On 13 October 1939, Richard Alber, Landrat of administrative district Münsingen from 1938 to 1944, ordered that Schloss Grafeneck had to be cleared the next day.

In the castle grounds were built a wooden hut with about 100 beds, a parking space for the grey buses, a crematorium oven and a shed with facilities for gassing people.

Systematic murder under Action T4 started on 18 January 1940 in Grafeneck in a gas chamber camouflaged as a shower room, which was in a garage.

The steel cylinders required were supplied by Mannesmann; the gas was made by IG Farben in Ludwigshafen (BASF).

The victims came from 48 institutions for the handicapped and mentally ill: 40 from almost all districts of Baden-Württemberg, six from Bavaria and one each from Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia.

The French occupying forces returned the site in 1946/47 to the Samaritan Foundation or Samariterstiftung [de], who re-established it as a centre for disabled and mentally ill people, which still operates.

[4] The T4-organisators Viktor Brack and Karl Brandt arranged that the killing of ill people was to be made only by medical staff, according to a letter from Adolf Hitler (1.