from the concentration camps. The institute was set up after the beginning of the Second World War as part of a Reich-wide, centrally coordinated and largely secret programme called Action T4
for the "Elimination of life unworthy of life
" (Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens) or the killing of what the Nazis called "dead weight existences" (Ballastexistenzen). Today, the Pirna Sonnenstein Memorial Site (Gedenkstätte Pirna Sonnenstein) stands to commemorate these crimes.
The Nazi euthanasia facility at Sonnenstein Castle
also supported the personnel as well as the organisational and technical preparation of the Holocaust. It was one of six that were in operation in Saxony
, and was — not least due to the number of victims — one of the worst sites of Nazi war crimes in the state
.
and first director of this hospital was Ernst Gottlob Pienitz. Between 1855 and 1914 the institute was expanded with numerous extensions. From 1922 to 1939 the national nursing college (Pflegerschule) was moved to Sonnenstein.
In 1928, Hermann Paul Nitsche was appointed as the director of the Sonnenstein Mental Institution (Heilanstalt Sonnenstein) which had now grown to over 700 patients. Under his tenure a systematic exclusion of chronically mentally ill patients began. As an advocate of "racial hygiene
" and "euthanasia
" he carried out compulsory sterilization
s, questionable compulsory medical procedures and food rationing on patients with "hereditary" diseases. In autumn 1939, the institute was closed to the public in a decree by Saxon Interior Minister and set up as a military hospital and resettlement camp.
, six death institutes were set up in 1940 and 1941 across the German Reich under the direction of the branches of the Nazi Party, overseen by a specially-created control centre for the extermination programme, established at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. These institutes were responsible for gassing 70,000 mentally ill and mentally retarded patients from psychiatric institutions, old peoples homes, nursing homes and hospitals. One of these extermination clinics was located in Pirna-Sonnenstein under the direction of the doctor, Horst Schumann
. His successors were Kurt Borm (code name "Dr. Storm"), Klaus Endruweit (code name "Dr. Bader"), Curt Schmalenbach (code name "Dr. Palm") and Ewald Wortmann (code name "Dr. Friede").
In spring 1940 the Berlin euthanasia department had a killing centre established in a screened-off part of the institute's land. In the cellar of a hospital building – Haus C 16 - a gas chamber
was installed and a crematorium attached. The four building complex was surrounded by a wall on the Elbe river and car park sides - still largely in place today. On the remaining sides a high board fence was erected to hide the what was going on inside.
At the end of June 1940 the extermination institute began operations. In the years 1940 and 1941 it had a total of about 100 employees: doctors, nurses, drivers, carers, office workers, police. Several times a week, patients were fetched from mental and nursing homes in busses and brought to the Sonnenstein. After passing the entrance gate to the institute, which was guarded by a police detachment, the victims were taken to the ground floor of Block C 16 where they were separated into reception rooms for men and women by care workers. In another room they were presented one by one, usually to two doctors from the institute, who then fabricated a cause of death for the subsequent death certificate.
Following their "examination" the victims had to undress in another room under the supervision of nurses and carers. Next 20 to 30 people were taken down to the cellar under the pretext that they were going for a shower. There they were led into a gas chamber
fitted out like a shower room with several shower heads in the ceiling. Then staff closed the steel door to the gas chamber. An institute doctor came down, turned the gas cock on a carbon monoxide
cylinder and watched the death process that, depending on build and endurance, took about 20 to 30 minutes.
After about 20 more minutes, the gas was extracted and the corpses collected from the gas chamber by "stokers" and cremated in two coke ovens supplied by the firm of Kori from Berlin. Before cremation, selected patients were dissected by the doctor and any gold teeth removed. The ashes of the victims were dumped on the institute rubbish dump or simply shovelled over the bank of the River Elbe behind the building at night.
The Sonnenstein Registry Office (Standesamt Sonnenstein) sent families of the victims a death certificate with falsified causes of death and a standard "letter of condolence". Men and women of all ages and even children were murdered at Sonnenstein, including those from the Katharinenhof in Saxony's Großhennersdorf
and from the Chemnitz-Altendorf State Institute. The patients killed at Sonnenstein came from the whole of Saxony, Thuringia
, Silesia
, East Prussia
and parts of Bavaria
. Until 24 August 1941, when Adolf Hitler, probably for internal political reasons, issued the "Euthanasia Stop" order, a total of 13,720 mentally ill and mentally retarded people were gased under Action T4 at Pirna-Sonnenstein.
