Archive for October 2008
Nazi Euthanasia at Meseritz-Obrawalde! www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Meseritz-Obrawalde Euthanasia Centre
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In 1939, the town of Meseritz was within the Prussian province of Pomerania. Today the town bears the name Miedzyrzecz and is situated in Poland. The hospital at Obrawalde (now Obrzyce), usually referred to as Meseritz-Obrawalde, together with the institution at Tiegenhof (now Dziekanka) in the Wartheland, were probably the most notorious killing centres of “wild” euthanasia.
During the period preceding the suspension of the euthanasia programme in August 1941, large numbers of patients had been transferred from Meseritz-Obrawalde “to the East” and had, like patients from other Pomeranian institutions, simply disappeared. At the beginning of 1942, the first trains, each containing about 700 handicapped patients arrived.
They were eventually to be transported to Meseritz-Obrawalde from at least twenty-six German cities, usually in the middle of the night. At the end of the year, and especially in 1943, these trains arrived more and more frequently. All the nurses and orderlies – according to their statements – had to “unload” the patients.
The sick patients were in horrible condition: many were emaciated and they were very dirty. This condition contributed to the nursing personnel being able to distance themselves emotionally from these people. The patients were in such an undignified condition that the personnel could be convinced to kill thousands of them without compunction. The staff selected for killing those patients who were unable to work, but the process was arbitrary and those selected included “patients who caused extra work for the nurses, those who were deaf-mute, ill, obstructive, or undisciplined, and anyone else who was simply annoying” as well as patients “who had fled and were recaptured, and those engaging in undesirable sexual liaisons.”
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Meseritz-Obrawalde Today
The selected handicapped victims were taken to so-called killing rooms where physicians and nurses killed them using an orally administered drug overdose or a lethal injection. The killing of was never done by only one nurse. Practical experience had shown that it was absolutely necessary for the killing to be done by at least two nurses. After the patient had been killed by the male and female nurses, a fraudulent death certificate was prepared and sent to the victim’s family. Most of the naked corpses were buried in mass graves, but some were cremated in Frankfurt an der Oder. Construction of a crematorium to handle the large number of corpses was begun, but the project was not yet completed when Soviet troops liberated the hospital on 29 January 1945. Meseritz-Obrawalde had 900 patients in 1939, but during the war the institution was filled to capacity with 2,000 patients.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/euthan/Meseritz-Obrawalde.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
