Persecution - deportation - extermination

A time of massive exclusion and persecution began in 1933 for mentally ill and disabled people.

Since January 1st, 1934, the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring” was in effect. People with psychiatric diagnoses were no longer allowed to have children because they were viewed as a “threat to the national body.” It is known that 366 men and women from the Klingenmünster sanatorium and nursing home had to undergo forced sterilization. The operations took place primarily in Landau and Ludwigshafen.

On September 10, 1939, the institution was evacuated for the Wehrmacht. Over 1,200 patients from the Palatinate were brought to Bavarian institutions by freight trains. In October 1940, only around 900 of the evacuated patients, nurses and doctors returned to the Klingenmünster sanatorium and nursing home.

In 1939, the Nazis prepared a secret operation to murder the sick, which they euphemistically called "euthanasia" (Greek for "the good death"). Doctors filled out registration forms for institutional patients, determined the length of stay, prospects of recovery and work performance, and then decided which of them was “unworthy of living” and should die. In six places in Germany, existing facilities were converted into “Reichsanstalten” (Reichsanstalten), their sole purpose was the mass murder of sick and disabled people.

At least 223 patients from the Klingenmünster sanatorium and nursing home were gassed in 1940 in the killing centers in Grafeneck (Swabian Alb), Pirna (near Dresden) and Hartheim (near Linz/Danube). Their bodies were immediately burned and their ashes disposed of. By August 1941, over 70,000 sick and disabled people had fallen victim to the central murder campaign throughout the German Reich.

In 1943 and 1944, 72 forced laborers and people in “preventative detention” were deported directly from the Klingenmünster institution. They were sent to the Hadamar killing center and the Dachau, Mauthausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps. At least 41 of them did not survive.

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Euphemia Anna 🌳

March 26, 2024

“The memorial for the victims of Nazi psychiatry was inaugurated on April 11, 2008.
As in many other clinics, it took over 40 years in Klingenmünster to face its own history [after the Nazi era]. In 1989, the Palatinate District Association commissioned the Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore in Kaiserslautern to come to terms with the events in what was then the Klingenmünster Sanatorium and Nursing Home. [...] The sculpture 'Between the Cutting Edges' by the Palatinate artist Volker Krebs, which is at the center of the memorial, makes the suffering of the victims visible with its shape reminiscent of a crucifix." Source (quoted verbatim): information board on site

The memorial plaque (from 2011) has the following text:
"More than 2,000 people from the Klingenmünster sanatorium and nursing home became victims of psychiatry under National Socialism between 1940 and 1945. They were sick, weak or just different. Many of them were not given a grave or were buried in an unworthy manner."
Further information: pfalzklinikum.de/ueber-uns/geschichte/gedenkarbeit

There is a digital exhibition on the topic of “Nazi Psychiatry in the Palatinate”:
ns-psychiatrie-pfalz.de/home?in=&cHash=cbbce04164382d0272740fa0e20292bd

To the right of the memorial there is a "Wall of Remembrance" with the names of (long-term) patients who died in the clinic in the post-war period. There is also a "historic" part of the cemetery (on the right outer edge) and a "new" part of the cemetery.

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Location: Klingenmünster, Südliche Weinstraße, Südpfalz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

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