. At the time the camps did not have their own gas chambers. The scale of prisoner transportation to Sonnenstein is still not fully known. Records show transportations from the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz. The mass gassing of almost 600 inmates from the Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of July 1941 marked the transition to a new dimension in war crime.
In the first half of 1942 extermination camps
for Polish and European Jews were established, especially in East Poland, under Operation Reinhard
, that were able to draw on the experience gained under Action T4
. About a third of the employees at the Sonnenstein Death Institute were deployed during 1942 and 1943 to the extermination camps of Bełżec, Sobibor
and Treblinka
.
After the doctors' trial, the crimes committed were rarely mentioned in Pirna. During the time of East Germany, the story was repressed and largely concealed for four decades. On the Sonnenstein site a large factory was built that was kept shielded from the public; the firm used the buildings of the death centre.
These statistics only cover the first phase of Action T4, that was ended by an order from Adolf Hitler on 24 August 1941. After the temporary interruption of Action T4, a further 1,031 concentration camp prisoners from Buchenwald
, Sachsenhausen
and Auschwitz
were murdered in Sonnenstein under the code name "Special treatment 14 f 13".. One of the best-known victims was the Dresden painter Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler
. Likewise the church solicitor, Martin Gauger
, who came from Buchenwald concentration camp
was murdered in Sonnenstein under 14f13.
From 1954 to 1991 a large part of the site was used by a continuous-flow machine manufacturer to build aircraft turbines. In 1977 the Pirna District Rehabilitation Centre was established in the castle area. In 1991 this grew into the workshop for handicapped people under the sponsorship of the workers' charity, Arbeiterwohlfahrt.
Not until autumn 1989 did its historic events gradually sink in to the public consciousness in the town. On 1 September 1989 on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Nazi extermination programme, a small exhibition by the historian, Götz Aly
, about Action T4
was held in the Evangelical Community Centre of Pirna-Sonnenstein at the initiative of several townsfolk interested in bringing the subject to light. The exhibition generated a lot of public interest. As a result, there was a citizens' initiative to create a suitable memorial site to the victims of the Nazi euthanasia crimes at Sonnenstein. In June 1991 a society for the site was formed, the Kuratorium Gedenkstätte Sonnenstein.
Based to searches of the archives and archaeological investigations carried out from 1992 to 1994 the cellar rooms used for the exterminations in Haus C 16 were reconstructed in 1995 and arranged as a memorial centre (today building Schlosspark 11). The exhibition is located in the attic of the same building. On behalf of the Saxon Memorial Foundation a permanent exhibition to remember the victims of political tyranny was created to document the crimes. It was opened to the public on 9 June 2000.
The project by Heike Ponwitz is the result of a competition to erect a memorial for the 15,000 victims of Sonnenstein.
Other bibliography see main article: Action T4
Sonnenstein castle
The Sonnenstein castle is a castle in Pirna, near Dresden, Germany. It housed a mental hospital, which operated from 1811 to the end of World War II in 1945. During the War, it functioned as an extermination centre for the Third Reich Action T4 program...
near Pirna
Pirna
Pirna is a town in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, capital of the administrative district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The town's population is over 40,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as a Große Kreisstadt...
in East Germany, where a hospital had been established in 1811.
In 1940 and 1941, the facility was used by the Nazis to exterminate around 15,000 people in a process that was labelled as euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
. The majority of victims were suffering from psychological disorders and mental retardation
Mental retardation
Mental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
, but their number also included inmates from the concentration camps. The institute was set up after the beginning of the Second World War as part of a Reich-wide, centrally coordinated and largely secret programme called Action T4
Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
for the "Elimination of life unworthy of life
Life unworthy of life
The phrase "life unworthy of life" was a Nazi designation for the segments of populace which had no right to live and thus were to be "euthanized". The term included people with serious medical problems and those considered grossly inferior according to racial policy of the Third Reich...
" (Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens) or the killing of what the Nazis called "dead weight existences" (Ballastexistenzen). Today, the Pirna Sonnenstein Memorial Site (Gedenkstätte Pirna Sonnenstein) stands to commemorate these crimes.
