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.