Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre
These murders at Sonnenstein and elsewhere served as organizational and technical preparation for the Holocaust; many of the key personnel of Aktion T4 had prominent roles in Operation Reinhard.
In autumn 1939, the institute was closed to the public in a decree by Saxon Interior Minister and was repurposed as a military hospital and resettlement camp.
The complex of four buildings was surrounded by a wall on the sides facing the Elbe river and a car park – still largely in place today.
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 orderlies.
An institute doctor came down, opened the valve on a carbon monoxide cylinder and watched the death process that, depending on build and endurance, took about 20 to 30 minutes.
[3] Men and women of all ages and even children were killed 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 (e.g. from the Provincial Mental Sanatorium Kortau) and parts of Bavaria.
Until 24 August 1941, when Adolf Hitler, probably for internal political reasons, issued the "Euthanasia Stop" order,[4] a total of 13,720 mentally ill and intellectually disabled people were gassed under Action T4 at Pirna-Sonnenstein.
[2] 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.
The Dresden jury handed down four death sentences, including Hermann Paul Nitsche, who from spring 1940 was one of the medical directors in charge of murdering patients.
On 1 September 1989, the 50th anniversary of the start of the Nazi extermination programme, a small exhibition about Action T4 by the historian Götz Aly was held, at the initiative of several townsfolk interested in bringing the subject to light.
Based on 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).
[6] Today, the site 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 the Electorate of Saxony court painter Bernardo Bellotto (1721-1780).
Each board takes a theme connected with Nazi euthanasia war crimes, such as collective transport, letter of condolence,, special treatment, or bathroom.