The Nazi euthanasia facility at Sonnenstein Castle
Sonnenstein castle
The Sonnenstein castle is a castle in Pirna, near Dresden, Germany. It housed a mental hospital, which operated from 1811 to the end of World War II in 1945. During the War, it functioned as an extermination centre for the Third Reich Action T4 program...
also supported the personnel as well as the organisational and technical preparation of the Holocaust. It was one of six that were in operation in Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
, and was — not least due to the number of victims — one of the worst sites of Nazi war crimes in the state
States of Germany
Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...
.
Early history
The former castle site and fortress was converted in 1811 into an institute for mentally-ill patients who were assessed as curable. It had a good reputation due to its psychiatric reform concept. The general practitionerGeneral practitioner
A general practitioner is a medical practitioner who treats acute and chronic illnesses and provides preventive care and health education for all ages and both sexes. They have particular skills in treating people with multiple health issues and comorbidities...
and first director of this hospital was Ernst Gottlob Pienitz. Between 1855 and 1914 the institute was expanded with numerous extensions. From 1922 to 1939 the national nursing college (Pflegerschule) was moved to Sonnenstein.
In 1928, Hermann Paul Nitsche was appointed as the director of the Sonnenstein Mental Institution (Heilanstalt Sonnenstein) which had now grown to over 700 patients. Under his tenure a systematic exclusion of chronically mentally ill patients began. As an advocate of "racial hygiene
Racial hygiene
Racial hygiene was a set of early twentieth century state sanctioned policies by which certain groups of individuals were allowed to procreate and others not, with the expressed purpose of promoting certain characteristics deemed to be particularly desirable...
" and "euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
" he carried out compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
s, questionable compulsory medical procedures and food rationing on patients with "hereditary" diseases. In autumn 1939, the institute was closed to the public in a decree by Saxon Interior Minister and set up as a military hospital and resettlement camp.
Systematic murder of patients
As part of what later became the so-called Action T4Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
, six death institutes were set up in 1940 and 1941 across the German Reich under the direction of the branches of the Nazi Party, overseen by a specially-created control centre for the extermination programme, established at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. These institutes were responsible for gassing 70,000 mentally ill and mentally retarded patients from psychiatric institutions, old peoples homes, nursing homes and hospitals. One of these extermination clinics was located in Pirna-Sonnenstein under the direction of the doctor, Horst Schumann
Horst Schumann
Horst Schumann , SS-Sturmbannführer and medical doctor, conducted cruel sterilization and castration experiments at Auschwitz and was particularly interested in the mass sterilization of Jews by means of X-rays....
. His successors were Kurt Borm (code name "Dr. Storm"), Klaus Endruweit (code name "Dr. Bader"), Curt Schmalenbach (code name "Dr. Palm") and Ewald Wortmann (code name "Dr. Friede").
In spring 1940 the Berlin euthanasia department had a killing centre established in a screened-off part of the institute's land. In the cellar of a hospital building – Haus C 16 - a gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
was installed and a crematorium attached. The four building complex was surrounded by a wall on the Elbe river and car park sides - still largely in place today. On the remaining sides a high board fence was erected to hide the what was going on inside.
At the end of June 1940 the extermination institute began operations. In the years 1940 and 1941 it had a total of about 100 employees: doctors, nurses, drivers, carers, office workers, police. Several times a week, patients were fetched from mental and nursing homes in busses and brought to the Sonnenstein. After passing the entrance gate to the institute, which was guarded by a police detachment, the victims were taken to the ground floor of Block C 16 where they were separated into reception rooms for men and women by care workers. In another room they were presented one by one, usually to two doctors from the institute, who then fabricated a cause of death for the subsequent death certificate.
Following their "examination" the victims had to undress in another room under the supervision of nurses and carers. Next 20 to 30 people were taken down to the cellar under the pretext that they were going for a shower. There they were led into a gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
fitted out like a shower room with several shower heads in the ceiling. Then staff closed the steel door to the gas chamber. An institute doctor came down, turned the gas cock on a carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide , also called carbonous oxide, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas that is slightly lighter than air. It is highly toxic to humans and animals in higher quantities, although it is also produced in normal animal metabolism in low quantities, and is thought to have some normal...
cylinder and watched the death process that, depending on build and endurance, took about 20 to 30 minutes.
