Due to an increasing overload of psychiatric facilities in the Kingdom of Saxony, the construction of the Royal Saxon State Institution Gross-Schweidnitz near Löbau in Saxony began in 1898. The institute, with initially 34 buildings, was opened on April 1, 1902 and offered space for 524 people with curable and incurable mental illnesses.
On May 1, 1939, Alfred Schulz was appointed director. For the T4 campaign, the institution under Director Schulz served as an interim institution for the Pirna-Sonnenstein killing center. From December 1943 there was a so-called "children's department" in the state institution under the direction of Arthur Mittag.
In the course of the war, Großschweidnitz became one of the last intact locations of a mental hospital in the country. Many seriously ill patients were transferred here from other facilities. As a result, the plant was massively overloaded. This increased pressure on doctors and hospital management, killing more patients with drug overdoses, food restrictions, hypothermia and demobilization.
Between mid-1943 and September 1944 alone, around 2,400 patients were killed in Großschweidnitz. A total of over 5000 people were murdered from 1939 to 1945. Doctors and nursing staff were knowledgeable and involved.
After 1945, the entire facility was decontaminated and turned back into a psychiatric clinic.
In 1947 2 doctors and 5 senior sisters were sentenced to several years in prison. [3]
As early as 1949, the clinic facility again accommodated 1,520 patients. After the political change in 1989, the hospital was extensively renovated and modernized.
From 1967 the institution was called "Specialist Hospital for Psychiatry and Neurology".
In 2012, the Großschweidnitz Memorial Society was founded, which deals with the investigation of crimes in the clinic during the Nazi era.
Source: Wikipedia