Gedenkstätte Hadmar

Cemetery description

Hadamar Euthanasia Centre Memorial

In January 1941, in a former health care institution and a nursing home for mentally sick patients in Hadamar, an action to systematically kill patients was launched. In this way, Hadamar became one of the six euthanasia centres operating within the so-called ‘Action T4’ that aimed at the annihilation of persons pronounced as ‘unsuitable for work’ or ‘incurably sick’ that stayed in health care institutions and hospitals. Within merely 8 months, more than 10,000 children, women and men classified as sick or disabled were killed in Hadamar’s basement, where the gas chamber was faked to look like a bathroom. Additionally, Polish forced labourers unable to work as a result of inhumane treatment were killed here. The corpses were burnt. In August 1941, gassings were suspended but, as of 1942, the action to murder the patients and other persons that remained under the care of Hadamar was relaunched. This time, the doctors, nurses and other personnel murdered the victims by overdosing medicaments or by starving them to death.
By the end of the war in 1945, approximately 4,500 additional patients were killed in Hadamar, including 62 Polish forced labourers. Their remains were buried in collective graves in a hospital cemetery that was built especially for that purpose. The cemetery is located on a hill and next to the former euthanasia centre.
In 1964, it was transformed into a symbolic memorial site marked by a stone obelisk as well as stone symbols of various religious denominations. Since 1983, the premises of the former hospital have housed a memorial site that consists of the cemetery, the authentic war-time basement rooms that were utilised as the gas chambers, the crematorium and an exhibition devoted to the history of this place. The memorial book contains the names of the victims. Hadamar is also a place where the Social Psychiatry Centre is located.

Address details