After about 20 more minutes, the gas was extracted and the corpses collected from the gas chamber by "stokers" and cremated in two coke ovens supplied by the firm of Kori from Berlin. Before cremation, selected patients were dissected by the doctor and any gold teeth removed. The ashes of the victims were dumped on the institute rubbish dump or simply shovelled over the bank of the River Elbe behind the building at night.
The Sonnenstein Registry Office (Standesamt Sonnenstein) sent families of the victims a death certificate with falsified causes of death and a standard "letter of condolence". Men and women of all ages and even children were murdered at Sonnenstein, including those from the Katharinenhof in Saxony's Großhennersdorf
Großhennersdorf
Großhennersdorf is a village and a former municipality in Görlitz district, Free State of Saxony, Germany. Since 1 January 2011, it is part of the town Herrnhut. It is connected by Bundesstraße 178 linking Löbau and Zittau....
and from the Chemnitz-Altendorf State Institute. The patients killed at Sonnenstein came from the whole of Saxony, Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
, Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
, East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
and parts of Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
. Until 24 August 1941, when Adolf Hitler, probably for internal political reasons, issued the "Euthanasia Stop" order, a total of 13,720 mentally ill and mentally retarded people were gased under Action T4 at Pirna-Sonnenstein.
Precursor to the "Final Solution"
In addition, in summer 1941 more than one thousand inmates from concentration camps were murdered at Pirna-Sonnenstein as part of Action 14f13Action 14f13
Action 14f13, also called "Sonderbehandlung 14f13", was a campaign of the Third Reich to murder Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Also called "invalid" or "prisoner euthanasia", the campaign culled the sick, elderly and those deemed no longer fit for work from the rest of the prisoners in a...
. At the time the camps did not have their own gas chambers. The scale of prisoner transportation to Sonnenstein is still not fully known. Records show transportations from the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz. The mass gassing of almost 600 inmates from the Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of July 1941 marked the transition to a new dimension in war crime.
In the first half of 1942 extermination camps
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
for Polish and European Jews were established, especially in East Poland, under Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
, that were able to draw on the experience gained under Action T4
Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
. About a third of the employees at the Sonnenstein Death Institute were deployed during 1942 and 1943 to the extermination camps of Bełżec, Sobibor
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
and Treblinka
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
.
Traces removed
During the summer of 1942 the euthanasia institute of Sonnenstein was dissolved and the gas chamber and crematorium dismantled. After careful removal of the traces of the crime, the building was used from the end of 1942 as a military hospital by the Wehrmacht. In the so-called Dresden Doctors' Trial in the summer of 1947 some of the participants in the murders at Sonnenstein were held to account. The Dresden jury sentenced to death Hermann Paul Nitsche, who from spring 1940 was one of the medical directors in charge of the extermination of patients in the German Reich, as well as two of the Sonnenstein nurses.After the doctors' trial, the crimes committed were rarely mentioned in Pirna. During the time of East Germany, the story was repressed and largely concealed for four decades. On the Sonnenstein site a large factory was built that was kept shielded from the public; the firm used the buildings of the death centre.
Number of victims
According to surviving internal T4 statistics, in the Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre in 15 months between June 1940 and 1 September 1941 a total of 13,720 people were murdered in the gas chamber:| 1940 | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | 1941 | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 1,116 | 1,221 | 1,150 | 801 | 947 | 698 | 365 | 608 | 760 | 273 | 1,330 | 1,297 | 2,537 | 607 | 13,720 |
These statistics only cover the first phase of Action T4, that was ended by an order from Adolf Hitler on 24 August 1941. After the temporary interruption of Action T4, a further 1,031 concentration camp prisoners from Buchenwald
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
, Sachsenhausen
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
and Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
were murdered in Sonnenstein under the code name "Special treatment 14 f 13".. One of the best-known victims was the Dresden painter Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler
Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler
Elfriede Lohse Wächtler was a German painter of the avant-garde whose works were banned as "degenerate art", and in some cases destroyed, by the Third Reich. She was killed in a former psychiatric institution at Sonnenstein castle in Pirna under Action T4, a forced euthanasia program of Nazi Germany...
. Likewise the church solicitor, Martin Gauger
Martin Gauger
Martin Gauger was a German jurist and pacifist from Wuppertal, Rhenish Prussia. He was a member of the Kreisau Circle which sought to overthrow the National Socialist regime in Germany during the Second World War....
, who came from Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
was murdered in Sonnenstein under 14f13.
Establishment of the memorial centre
After the death centre had closed in 1941, the Adolf Hitler School (Adolf-Hitler-Schule Gau Sachsen), a Reich Administration School and a Wehrmacht military hospital were established on the site and lasted until 1945. Following the end of the Second World War, it became a refugee camp, quarantine camp for released members of the Wehrmacht, part of the Landrat office and a police school. These remained until 1949, with the exception of the police school which lasted until 1954.From 1954 to 1991 a large part of the site was used by a continuous-flow machine manufacturer to build aircraft turbines. In 1977 the Pirna District Rehabilitation Centre was established in the castle area. In 1991 this grew into the workshop for handicapped people under the sponsorship of the workers' charity, Arbeiterwohlfahrt.
Not until autumn 1989 did its historic events gradually sink in to the public consciousness in the town. On 1 September 1989 on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Nazi extermination programme, a small exhibition by the historian, Götz Aly
Götz Aly
Götz Aly is a German journalist, historian and social scientist.-Biography:After attending the German School of Journalists, Aly studied history and political science in Berlin...
, about Action T4
Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
was held in the Evangelical Community Centre of Pirna-Sonnenstein at the initiative of several townsfolk interested in bringing the subject to light. The exhibition generated a lot of public interest. As a result, there was a citizens' initiative to create a suitable memorial site to the victims of the Nazi euthanasia crimes at Sonnenstein. In June 1991 a society for the site was formed, the Kuratorium Gedenkstätte Sonnenstein.
Based to searches of the archives and archaeological investigations carried out from 1992 to 1994 the cellar rooms used for the exterminations in Haus C 16 were reconstructed in 1995 and arranged as a memorial centre (today building Schlosspark 11). The exhibition is located in the attic of the same building. On behalf of the Saxon Memorial Foundation a permanent exhibition to remember the victims of political tyranny was created to document the crimes. It was opened to the public on 9 June 2000.
The memorial centre today
It is part of the memorial known as "Vergangenheit ist Gegenwart" ("The Past is the Present"), created by Berlin artist, Heike Ponwitz. All the boards carry a motif of the Sonnenstein Fortress based on a painting by electoral Saxony's court painter, Giovanni Canaletto (1722-1780). Each board takes a theme connected with the Nazi euthanasia war crime, such as: collective transport, letter of condolence,special treatment or bathroom. The beauty of the townscape is thus interrupted by a closer look at its past.The project by Heike Ponwitz is the result of a competition to erect a memorial for the 15,000 victims of Sonnenstein.
Sources
- Böhm, Boris: Geschichte des Sonnensteins und seiner Festung, publ. by Kuratorium Gedenkstätte Sonnenstein, Pirna, 1994
- Kuratorium Gedenkstätte Sonnenstein e.V. u. Sächsische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung (pub.): Nationalsozialistische Euthanasieverbrechen in Sachsen. Beiträge zu ihrer Aufarbeitung. Dresden, Pirna 1993 and 2nd heavily amended edition of 1996; 2004, ISBN 3-937602-32-1. (Collection of individual articles.)
- Kuratorium Gedenkstätte Sonnenstein e.V. (publ.): Von den Krankenmorden auf dem Sonnenstein zur „Endlösung der Judenfrage“ im Osten. Pirna, 2001.
- Frank Hirschinger: Zur Ausmerzung freigegeben. Halle und die Landesheilanstalt Altscherbitz 1933-1945. Böhlau, Cologne, 2001, ISBN 3-412-06901-9.
- Daniela Martin: "... die Blumen haben fein geschmeckt". Das Leben meiner Urgroßmutter Anna L. (1893-1940) Schriftenreihe Lebenszeugnisse - Leidenswege, Heft 21, Dresden, 2010; ISBN 978-3-934382-23-7.
- Thomas Schilter: Unmenschliches Ermessen. Die nationalsozialistische „Euthanasie“-Tötungsanstalt Pirna-Sonnenstein 1940/41. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig, 1998. 319 pages, ISBN 3378010339.
Other bibliography see main article: Action T4